FROM this newspaper 100 years ago. - The Spectator writes: Our old friend the Spanish prisoner with a fortune of £37,000 in an English bank, who mourns a dead wife who was an English lady, is now casting his languishing eyes towards Darlington.

At any rate two Darlingtonians have received a most pathetic appeal addressed from the Castle Fort of Barcelona, with the promise of a great reward if the "Dear sir and relative" will only find out the poor prisoner's daughter, become her protector, and incidentally "advance the necessary funds for the repleving of my equipage."

"My equipage are confiscated in Carthagena, but nobody knows that dissembled secret, you only are aware of it," and the poor prisoner who is in a grave state of health expects that a reply will at once be sent by cable. Instead of that the letters have been handed to the press in order that readers may be warned against the "Spanish prisoner swindle".

From this newspaper 50 years ago. - Meeting in the sylvan setting provided by Newgate Bank, near Helmsley, on Saturday, members of the Ryedale branch of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England heard an eloquent appeal by Mrs Dorothy McGrigor Philips for action to avert the threatened menace to the beauty of the countryside.

In the words of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, she said: "a new age is opening - a change as great as that which came over Britain at the industrial revolution, and much more dangerous." We had only to go about the countryside to see how true that statement was and that this new age was a far greater threat to the country than the town.

From this newspaper 25 years ago. - Football and embroidery may seem an unlikely combination of interests for an 82-year-old widow. Unlikely, that is, until one met the newly-elected chairman of Reeth Road Social Club, Richmond.

Mrs Daisie Duffy moved to Richmond 17 years ago from her native Sunderland where she was a regular face on the terraces of Roker Park. She never misses the BBC Match of the Day, but the Sunderland result is always the first one she looks for.

"I'm football crazy," she said, "and can count the times I've missed a Sunderland match on one hand. It breaks my heart when they lose."

A bundle of energy, Mrs Duffy is now devoted to increasing the membership and widening the activities of her local social club. It reopened in Jubilee Year and she has gone along twice weekly since then.

Committee work is nothing new to her. "I have been on many committees in the past so I know what I am doing," she said. "But I am just feeling my way at the moment."