Day's Cash Stores

Thank you to Kim Loos, who lives in Minnesota in the U.S., who e-mailed me to say that Day's Cash Stores (which was situated in West Street, and later the site of the Wimpy Bar) was founded by his Great Grandfather Charles W. Day. He says the original building was destroyed in a fire in 1910 and replaced within the year by the building that housed the Wimpy Bar and that Days went out of business when his Grand Uncles retired. Charles Day was also mayor of the borough in 1924/25. He and his wife donated the gates to Central Park and the electrified Five Lamps that stood in the Market Place and can now to be seen in Liquorpond Street. He also attached a 1925 photo of Charles and Ellen (nee Ward) Day.

Above: Day's Cash Stores. Below: The same site in 2012. Notice the left hand side pillar from the old shop didn't get destroyed in the demolition and is still to be seen today.

Charles and Ellen Day.

The lamps in the Market Place that Charles Day donated, they are now situated in Liquorpond Street.

 

Tinned food in Boston

I was e-mailed this old picture of workers at Beaulahs by Shirley Coope, wife of my friend Terry Coope and she says, "Tez's aunt Ruby Jackson (nee Betts) is on the front row 5th from the left i think she was about 16 years old, she's 83 now so would be about 1945."


Thanks Shirley, you got me looking for some other stuff on the canning factories and I have set down below the things I have collected.

This was Beaulahs Tawney Street factory.............

.........and their Bargate End factory.

Some more ladies, of a different time period, sorting peas at Beaulahs.

A Beaulahs advertisement.

Beaulahs cards given away with their products.

This photo doesn't specify which factory, it just says, "Girls at a canning factory in Boston, Lincolnshire, making 'Blitz Soup'", blitz soup was distributed to all bombed areas; the pictures in front of them are of RAF aces so was obviously taken during world war two.

Another canning factory was Lin-Can which was down London Road, where Somerfields supermarket is now.

And the building next door to Lin-can with the dome was yet another canners Willer and Riley's.

The two pictures below show the building being demolished to make way for Somerfields.

 

Broughtons shop

Thanks to Michael Broughton, an ex Bostonian who now lives in Cardiff for the picture and e-mailed information below.

Broughton’s shop ran in his family for 4 generations, the last being William Harvey Broughton, Michael's Father, who sold the shop and retired early due to a heart attack, in 1969. The family moved to Cardiff where, soon after, his Father suffered another heart attack and passed away. The shop stood where the KFC food outlet is now at number 42 Market place. It had the Maypole on the left as you look at the photo, and the Home & Colonial grocery store on the right, the first floor of the shop and the same floor of the Home & Colonial was knocked through and rented out as a café, he couldn't be too sure of the café name but thought it may have been Coney’s Café. He also added that the newsagent business (unusually) never sold any Tobacco products. Thanks again for sharing this information Michael.

Old Postcards

Below are some of the many postcards that have been published over the years of Boston.

Various views

The Stump from the Town Bridge



Various

The Municipal Buildings, West Street

The Swing Bridge

Upsall's boat hire, Witham Bank

The Wesleyan Chapel, Red Lion Street

Old Council vehicles

A lot of work done by the council today is taken on by private companies but in years gone by they had their own vehicles and workforce. Shown below are two such vehicles of the Boston Rural District Council. Lincolnshire of course was divided into three areas Holland, Kesteven and Lindsey with Boston being in the Holland district.

Old Boston buses



This Leyland bus was built in September 1927 and was acquired by the Lincolnshire Road Car Co. in 1931, for whom it worked out of Boston as No.132. It was exported in the 1950s and became a caravan, and is now rotting somewhere in Tasmania!

One of Sharpe's buses in its overnight storage position at their depot in Pipe Office Lane, Boston.

Above: A Kyme's bus in Bond Street at the side of the now demolished Regal Cinema. Below: A Kyme's bus in the Market Place.



SEA SERPENT?

In August 1903 there was a lot of excitement at Boston Dock when a sea creature was landed there from the steam trawler "Indian" belonging to the Deep Sea Fishing Co. It was described at the time as "a monster of the deep, having the body of an elongated flatfish and a head shaped like a horse's." The creature was brought up in the vessels trawl during the  night-time on the fishing grounds off Iceland.
It was just over 8 feet long and between 8 and 10 inches deep and the body was so flat that when laid out it scarcely rose 2 inches above the board. Running the whole length of the body was a series of fins and the tail itself was small in proportion to the body but the most remarkable thing about the monster was its head which was horse shaped. The eyes were large, about 3 inches across and the body was smooth and grey coloured with no scales about the head. Captain Johnston, of the trawler "Indian" said that when the animal was hauled aboard the body flashed in the darkness like a piece of silver.
It was displayed on the Fish Pontoon at the dock and after a lot of bidding it was sold to a Mr. H. Randall for 14 shillings (70p) and afterwards moved for exhibition at Skegness. The older fishermen of Boston said they had never seen anything like it and local naturalists were at a loss as to what it might be.
So what was it? Well, Mr. G.E.Hackford, photographer of Boston, sent a photograph and letter to the Natural History Museum in London and received this reply.
"The fish represented on your excellent photographs, which I am very pleased to keep, is the Deal Fish (Trachypterus Arcticus), a pelagic fish of wide distribution, already on record from Iceland and from various points on the British coasts. Yours faithfully, G.A. Boulenger."
So there we have it, no sea monster brought to Boston but still an interesting story. The picture above shows what a Deal Fish looks like.