PICTURE PAST: June 20, 1969 – Youth steals from Dolphin Square restaurant

The search was on for a Weston boy who had been swept out to sea. The story appeared in the Weston Mercury and Somerset Herald 50 years ago.

The Mercury's archives from 150 years ago told an all too familiar tale of vandals wreaking havoc.

The Looking Back section from 100 years before of the Weston Mercury and Somerset Herald reported thieves had taken several beds of choice geraniums.

The paper reported: "Robberies of this kind have, of late, been almost an every day occurrence."

- A helicopter and boats were used in a search off Burnham beach to try to find a Weston boy who had been swept away after he had fallen into the water while playing on the beach.

The police search continued in the week leading up to the June 20 edition of the Mercury going to press but he had not been found.

The missing boy was Timothy Orpin who attended Ashcombe Primary School.

He was playing near the water's edge at low tide when his six-year-old sister Penelope saw him slip into the water.

- Weston demonstrators who gathered outside the Winter Gardens to protest against the delay to Weston's urgently needed new hospital were left disappointed when MP Richard Crossman, secretary of state for social services, did not attend.

Mr Crossman was due to address the conference of the Association of Hospital Management Committees and people had planned to hand him a petition urging the new hospital plans to be brought forward.

But the area secretary of the Prospect branch of the National Federation of Old Age Pensioners, William Bowler, had to send 20 people away after the demonstration was cancelled.

- A youth took a towel roller from the toilets of a restaurant near Dolphin Square.

The young man admitted to stealing the roller but said he did not wield it as a weapon.

Magistrates heard seven youths, including the defendant, went into the Monte Carlo Restaurant and were refused service.

But the defendant and one other went into the toilets before leaving and stole the towel roller.The managers went in and confronted the thieves.

- A councillor pleaded with the borough council's housing committee to introduce an open space for organised games on the Bournville estate.

Cllr Blizzard had been surprised to hear the parks committee proposed making a 15-acre site there into a park area with no facilities for organised games. All hands in the lucky dip at Corpus Christi school's garden fete.