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Fascinating feast of stories in new Echo book

Called Echoes of the Century the A4 softback book starts with a chapter detailing the Echo’s own history from August 20, 1900, when the first edition was about to be launched – and someone spotted that a page was upside down!

More than two dozen journalists, and other Echo staff members, painstakingly thumbed through the yellowing volumes in the Echo’s archives, turning the pages of more than 31,000 editions of the Echo.

The result is a fascinating feast of stories and snippets covering everything from the day the Kaiser came to town to the Creekmoor chicken that laid square eggs.

Daily Echo editor Neal Butterworth said: “A great deal of research, effort and, yes, passion has gone into this publication and I am indebted to the dedicated team of writers and sub-editors who have pored over our dusty volumes.

“This superb publication says everything about life in newspapers. Long hours of hard work and frustration, a head swimming with stories, ideas and pictures, a feeling of immense satisfaction and, believe me, plenty of laughter.”

Tragedies covered in the book include the tram crash of 1908, when seven people died, the Second World War bomb raid over Bournemouth of 1943 when 70 people lost their lives and the 1995 coach crash which killed 13 members of the Christchurch Royal British Legion.

What the journalists found intriguing was how some things had changed little over the years. Cases of graffiti, vandlaism and even a stalker peppered the pages of the Echo in the early part of the century.

But there were big changes in other areas. In the early 1900s, young boys were birched for stealing oranges; in 1913, militant suffragettes poured phosphorous, tar and lampblack into pillar boxes in Bournemouth and Poole and in 1919, rodents were such a problem that Bournemouth launched a Swat the Rat Week.

Echoes of the Century costs £2.50.

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