Essex Chronicle writer Stan Jarvis takes a regular look at the columns of days gone by.
Here, in an article which first appeared in the Chronicle, he recalls a compelling story that made him read on…

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Looking through the old Chronicles can be a very human occupation.

Births, marriages, deaths; advertisements so useful to all of us; looking for the right places to buy a bike, get a chimney sweep, a guide to agents for the right house to buy and to furnish, a directory of those essential services including doctors and chemists which we never know when we are going to need and all updated every week.

Then, of course, there’s the news – and in those pages we sometimes find the strangest things of all. When I picked up the paper for February 7, 1958, my eyes were caught by the headline MONKEY BUSINESS in extra black type.

Of course I was curious, so I sat down with the Chron. That reporter must have been an old hand – he made me want to read on!

“Load of trouble for a lorry driver” followed by “Police with flashing torches stood outside the Brentwood Police Station on Monday night. A policeman clambered over the tailboard and the hunt was on.”

Never was a newspaper reader more intrigued.

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