The Postcard
A postcard that was published by Bamforth & Co. Ltd. of Holmfirth. The card was posted in Lancaster using a 3½p stamp on Friday the 26th. October 1973. It was sent to:
Mr. & Mrs. T. Cuthbert,
c/o Mrs. J. Chisholm,
The Braes,
Burn Road,
Darvel.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Friday 26th. October.
Do hope you are getting
on alright and that by now
Aggie is feeling stronger.
We are wondering if you
are home, so hope to hear
from you soon.
Love from all here,
Nance xxx"
Morecambe Super Swimming Stadium
The £130,000 Swimming Stadium was opened by Sir Josiah Stamp, who was President of the L.M.S (London Midland and Scottish Railway) on the 27th. July 1936.
The pool remarkably took only 13 months to be dug and built.
At the time it was described as:
“Morecambe’s costliest yet
most popular enterprise.”
On opening the pool was visited by 27,000 bathers in two days. This pool opened 7 days a week for daytime and floodlit bathing. It was the longest open air pool in Europe, being a massive 396 ft x 110 ft.
The Super Swimming Stadium was one of Morecambe's proudest features. National and International swimming competitions were staged there, and there were Aqua shows every year, with exhibition diving and performances by the resident 'Aquacascades'.
The First Beauty Contest
The first Baths Manager for Morecambe was Mr Leonard Flook. Morecambe was the fore-runner for holding Beauty Contests, which were the idea of Leonard Flook:
“Nobody had thought
about it before!”
The winner of the very first local contest received £50 and a cup. The Sunday Dispatch sponsored it, and the competition subsequently evolved into the Miss Great Britain and Miss World Contests.
Leonard Flook was invited to judge the final heat of the Miss Great Britain contest. Other judges included Laurel and Hardy, George Formby, and Wilfred Pickles.
The Blue Seagull Award
Young children earned their 'Blue Seagull Award' for swimming one length of the pool.
Closure of the Super Swimming Stadium
In 1975 it was announced that the Super Swimming Stadium would not be included in the latest holiday guide. It was also announced that the stadium would not open again due to structural defects.
It had been hoped that once structural engineers had been approached, the pool would come alive again, but it was not to be. It was demolished in 1976, and the site became a Leisure Park.
Morecambe
Morecambe in Lancashire was a thriving seaside resort in the mid-20th. century. It was home to the largest Pontins resort in the country. While the resort of Blackpool attracted holiday-makers predominantly from the Lancashire mill towns, Morecambe had more visitors from Yorkshire (due to its railway connection) and Scotland.
Mill workers from Bradford and further afield in West Yorkshire holidayed at Morecambe, with some retiring there. This gave Morecambe the nickname "Bradford on Sea". Between 1956 and 1989, it was the home of the Miss Great Britain beauty contest.
Morecambe suffered a decades-long decline after a series of incidents that damaged tourism and the local economy. Two piers were lost: West End Pier was partly washed away in a storm in November 1977, and the remnants were demolished in 1978; Central Pier, damaged by fire in 1933, was removed in 1992.
Pontins closed in 1993. In 1994, The World of Crinkley Bottom attraction in Happy Mount Park closed only thirteen weeks after opening. The ensuing Blobbygate scandal, a financial disaster after projected visitor numbers did not materialise, led to a legal battle between Lancaster City Council and TV star Noel Edmonds, costing North Lancs taxpayers £2.6 million.
The closures of Bubbles, Morecambe's swimming pool, and the Frontierland fairground soon followed.
On the 5th. February 2004, there was a major loss of life in Morecambe Bay when at least 21 Chinese immigrant shellfish harvesters were drowned after they became trapped by the incoming tide.
In December 2017 a local general practitioner and community health activist claimed that children in Morecambe were suffering from malnourishment, and implied that cases of rickets had been observed as a consequence.
The "Morecambe Budget"
Enoch Powell made a speech in Morecambe on the 11th. October 1968 on the economy, setting out alternative, radical free-market policies that would later be called the Morecambe Budget.
Powell used the financial year 1968–69 to show how income tax could be halved from 8s 3d to 4s 3d in the pound (basic rate cut from 41% to 21%), and how capital gains tax could be abolished without reducing expenditure on defence or the social services.
These tax cuts required a saving of £2,855 million, and this would be funded by eradicating losses in the nationalised industries and denationalising the profit-making state concerns.
Also ending all housing subsidies except for those who could not afford their own housing; ending all foreign aid; ending all grants and subsidies in agriculture; ending all assistance to development areas; ending all investment grants; abolishing the National Economic Development Council; and abolishing the Prices and Incomes Board.
The cuts in taxation would also allow the state to borrow from the public to spend on capital projects such as hospitals and roads, and on the firm and humane treatment of criminals.
A Hotel Kidnapping
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 26th. October 1973, the government of South Korea freed opposition leader Kim Dae Jung from house arrest, almost three months after he had been kidnapped from a hotel in Japan.
Alcatraz
Also on that day, California's Alcatraz Island and the federal prison building that had been located there were both opened by the U.S. Park Service as a tourist attraction.
Seth MacFarlane
The 26th. October 1973 also marked the birth in Kent, Connecticut of the American comedian, TV and film producer Seth MacFarlane.
Seth, who was also an actor, is known for Family Guy and Ted.
