Chief reporter JACK TOLSON takes a look back through the Chronicle archives to July 1992
SPORTS CAR FOR LEX?
POLICE dog Lex the German Shepherd could soon be patrolling Barnsley’s streets in a £20,000 sports car.
For the town’s police force is hoping to get a Sierra Cosworth 4 x 4 - one of the fastest cars on the road - and install a cage in the back so specially-trained dogs such as Lex can be at the scene of incidents within minutes.
And they are also to be used in a bid to stamp out crime - the Cosworth will patrol roads which are known to be used by car thieves.
Instead of police officers chasing thieves, the dogs will be set free, with instructions to apprehend whoever ties to escape from them.
Barnsley’s army of eight police dogs are already having a significant effect on crime - each dog ‘feels the collars’ of at least three criminals every month.
They are currently being deployed in normal patrol cars on a trial basis, but the experiment is proving so successful that it is likely to be introduced permanently.
PATRICIA SEES HERSELF IN CHRONICLE - AFTER TRAVELLING 12,000 MILES
EX-PUPIL of Littleworth Infants’ School Patricia Finney was stunned after flying 12,000 miles from her home in Australia to see her photograph in the Barnsley Chronicle.
“I couldn’t believe it, the coincidence was absolutely amazing and it was even more of a surprise because I had never seen the photograph before,” she said.
She was only seven years old and living in Martins Road, when she lined up with her classmates at the infants' school to have her picture taken in the school grounds in 1934.
The photograph was loaned to us by Frank Cant of Monk Bretton, another former pupil at the school, and we published it on the Nostalgia page on the same day Patricia arrived back in Barnsley.
LANDLOCKED BARNSLEY TO ‘ADOPT’ ITS OWN SHIP
LANDLOCKED Barnsley will adopts its own ship today at a reception at the town hall.
The £200m, 32,000 tonne Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship, Fort Victoria,was the subject of controversy earlier this month when a Parliamentary report revealed that the shop, when completed, would be more than £70m over budget and would need an expensive refit to fit out in Sea Wolf missiles which should have been fitted in the first place.
Last week Barnsley Council leader Hedley Salt brushed off criticisms, after one MP had dubbed the ship ‘HMS Delorean’ and said that others could mock and make snide comments but ‘we are happy with it’.
The official adoption ceremony for the ship, which is due to enter service in late 1992, will be followed by a weekend of celebrations.
