IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 9 - 15 DECEMBER 1924
This week's many stories include the Lyon Street family row involving pokers, the man who claimed he’d been poaching because he needed a pair of boots, the amateur talent show at the St Helens Hippodrome, the bags of coal that fell off a lorry in Moss Bank, it's announced that electricity would be coming to the whole of Parr and the curious case of the maintenance order and the illegitimate Sutton child.
We begin on the 9th when Harry Taylor appeared in the St Helens County Sessions charged with trespassing in pursuit of game in a field belonging to Lord Derby. The man from Balmer Street in Thatto Heath said he was in need of a pair of boots and to raise the cash to pay for them he had gone to catch some rabbits, which he intended to sell. But Taylor now had a £5 fine to pay and if he could not find the money he must serve a month in prison.
The police did not buy the old "it fell off a lorry" excuse – even when the goods did fall off a lorry! John Crooks from Atherton Street in St Helens had found two sacks of coal lying on the road between Moss Bank and Windle City and gleefully carried them home. A Ravenhead Colliery carter had been delivering coal in Moss Bank and the two bags had come tumbling off his motor wagon.
But a century ago, unlike today, the police seemed to be everywhere in St Helens walking the streets and keeping their eyes and ears open. Inspector Curran had seen Crooks take the bags and place them on his cart and later the man sold the coal to his daughter-in-law for 1s 6d. The 57-year-old was prosecuted under the stealing by finding law and fined 9 shillings.
A curious case was heard in St Helens Police Court on the 12th when the wife of Joseph Butler summoned her husband for arrears on a maintenance order. Butler had for some years lived in Blackpool where he worked as a nursing orderly at a convalescent camp. In August 1921 a court had ordered the husband to pay £1 a week to his separated wife and their two children, who lived in Joseph Street in Sutton. But his payments had been irregular and £68 arrears had accrued.
Although Hannah Butler knew her husband lived in Blackpool, she said she was not allowed to know his address and had to use her mother-in-law in Normans Lane as an intermediary. In response Joseph Butler said he wanted the maintenance order cancelling through the "misconduct" of his wife with another man.
The Bench decided to hear Mrs Butler's claim for £68 arrears first. Joseph was ordered to pay off the amount at £1 per week, meaning he now needed to send to his wife a total of £2 each week. The husband was also ordered to pay the court costs and warned that if he failed to make the payments he would be sent to prison.
The court then considered Joseph Butler's separate claim for the maintenance order to be rescinded on the ground that his wife had had a baby with another man. It seems extraordinary that a man separated from his wife for well over three years should be able to absolve his responsibilities to his family because his, no doubt, lonely wife had been seeing another man and bore his child.
Whether Butler would still have had to make some payments for his own children if the Bench had accepted the application, I cannot be certain. But the court was being asked to cancel the whole maintenance order and not amend it by excluding payments for the youngest child and Joseph Butler's separated wife.
In the end the Bench decided not to rescind the order on the ground that it had not been definitively proved to their satisfaction that the husband could not have fathered the child. That was despite Mrs Butler's sister taking the witness stand and declaring that "everybody in Sutton" knew about the illegitimate baby.
In its introduction to another court case this week the St Helens Reporter wrote: "William Harold Saunders, of 70, Lyon-street, is possessed of a happy compound of wit, philosophy and repartee, hidden behind a mask of typical Lancashire dourness. This probably led to the bringing out of facts which contributed to his dismissal, at the St. Helens Police Court on Friday, on a charge of assaulting his step-mother, Edith Saunders."
The latter had charged William and his wife Catherine with assault after a row in which pokers had been used. During the 19th century it was common for rowing parties to take all sorts of stuff – from clumps of hair to big stones – into court as supposed evidence of assault. Such trophies were rare in the 1920s but the complainant Edith Saunders brought the poker that she claimed had been used against her into the courtroom wrapped in newspaper.
The dispute was connected to the dog belonging to William and Catherine that had gone missing and when it was found a summons was issued. Some time afterwards Edith Saunders claimed that her stepson William had entered her house and hit her and after her brother had got between the pair, he also had been struck. Then she claimed Catherine had appeared on the scene armed with a poker and had attempted to strike her. For her part Catherine claimed that she had been protecting her husband and had only intervened because Edith Saunders was hitting William with her own poker.
She also alleged Mrs Saunders had called her and her husband "a lot of gaol birds". In giving his account of the event, William Saunders caused some amusement in the courtroom by saying that after coming home from work he had been sitting in his house "with my clogs, stockings and everything off, reading the paper" in front of the fire. "I hope you did not go out like that?", asked the Chairman of the Bench. "No, I did not," came the reply. William then explained how when he had heard the two women squabbling, he quickly got his clothes and clogs back on and went to see what the trouble was.
He said: "I never struck her because she had a big steel poker in her hand, and I was busy attending to her brother. Him and me got fighting and pokers were flying about, and I got caught on the shoulder. They pushed me towards the doorstep. Mrs. Saunders made a smack at me with the poker. I saw it coming. I ducked, and the same poker, I am glad to say, caught her brother on the head." That last comment led to much laughter in court and eventually the case was dismissed.
Although electricity had been made available in St Helens since the late 1890s, by 1924 it was still not accessible to all. Mainly that was through landlords not wanting the expense of installing electricity in the houses that they owned. However, the entire town had yet to have mains cables installed and in the letters column of the St Helens Reporter on the 12th, a correspondent complained about the lack of electricity in parts of Parr.
The area of concern was mainly beyond the library and along Chancery Lane and Broad Oak Road. But the editor of the paper added a note to say that an electrification scheme would soon begin. That would result in the whole of the Parr district being wired up and in and around Ashtons Green Colliery (pictured above) there were currently many drums of cable waiting to be installed.
The paper also described that the arrangements were being made for the annual New Year's Day breakfast for the poor children of St Helens, writing: "This feast of the little ones, which has become looked upon, as far as the children are concerned, at any rate, as one of the red letter events of the town, is now in its forty-seventh year."
For a week from the 15th the St Helens Follies was presented at the Hippodrome Theatre in Corporation Street. We would call it a talent contest, as the amateur entertainers of the town were being invited to compete for £100 worth of prizes. And if a new star was discovered, what was described as a £1,000 contract was on offer.
The entertainment would be under the supervision of Fred Karno, the pioneer of slapstick comedy who is credited with discovering Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Karno had an arrangement with Burtons, "the tailors of taste", with the prizes for the talent show winners being displayed within their Church Street store. But as well as local wannabees on stage there would be a number of professional acts, including:
Happy Lillian Lee ("The merry yodelling Dutch girl"); Master David Weir ("Cleverest of all boy comedians"); Eddie Veno ("England’s greatest dancer"); Saxon Brown ("The strongest Boy Scout on Earth") and Joyce Fletcher ("In vaudeville tit-bits").
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the tragedy at the Royal Alfred Inn, the St Helens' man's dole fraud while working for the Employment Exchange, the husband who preferred his dog to his wife and the Sutton Manor man for whom it never rains than it pours.
We begin on the 9th when Harry Taylor appeared in the St Helens County Sessions charged with trespassing in pursuit of game in a field belonging to Lord Derby. The man from Balmer Street in Thatto Heath said he was in need of a pair of boots and to raise the cash to pay for them he had gone to catch some rabbits, which he intended to sell. But Taylor now had a £5 fine to pay and if he could not find the money he must serve a month in prison.
The police did not buy the old "it fell off a lorry" excuse – even when the goods did fall off a lorry! John Crooks from Atherton Street in St Helens had found two sacks of coal lying on the road between Moss Bank and Windle City and gleefully carried them home. A Ravenhead Colliery carter had been delivering coal in Moss Bank and the two bags had come tumbling off his motor wagon.
But a century ago, unlike today, the police seemed to be everywhere in St Helens walking the streets and keeping their eyes and ears open. Inspector Curran had seen Crooks take the bags and place them on his cart and later the man sold the coal to his daughter-in-law for 1s 6d. The 57-year-old was prosecuted under the stealing by finding law and fined 9 shillings.
A curious case was heard in St Helens Police Court on the 12th when the wife of Joseph Butler summoned her husband for arrears on a maintenance order. Butler had for some years lived in Blackpool where he worked as a nursing orderly at a convalescent camp. In August 1921 a court had ordered the husband to pay £1 a week to his separated wife and their two children, who lived in Joseph Street in Sutton. But his payments had been irregular and £68 arrears had accrued.
Although Hannah Butler knew her husband lived in Blackpool, she said she was not allowed to know his address and had to use her mother-in-law in Normans Lane as an intermediary. In response Joseph Butler said he wanted the maintenance order cancelling through the "misconduct" of his wife with another man.
The Bench decided to hear Mrs Butler's claim for £68 arrears first. Joseph was ordered to pay off the amount at £1 per week, meaning he now needed to send to his wife a total of £2 each week. The husband was also ordered to pay the court costs and warned that if he failed to make the payments he would be sent to prison.
The court then considered Joseph Butler's separate claim for the maintenance order to be rescinded on the ground that his wife had had a baby with another man. It seems extraordinary that a man separated from his wife for well over three years should be able to absolve his responsibilities to his family because his, no doubt, lonely wife had been seeing another man and bore his child.
Whether Butler would still have had to make some payments for his own children if the Bench had accepted the application, I cannot be certain. But the court was being asked to cancel the whole maintenance order and not amend it by excluding payments for the youngest child and Joseph Butler's separated wife.
In the end the Bench decided not to rescind the order on the ground that it had not been definitively proved to their satisfaction that the husband could not have fathered the child. That was despite Mrs Butler's sister taking the witness stand and declaring that "everybody in Sutton" knew about the illegitimate baby.
In its introduction to another court case this week the St Helens Reporter wrote: "William Harold Saunders, of 70, Lyon-street, is possessed of a happy compound of wit, philosophy and repartee, hidden behind a mask of typical Lancashire dourness. This probably led to the bringing out of facts which contributed to his dismissal, at the St. Helens Police Court on Friday, on a charge of assaulting his step-mother, Edith Saunders."
The latter had charged William and his wife Catherine with assault after a row in which pokers had been used. During the 19th century it was common for rowing parties to take all sorts of stuff – from clumps of hair to big stones – into court as supposed evidence of assault. Such trophies were rare in the 1920s but the complainant Edith Saunders brought the poker that she claimed had been used against her into the courtroom wrapped in newspaper.
The dispute was connected to the dog belonging to William and Catherine that had gone missing and when it was found a summons was issued. Some time afterwards Edith Saunders claimed that her stepson William had entered her house and hit her and after her brother had got between the pair, he also had been struck. Then she claimed Catherine had appeared on the scene armed with a poker and had attempted to strike her. For her part Catherine claimed that she had been protecting her husband and had only intervened because Edith Saunders was hitting William with her own poker.
She also alleged Mrs Saunders had called her and her husband "a lot of gaol birds". In giving his account of the event, William Saunders caused some amusement in the courtroom by saying that after coming home from work he had been sitting in his house "with my clogs, stockings and everything off, reading the paper" in front of the fire. "I hope you did not go out like that?", asked the Chairman of the Bench. "No, I did not," came the reply. William then explained how when he had heard the two women squabbling, he quickly got his clothes and clogs back on and went to see what the trouble was.
He said: "I never struck her because she had a big steel poker in her hand, and I was busy attending to her brother. Him and me got fighting and pokers were flying about, and I got caught on the shoulder. They pushed me towards the doorstep. Mrs. Saunders made a smack at me with the poker. I saw it coming. I ducked, and the same poker, I am glad to say, caught her brother on the head." That last comment led to much laughter in court and eventually the case was dismissed.
Although electricity had been made available in St Helens since the late 1890s, by 1924 it was still not accessible to all. Mainly that was through landlords not wanting the expense of installing electricity in the houses that they owned. However, the entire town had yet to have mains cables installed and in the letters column of the St Helens Reporter on the 12th, a correspondent complained about the lack of electricity in parts of Parr.
The paper also described that the arrangements were being made for the annual New Year's Day breakfast for the poor children of St Helens, writing: "This feast of the little ones, which has become looked upon, as far as the children are concerned, at any rate, as one of the red letter events of the town, is now in its forty-seventh year."
For a week from the 15th the St Helens Follies was presented at the Hippodrome Theatre in Corporation Street. We would call it a talent contest, as the amateur entertainers of the town were being invited to compete for £100 worth of prizes. And if a new star was discovered, what was described as a £1,000 contract was on offer.
The entertainment would be under the supervision of Fred Karno, the pioneer of slapstick comedy who is credited with discovering Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Karno had an arrangement with Burtons, "the tailors of taste", with the prizes for the talent show winners being displayed within their Church Street store. But as well as local wannabees on stage there would be a number of professional acts, including:
Happy Lillian Lee ("The merry yodelling Dutch girl"); Master David Weir ("Cleverest of all boy comedians"); Eddie Veno ("England’s greatest dancer"); Saxon Brown ("The strongest Boy Scout on Earth") and Joyce Fletcher ("In vaudeville tit-bits").
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the tragedy at the Royal Alfred Inn, the St Helens' man's dole fraud while working for the Employment Exchange, the husband who preferred his dog to his wife and the Sutton Manor man for whom it never rains than it pours.
This week's many stories include the Lyon Street family row involving pokers, the man who claimed he’d been poaching because he needed a pair of boots, the amateur talent show at the St Helens Hippodrome, the bags of coal that fell off a lorry in Moss Bank, it's announced that electricity would be coming to the whole of Parr and the curious case of the maintenance order and the illegitimate Sutton child.
We begin on the 9th when Harry Taylor appeared in the St Helens County Sessions charged with trespassing in pursuit of game in a field belonging to Lord Derby.
The man from Balmer Street in Thatto Heath said he was in need of a pair of boots and to raise the cash to pay for them he had gone to catch some rabbits, which he intended to sell.
But Taylor now had a £5 fine to pay and if he could not find the money he must serve a month in prison.
The police did not buy the old "it fell off a lorry" excuse – even when the goods did fall off a lorry!
John Crooks from Atherton Street in St Helens had found two sacks of coal lying on the road between Moss Bank and Windle City and gleefully carried them home.
A Ravenhead Colliery carter had been delivering coal in Moss Bank and the two bags had come tumbling off his motor wagon.
But a century ago, unlike today, the police seemed to be everywhere in St Helens, walking the streets and keeping their eyes and ears open.
Inspector Curran had seen Crooks take the bags and place them on his cart and later the man sold the coal to his daughter-in-law for 1s 6d.
The 57-year-old was prosecuted under the stealing by finding law and fined 9 shillings.
A curious case was heard in St Helens Police Court on the 12th when the wife of Joseph Butler summoned her husband for arrears on a maintenance order.
Butler had for some years lived in Blackpool where he worked as a nursing orderly at a convalescent camp.
In August 1921 a court had ordered the husband to pay £1 a week to his separated wife and their two children, who lived in Joseph Street in Sutton. But his payments had been irregular and £68 arrears had accrued.
Although Hannah Butler knew her husband lived in Blackpool, she said she was not allowed to know his address and had to use her mother-in-law in Normans Lane as an intermediary.
In response Joseph Butler said he wanted the maintenance order cancelling through the "misconduct" of his wife with another man.
The Bench decided to hear Mrs Butler's claim for £68 arrears first. Joseph was ordered to pay off the amount at £1 per week, meaning he now needed to send to his wife a total of £2 each week.
The husband was also ordered to pay the court costs and warned that if he failed to make the payments he would be sent to prison.
The court then considered Joseph Butler's separate claim for the maintenance order to be rescinded on the ground that his wife had had a baby with another man.
It seems extraordinary that a man separated from his wife for well over three years should be able to absolve his responsibilities to his family because his, no doubt, lonely wife had been seeing another man and bore his child.
Whether Butler would still have had to make some payments for his own children if the Bench had accepted the application, I cannot be certain.
But the court was being asked to cancel the whole maintenance order and not amend it by excluding payments for the youngest child and Joseph Butler's separated wife.
In the end the Bench decided not to rescind the order on the ground that it had not been definitively proved to their satisfaction that the husband could not have fathered the child.
That was despite Mrs Butler's sister taking the witness stand and declaring that "everybody in Sutton" knew about the illegitimate baby.
In its introduction to another court case this week the St Helens Reporter wrote:
"William Harold Saunders, of 70, Lyon-street, is possessed of a happy compound of wit, philosophy and repartee, hidden behind a mask of typical Lancashire dourness.
"This probably led to the bringing out of facts which contributed to his dismissal, at the St. Helens Police Court on Friday, on a charge of assaulting his step-mother, Edith Saunders."
The latter had charged William and his wife Catherine with assault after a row in which pokers had been used.
During the 19th century it was common for rowing parties to take all sorts of stuff – from clumps of hair to big stones – into court as supposed evidence of assault.
Such trophies were rare in the 1920s but the complainant Edith Saunders brought the poker that she claimed had been used against her into the courtroom wrapped in newspaper.
The dispute was connected to the dog belonging to William and Catherine that had gone missing and when it was found a summons was issued.
Some time afterwards Edith Saunders claimed that her stepson William had entered her house and hit her and after her brother had got between the pair, he also had been struck.
Then she claimed Catherine had appeared on the scene armed with a poker and had attempted to strike her.
For her part Catherine claimed that she had been protecting her husband and had only intervened because Edith Saunders was hitting William with her own poker.
She also alleged Mrs Saunders had called her and her husband "a lot of gaol birds".
In giving his account of the event, William Saunders caused some amusement in the courtroom by saying that after coming home from work he had been sitting in his house "with my clogs, stockings and everything off, reading the paper" in front of the fire.
"I hope you did not go out like that?", asked the Chairman of the Bench. "No, I did not," came the reply.
William then explained how when he had heard the two women squabbling, he quickly got his clothes and clogs back on and went to see what the trouble was. He said:
"I never struck her because she had a big steel poker in her hand, and I was busy attending to her brother. Him and me got fighting and pokers were flying about, and I got caught on the shoulder.
"They pushed me towards the doorstep. Mrs. Saunders made a smack at me with the poker. I saw it coming. I ducked, and the same poker, I am glad to say, caught her brother on the head."
That last comment led to much laughter in court and eventually the case was dismissed.
Although electricity had been made available in St Helens since the late 1890s, by 1924 it was still not accessible to all.
Mainly that was through landlords not wanting the expense of installing electricity in the houses that they owned.
However, the entire town had yet to have mains cables installed and in the letters column of the St Helens Reporter on the 12th, a correspondent complained about the lack of electricity in parts of Parr.
The area of concern was mainly beyond the library and along Chancery Lane and Broad Oak Road.
But the editor of the paper added a note to say that an electrification scheme would soon begin.
That would result in the whole of the Parr district being wired up and in and around Ashtons Green Colliery (pictured above) there were currently many drums of cable waiting to be installed.
The paper also described that the arrangements were being made for the annual New Year's Day breakfast for the poor children of St Helens, writing:
"This feast of the little ones, which has become looked upon, as far as the children are concerned, at any rate, as one of the red letter events of the town, is now in its forty-seventh year."
For a week from the 15th the St Helens Follies was presented at the Hippodrome Theatre in Corporation Street.
We would call it a talent contest, as the amateur entertainers of the town were being invited to compete for £100 worth of prizes.
And if a new star was discovered, what was described as a £1,000 contract was on offer.
The entertainment would be under the supervision of Fred Karno, the pioneer of slapstick comedy who is credited with discovering Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.
Karno had an arrangement with Burtons, "the tailors of taste", with the prizes for the talent show winners being displayed within their Church Street store.
But as well as local wannabees on stage there would be a number of professional acts, including:
Happy Lillian Lee ("The merry yodelling Dutch girl"); Master David Weir ("Cleverest of all boy comedians"); Eddie Veno ("England’s greatest dancer"); Saxon Brown ("The strongest Boy Scout on Earth") and Joyce Fletcher ("In vaudeville tit-bits").
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the tragedy at the Royal Alfred Inn, the St Helens' man's dole fraud while working for the Employment Exchange, the husband who preferred his dog to his wife and the Sutton Manor man for whom it never rains than it pours.
We begin on the 9th when Harry Taylor appeared in the St Helens County Sessions charged with trespassing in pursuit of game in a field belonging to Lord Derby.
The man from Balmer Street in Thatto Heath said he was in need of a pair of boots and to raise the cash to pay for them he had gone to catch some rabbits, which he intended to sell.
But Taylor now had a £5 fine to pay and if he could not find the money he must serve a month in prison.
The police did not buy the old "it fell off a lorry" excuse – even when the goods did fall off a lorry!
John Crooks from Atherton Street in St Helens had found two sacks of coal lying on the road between Moss Bank and Windle City and gleefully carried them home.
A Ravenhead Colliery carter had been delivering coal in Moss Bank and the two bags had come tumbling off his motor wagon.
But a century ago, unlike today, the police seemed to be everywhere in St Helens, walking the streets and keeping their eyes and ears open.
Inspector Curran had seen Crooks take the bags and place them on his cart and later the man sold the coal to his daughter-in-law for 1s 6d.
The 57-year-old was prosecuted under the stealing by finding law and fined 9 shillings.
A curious case was heard in St Helens Police Court on the 12th when the wife of Joseph Butler summoned her husband for arrears on a maintenance order.
Butler had for some years lived in Blackpool where he worked as a nursing orderly at a convalescent camp.
In August 1921 a court had ordered the husband to pay £1 a week to his separated wife and their two children, who lived in Joseph Street in Sutton. But his payments had been irregular and £68 arrears had accrued.
Although Hannah Butler knew her husband lived in Blackpool, she said she was not allowed to know his address and had to use her mother-in-law in Normans Lane as an intermediary.
In response Joseph Butler said he wanted the maintenance order cancelling through the "misconduct" of his wife with another man.
The Bench decided to hear Mrs Butler's claim for £68 arrears first. Joseph was ordered to pay off the amount at £1 per week, meaning he now needed to send to his wife a total of £2 each week.
The husband was also ordered to pay the court costs and warned that if he failed to make the payments he would be sent to prison.
The court then considered Joseph Butler's separate claim for the maintenance order to be rescinded on the ground that his wife had had a baby with another man.
It seems extraordinary that a man separated from his wife for well over three years should be able to absolve his responsibilities to his family because his, no doubt, lonely wife had been seeing another man and bore his child.
Whether Butler would still have had to make some payments for his own children if the Bench had accepted the application, I cannot be certain.
But the court was being asked to cancel the whole maintenance order and not amend it by excluding payments for the youngest child and Joseph Butler's separated wife.
In the end the Bench decided not to rescind the order on the ground that it had not been definitively proved to their satisfaction that the husband could not have fathered the child.
That was despite Mrs Butler's sister taking the witness stand and declaring that "everybody in Sutton" knew about the illegitimate baby.
In its introduction to another court case this week the St Helens Reporter wrote:
"William Harold Saunders, of 70, Lyon-street, is possessed of a happy compound of wit, philosophy and repartee, hidden behind a mask of typical Lancashire dourness.
"This probably led to the bringing out of facts which contributed to his dismissal, at the St. Helens Police Court on Friday, on a charge of assaulting his step-mother, Edith Saunders."
The latter had charged William and his wife Catherine with assault after a row in which pokers had been used.
During the 19th century it was common for rowing parties to take all sorts of stuff – from clumps of hair to big stones – into court as supposed evidence of assault.
Such trophies were rare in the 1920s but the complainant Edith Saunders brought the poker that she claimed had been used against her into the courtroom wrapped in newspaper.
The dispute was connected to the dog belonging to William and Catherine that had gone missing and when it was found a summons was issued.
Some time afterwards Edith Saunders claimed that her stepson William had entered her house and hit her and after her brother had got between the pair, he also had been struck.
Then she claimed Catherine had appeared on the scene armed with a poker and had attempted to strike her.
For her part Catherine claimed that she had been protecting her husband and had only intervened because Edith Saunders was hitting William with her own poker.
She also alleged Mrs Saunders had called her and her husband "a lot of gaol birds".
In giving his account of the event, William Saunders caused some amusement in the courtroom by saying that after coming home from work he had been sitting in his house "with my clogs, stockings and everything off, reading the paper" in front of the fire.
"I hope you did not go out like that?", asked the Chairman of the Bench. "No, I did not," came the reply.
William then explained how when he had heard the two women squabbling, he quickly got his clothes and clogs back on and went to see what the trouble was. He said:
"I never struck her because she had a big steel poker in her hand, and I was busy attending to her brother. Him and me got fighting and pokers were flying about, and I got caught on the shoulder.
"They pushed me towards the doorstep. Mrs. Saunders made a smack at me with the poker. I saw it coming. I ducked, and the same poker, I am glad to say, caught her brother on the head."
That last comment led to much laughter in court and eventually the case was dismissed.
Although electricity had been made available in St Helens since the late 1890s, by 1924 it was still not accessible to all.
Mainly that was through landlords not wanting the expense of installing electricity in the houses that they owned.
However, the entire town had yet to have mains cables installed and in the letters column of the St Helens Reporter on the 12th, a correspondent complained about the lack of electricity in parts of Parr.
The area of concern was mainly beyond the library and along Chancery Lane and Broad Oak Road.
But the editor of the paper added a note to say that an electrification scheme would soon begin.
The paper also described that the arrangements were being made for the annual New Year's Day breakfast for the poor children of St Helens, writing:
"This feast of the little ones, which has become looked upon, as far as the children are concerned, at any rate, as one of the red letter events of the town, is now in its forty-seventh year."
For a week from the 15th the St Helens Follies was presented at the Hippodrome Theatre in Corporation Street.
We would call it a talent contest, as the amateur entertainers of the town were being invited to compete for £100 worth of prizes.
And if a new star was discovered, what was described as a £1,000 contract was on offer.
The entertainment would be under the supervision of Fred Karno, the pioneer of slapstick comedy who is credited with discovering Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.
Karno had an arrangement with Burtons, "the tailors of taste", with the prizes for the talent show winners being displayed within their Church Street store.
But as well as local wannabees on stage there would be a number of professional acts, including:
Happy Lillian Lee ("The merry yodelling Dutch girl"); Master David Weir ("Cleverest of all boy comedians"); Eddie Veno ("England’s greatest dancer"); Saxon Brown ("The strongest Boy Scout on Earth") and Joyce Fletcher ("In vaudeville tit-bits").
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the tragedy at the Royal Alfred Inn, the St Helens' man's dole fraud while working for the Employment Exchange, the husband who preferred his dog to his wife and the Sutton Manor man for whom it never rains than it pours.