IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 10 - 16 NOVEMBER 1925
This week's many stories include the scarlet fever outbreak in Rainford, the rent by auction of a butcher's stall in the Covered Market, criticism of the perpetual Peasley Cross flooding, the row at a fairground in St Helens Junction and how the telephone and motorised vehicles had improved the efficiency of the fire brigade.
We begin on the 10th when an unusual auction took place at the Market Inspector's office in St Helens. Auction sales of business premises were very common but St Helens Corporation was auctioning the rental of a butcher's stall in the Covered Market.
It went for 41 shillings a week, considerably more than the 12/6 that many stallholders were paying for similar-sized stalls in a comparable position. The rent by auction was considered an experiment to see how much butchers were prepared to pay and other stallholders were now expecting to see their rent rise in the future.
On the 12th the annual St Helens Parish Church tea party was held and the new Vicar, the Rev Frank Child, paid tribute to his predecessor, the Rev. Canon Albert Baines, who had been transferred to Huddersfield earlier in the year. For most of his 14 years in St Helens, Canon Baines had been without a church, as it had burned down in 1916. But Rev Child was able to announce that they needed to raise only a further £1,500 to complete the new building.
The St Helens Reporter could be a bit unkind in how they described those down on their luck and on the 13th referred to Paul Leech from Church Street as a "piece of human driftwood, who called for the sympathy of all who saw him." He had been accused of being drunk and disorderly after visiting the p on Derbyshire Hill Road but the paper said the man had told the magistrates such a pathetic story that they dismissed the charge against him.
Lads that were kicking a football about in the street would scatter as soon as they saw a policeman arrive on the scene. The officer had longer legs and so would always be able to catch up with the fleeing footballers but only possessing a single pair of hands, could only collar one boy.
Thomas O’Neale was the unlucky one after being caught playing football in Wilson Street on October 31st. In fact he had been twice unlucky, as Thomas had previously been brought to court for playing football in the street. Then he had promised not to repeat the offence and was bound over, but this week after breaking his word, the lad was fined 5 shillings.
When William Wildman of Back Crab Street appeared in court accused of playing football in College Street, he claimed to have only been watching some boys playing the game. When a policeman turned up, he said, they had all run away and the bobby had wrongly assumed that he had been one of them. After giving his evidence, the lad burst into tears and the Bench, feeling sorry for William, told him to go home.
Margaret Benihan of Oldfield Street also appeared to have been unlucky. She was charged with committing a breach of the peace and PC Jolly told the court that upon being called to the house he had found Mrs Benihan shouting, "You cannot put me out". That was to her husband who, seemingly, was doing what some men then did when having a row with their spouse – literally chuck their wives out of their home. But he was not in the dock and Margaret was bound over to keep the peace for six months but needed to find two sureties of £1 and pay 4 shillings costs.
A piece in the Reporter criticised the longstanding flooded state of Peasley Cross Lane after rain had fallen, ending their critique by saying: "Entering Lancashire, the motorist going north from Warrington is advised to travel via Ormskirk, and if in doing so he travels by Peasley Cross, after a shower, he will carry north with him a poor impression of the enterprise of those responsible for road maintenance in this County Borough."
The author offered a rather simplistic solution to the problem involving the laying of a new culvert without appreciating that subsidence was the underlying issue. But I'm sure they would never have imagined that the problem would still exist 100 years later!
"I was not afraid of the Germans, I am not afraid of the Bobbies." Those were the words alleged to have been spoken by Martin Troy of Marshland Street during a disturbance at a fairground in St Helens Junction. PC Whelan had arrested a man named Maloney for being drunk. Troy asked the constable why he did not take him to the station as well, claiming Maloney was only being picked on because he was Irish. So the officer obliged him and arrested Troy who in court on the 16th was bound over for six months.
Peter Atherton of Chamberlain Street (off Boundary Road) was summoned to St Helens Police Court on the 16th for failing to report the finding of a lost dog. Atherton's wife appeared for her husband and said they had no idea that they were supposed to take the dog to the police station.
The animal was valued at £50 but the woman said she and her husband had no intention of keeping it but were planning to send the dog back to its owner when advertised as missing, and, no doubt, claim the customary reward that would likely be offered. The owner of the stray dog had, indeed, offered such a reward but instead of getting the money for finding it, the woman and her husband were fined 5 shillings.
In the 19th century it could take some time for the St Helens Fire Brigade to arrive at a fire. The procedure often involved somebody getting on a horse and riding to the Town Hall to raise the alarm by sounding the fire bell. It then took time for the police officers that doubled as firemen, along with volunteers, to assemble and then get to the blaze in their horse-hauled appliance. But the advent of the telephone and motor vehicles made everything much quicker.
On the morning of the 15th the fire station at the rear of St Helens Town Hall received a telephone call at 12:48 am to say that a wooden shed on wasteland off Gaskell Street in Parr was on fire. The men arrived at the scene just seven minutes later and were able to extinguish the blaze in about 20 minutes. Although the shed was gutted, all the adjoining ones were saved.
On the 16th the monthly meeting of Rainford Urban District Council was held in the Village Hall and its members heard a report from their Medical Officer of Health. He was Dr Francis Prosser of Alpine House in Church Road, whose son, Dr Oswald Prosser, would follow in his father's footsteps, running the same practice from the same house for many years during the 20th century.
Rainford being very rural and with cleaner air and less crowded houses than the town of St Helens meant the population suffered a lower death rate. Dr Prosser told the meeting there had been only four deaths in Rainford during October. These were of persons of the ages of 77, 74, 46 years and 2 days, with the causes of death being, respectively, heart disease, old age, pneumonia and premature birth.
The doctor said that since their last meeting there had been four cases of scarlet fever within the Hydes Brow district of the village. That he thought had been likely caused by individuals coming into Rainford to pick potatoes. But there was some good news for local kids, with Dr Prosser saying: "I have excluded from school attendance the children from this district and hope to stay the spread of the disease with the least disturbance of the educational interests of Rainford."
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Sutton boy who stole money to buy a birthday present for his dad, the death of the Queen Mother, the case of the drunk leading the blind and the Parr coal stealer who said she'd learnt her lesson.
We begin on the 10th when an unusual auction took place at the Market Inspector's office in St Helens. Auction sales of business premises were very common but St Helens Corporation was auctioning the rental of a butcher's stall in the Covered Market.
It went for 41 shillings a week, considerably more than the 12/6 that many stallholders were paying for similar-sized stalls in a comparable position. The rent by auction was considered an experiment to see how much butchers were prepared to pay and other stallholders were now expecting to see their rent rise in the future.
On the 12th the annual St Helens Parish Church tea party was held and the new Vicar, the Rev Frank Child, paid tribute to his predecessor, the Rev. Canon Albert Baines, who had been transferred to Huddersfield earlier in the year. For most of his 14 years in St Helens, Canon Baines had been without a church, as it had burned down in 1916. But Rev Child was able to announce that they needed to raise only a further £1,500 to complete the new building.
The St Helens Reporter could be a bit unkind in how they described those down on their luck and on the 13th referred to Paul Leech from Church Street as a "piece of human driftwood, who called for the sympathy of all who saw him." He had been accused of being drunk and disorderly after visiting the p on Derbyshire Hill Road but the paper said the man had told the magistrates such a pathetic story that they dismissed the charge against him.
Lads that were kicking a football about in the street would scatter as soon as they saw a policeman arrive on the scene. The officer had longer legs and so would always be able to catch up with the fleeing footballers but only possessing a single pair of hands, could only collar one boy.
Thomas O’Neale was the unlucky one after being caught playing football in Wilson Street on October 31st. In fact he had been twice unlucky, as Thomas had previously been brought to court for playing football in the street. Then he had promised not to repeat the offence and was bound over, but this week after breaking his word, the lad was fined 5 shillings.
When William Wildman of Back Crab Street appeared in court accused of playing football in College Street, he claimed to have only been watching some boys playing the game. When a policeman turned up, he said, they had all run away and the bobby had wrongly assumed that he had been one of them. After giving his evidence, the lad burst into tears and the Bench, feeling sorry for William, told him to go home.
Margaret Benihan of Oldfield Street also appeared to have been unlucky. She was charged with committing a breach of the peace and PC Jolly told the court that upon being called to the house he had found Mrs Benihan shouting, "You cannot put me out". That was to her husband who, seemingly, was doing what some men then did when having a row with their spouse – literally chuck their wives out of their home. But he was not in the dock and Margaret was bound over to keep the peace for six months but needed to find two sureties of £1 and pay 4 shillings costs.
The author offered a rather simplistic solution to the problem involving the laying of a new culvert without appreciating that subsidence was the underlying issue. But I'm sure they would never have imagined that the problem would still exist 100 years later!
"I was not afraid of the Germans, I am not afraid of the Bobbies." Those were the words alleged to have been spoken by Martin Troy of Marshland Street during a disturbance at a fairground in St Helens Junction. PC Whelan had arrested a man named Maloney for being drunk. Troy asked the constable why he did not take him to the station as well, claiming Maloney was only being picked on because he was Irish. So the officer obliged him and arrested Troy who in court on the 16th was bound over for six months.
Peter Atherton of Chamberlain Street (off Boundary Road) was summoned to St Helens Police Court on the 16th for failing to report the finding of a lost dog. Atherton's wife appeared for her husband and said they had no idea that they were supposed to take the dog to the police station.
The animal was valued at £50 but the woman said she and her husband had no intention of keeping it but were planning to send the dog back to its owner when advertised as missing, and, no doubt, claim the customary reward that would likely be offered. The owner of the stray dog had, indeed, offered such a reward but instead of getting the money for finding it, the woman and her husband were fined 5 shillings.
In the 19th century it could take some time for the St Helens Fire Brigade to arrive at a fire. The procedure often involved somebody getting on a horse and riding to the Town Hall to raise the alarm by sounding the fire bell. It then took time for the police officers that doubled as firemen, along with volunteers, to assemble and then get to the blaze in their horse-hauled appliance. But the advent of the telephone and motor vehicles made everything much quicker.
On the 16th the monthly meeting of Rainford Urban District Council was held in the Village Hall and its members heard a report from their Medical Officer of Health. He was Dr Francis Prosser of Alpine House in Church Road, whose son, Dr Oswald Prosser, would follow in his father's footsteps, running the same practice from the same house for many years during the 20th century.
Rainford being very rural and with cleaner air and less crowded houses than the town of St Helens meant the population suffered a lower death rate. Dr Prosser told the meeting there had been only four deaths in Rainford during October. These were of persons of the ages of 77, 74, 46 years and 2 days, with the causes of death being, respectively, heart disease, old age, pneumonia and premature birth.
The doctor said that since their last meeting there had been four cases of scarlet fever within the Hydes Brow district of the village. That he thought had been likely caused by individuals coming into Rainford to pick potatoes. But there was some good news for local kids, with Dr Prosser saying: "I have excluded from school attendance the children from this district and hope to stay the spread of the disease with the least disturbance of the educational interests of Rainford."
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Sutton boy who stole money to buy a birthday present for his dad, the death of the Queen Mother, the case of the drunk leading the blind and the Parr coal stealer who said she'd learnt her lesson.
This week's many stories include the scarlet fever outbreak in Rainford, criticism of the perpetual Peasley Cross flooding, the rent by auction of a butcher's stall in the Covered Market, the row at a fairground in St Helens Junction and how the telephone and motorised vehicles had improved the efficiency of the fire brigade.
We begin on the 10th when an unusual auction took place at the Market Inspector's office in St Helens.
Auction sales of business premises were very common but St Helens Corporation was auctioning the rental of a butcher's stall in the Covered Market.
It went for 41 shillings a week, considerably more than the 12/6 that many stallholders were paying for similar-sized stalls in a comparable position.
The rent by auction was considered an experiment to see how much butchers were prepared to pay and other stallholders were now expecting to see their rent rise in the future.
On the 12th the annual St Helens Parish Church tea party was held and the new Vicar, the Rev Frank Child, paid tribute to his predecessor, the Rev. Canon Albert Baines, who had been transferred to Huddersfield earlier in the year.
For most of his 14 years in St Helens, Canon Baines had been without a church, as it had burned down in 1916.
But Rev Child was able to announce that they needed to raise only a further £1,500 to complete the new building.
The St Helens Reporter could be a bit unkind in how they described those down on their luck and on the 13th referred to Paul Leech from Church Street as a "piece of human driftwood, who called for the sympathy of all who saw him."
He had been accused of being drunk and disorderly after visiting the Horse Shoe on Derbyshire Hill Road but the paper said the man had told the magistrates such a pathetic story that they dismissed the charge against him.
Lads that were kicking a football about in the street would scatter as soon as they saw a policeman arrive on the scene.
The officer had longer legs and so would always be able to catch up with the fleeing footballers but only possessing a single pair of hands, could only collar one boy.
Thomas O’Neale was the unlucky one after being caught playing football in Wilson Street on October 31st.
In fact he had been twice unlucky, as Thomas had previously been brought to court for playing football in the street.
Then he had promised not to repeat the offence and was bound over, but this week after breaking his word, the lad was fined 5 shillings.
When William Wildman of Back Crab Street appeared in court accused of playing football in College Street, he claimed to have only been watching some boys playing the game.
When a policeman turned up, he said, they had all run away and the bobby had wrongly assumed that he had been one of them.
After giving his evidence, the lad burst into tears and the Bench, feeling sorry for William, told him to go home.
Margaret Benihan of Oldfield Street also appeared to have been unlucky.
She was charged with committing a breach of the peace and PC Jolly told the court that upon being called to the house he had found Mrs Benihan shouting, "You cannot put me out".
That was to her husband who, seemingly, was doing what some men then did when having a row with their spouse – literally chuck their wives out of their home.
But he was not in the dock and Margaret was bound over to keep the peace for six months but needed to find two sureties of £1 and pay 4 shillings costs.
A piece in the Reporter criticised the longstanding flooded state of Peasley Cross Lane after rain had fallen, ending their critique by saying:
"Entering Lancashire, the motorist going north from Warrington is advised to travel via Ormskirk, and if in doing so he travels by Peasley Cross, after a shower, he will carry north with him a poor impression of the enterprise of those responsible for road maintenance in this County Borough."
The author offered a rather simplistic solution to the problem involving the laying of a new culvert without appreciating that subsidence was the underlying issue.
But I'm sure they would never have imagined that the problem would still exist 100 years later!
"I was not afraid of the Germans, I am not afraid of the Bobbies." Those were the words alleged to have been spoken by Martin Troy of Marshland Street during a disturbance at a fairground in St Helens Junction.
PC Whelan had arrested a man named Maloney for being drunk. Troy asked the constable why he did not take him to the station as well, claiming Maloney was only being picked on because he was Irish.
So the officer obliged him and arrested Troy who in court on the 16th was bound over for six months.
Peter Atherton of Chamberlain Street (off Boundary Road) was summoned to St Helens Police Court on the 16th for failing to report the finding of a lost dog.
Atherton's wife appeared for her husband and said they had no idea that they were supposed to take the dog to the police station.
The animal was valued at £50 but the woman said she and her husband had no intention of keeping it but were planning to send the dog back to its owner when advertised as missing, and, no doubt, claim the customary reward that would likely be offered.
The owner of the stray dog had, indeed, offered such a reward but instead of getting the money for finding it, the woman and her husband were fined 5 shillings.
In the 19th century it could take some time for the St Helens Fire Brigade to arrive at a fire.
The procedure often involved somebody getting on a horse and riding to the Town Hall to raise the alarm by sounding the fire bell.
It then took time for the police officers that doubled as firemen, along with volunteers, to assemble and then get to the blaze in their horse-hauled appliance.
But the advent of the telephone and motor vehicles made everything much quicker.
On the morning of the 15th the fire station at the rear of St Helens Town Hall received a telephone call at 12:48 am to say that a wooden shed on wasteland off Gaskell Street in Parr was on fire.
The men arrived at the scene just seven minutes later and were able to extinguish the blaze in about 20 minutes. Although the shed was gutted, all the adjoining ones were saved.
On the 16th the monthly meeting of Rainford Urban District Council was held in the Village Hall and its members heard a report from their Medical Officer of Health.
He was Dr Francis Prosser of Alpine House in Church Road, whose son, Dr Oswald Prosser, would follow in his father's footsteps, running the same practice from the same house for many years during the 20th century.
Rainford being very rural and with cleaner air and less crowded houses than the town of St Helens meant the population suffered a lower death rate.
Dr Prosser told the meeting there had been only four deaths in Rainford during October.
These were of persons of the ages of 77, 74, 46 years and 2 days, with the causes of death being, respectively, heart disease, old age, pneumonia and premature birth.
The doctor said that since their last meeting there had been four cases of scarlet fever within the Hydes Brow district of the village.
That he thought had been likely caused by individuals coming into Rainford to pick potatoes. But there was some good news for local kids, with Dr Prosser saying:
"I have excluded from school attendance the children from this district and hope to stay the spread of the disease with the least disturbance of the educational interests of Rainford."
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Sutton boy who stole money to buy a birthday present for his dad, the death of the Queen Mother, the case of the drunk leading the blind and the Parr coal stealer who said she'd learnt her lesson.
We begin on the 10th when an unusual auction took place at the Market Inspector's office in St Helens.
Auction sales of business premises were very common but St Helens Corporation was auctioning the rental of a butcher's stall in the Covered Market.
It went for 41 shillings a week, considerably more than the 12/6 that many stallholders were paying for similar-sized stalls in a comparable position.
The rent by auction was considered an experiment to see how much butchers were prepared to pay and other stallholders were now expecting to see their rent rise in the future.
On the 12th the annual St Helens Parish Church tea party was held and the new Vicar, the Rev Frank Child, paid tribute to his predecessor, the Rev. Canon Albert Baines, who had been transferred to Huddersfield earlier in the year.
For most of his 14 years in St Helens, Canon Baines had been without a church, as it had burned down in 1916.
But Rev Child was able to announce that they needed to raise only a further £1,500 to complete the new building.
The St Helens Reporter could be a bit unkind in how they described those down on their luck and on the 13th referred to Paul Leech from Church Street as a "piece of human driftwood, who called for the sympathy of all who saw him."
He had been accused of being drunk and disorderly after visiting the Horse Shoe on Derbyshire Hill Road but the paper said the man had told the magistrates such a pathetic story that they dismissed the charge against him.
Lads that were kicking a football about in the street would scatter as soon as they saw a policeman arrive on the scene.
The officer had longer legs and so would always be able to catch up with the fleeing footballers but only possessing a single pair of hands, could only collar one boy.
Thomas O’Neale was the unlucky one after being caught playing football in Wilson Street on October 31st.
In fact he had been twice unlucky, as Thomas had previously been brought to court for playing football in the street.
Then he had promised not to repeat the offence and was bound over, but this week after breaking his word, the lad was fined 5 shillings.
When William Wildman of Back Crab Street appeared in court accused of playing football in College Street, he claimed to have only been watching some boys playing the game.
When a policeman turned up, he said, they had all run away and the bobby had wrongly assumed that he had been one of them.
After giving his evidence, the lad burst into tears and the Bench, feeling sorry for William, told him to go home.
Margaret Benihan of Oldfield Street also appeared to have been unlucky.
She was charged with committing a breach of the peace and PC Jolly told the court that upon being called to the house he had found Mrs Benihan shouting, "You cannot put me out".
That was to her husband who, seemingly, was doing what some men then did when having a row with their spouse – literally chuck their wives out of their home.
But he was not in the dock and Margaret was bound over to keep the peace for six months but needed to find two sureties of £1 and pay 4 shillings costs.
"Entering Lancashire, the motorist going north from Warrington is advised to travel via Ormskirk, and if in doing so he travels by Peasley Cross, after a shower, he will carry north with him a poor impression of the enterprise of those responsible for road maintenance in this County Borough."
The author offered a rather simplistic solution to the problem involving the laying of a new culvert without appreciating that subsidence was the underlying issue.
But I'm sure they would never have imagined that the problem would still exist 100 years later!
"I was not afraid of the Germans, I am not afraid of the Bobbies." Those were the words alleged to have been spoken by Martin Troy of Marshland Street during a disturbance at a fairground in St Helens Junction.
PC Whelan had arrested a man named Maloney for being drunk. Troy asked the constable why he did not take him to the station as well, claiming Maloney was only being picked on because he was Irish.
So the officer obliged him and arrested Troy who in court on the 16th was bound over for six months.
Peter Atherton of Chamberlain Street (off Boundary Road) was summoned to St Helens Police Court on the 16th for failing to report the finding of a lost dog.
Atherton's wife appeared for her husband and said they had no idea that they were supposed to take the dog to the police station.
The animal was valued at £50 but the woman said she and her husband had no intention of keeping it but were planning to send the dog back to its owner when advertised as missing, and, no doubt, claim the customary reward that would likely be offered.
The owner of the stray dog had, indeed, offered such a reward but instead of getting the money for finding it, the woman and her husband were fined 5 shillings.
In the 19th century it could take some time for the St Helens Fire Brigade to arrive at a fire.
The procedure often involved somebody getting on a horse and riding to the Town Hall to raise the alarm by sounding the fire bell.
It then took time for the police officers that doubled as firemen, along with volunteers, to assemble and then get to the blaze in their horse-hauled appliance.
But the advent of the telephone and motor vehicles made everything much quicker.
The men arrived at the scene just seven minutes later and were able to extinguish the blaze in about 20 minutes. Although the shed was gutted, all the adjoining ones were saved.
On the 16th the monthly meeting of Rainford Urban District Council was held in the Village Hall and its members heard a report from their Medical Officer of Health.
He was Dr Francis Prosser of Alpine House in Church Road, whose son, Dr Oswald Prosser, would follow in his father's footsteps, running the same practice from the same house for many years during the 20th century.
Rainford being very rural and with cleaner air and less crowded houses than the town of St Helens meant the population suffered a lower death rate.
Dr Prosser told the meeting there had been only four deaths in Rainford during October.
These were of persons of the ages of 77, 74, 46 years and 2 days, with the causes of death being, respectively, heart disease, old age, pneumonia and premature birth.
The doctor said that since their last meeting there had been four cases of scarlet fever within the Hydes Brow district of the village.
That he thought had been likely caused by individuals coming into Rainford to pick potatoes. But there was some good news for local kids, with Dr Prosser saying:
"I have excluded from school attendance the children from this district and hope to stay the spread of the disease with the least disturbance of the educational interests of Rainford."
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Sutton boy who stole money to buy a birthday present for his dad, the death of the Queen Mother, the case of the drunk leading the blind and the Parr coal stealer who said she'd learnt her lesson.