IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 13 - 19 OCTOBER 1925
This week's many stories include the suicide of a Sutton councillor and grocer through his customers' unpaid debts, the disgusting scavenging of rags in Parr, the noisiest woman in St Helens appears in court to shout at the top of her voice, the campaign to persuade people of the benefits of using electricity and what was claimed to be the worst case of benefit fraud is committed in St Helens.
We begin on the 14th at a meeting of the council's Water Committee when it was stated that a delegation had visited Bolton to inspect their public washhouses. Such places were where people could inexpensively bathe themselves and launder their clothes. It was felt that if washhouses could be established in the poorer neighbourhoods of St Helens – such as in Newtown, Sutton and Parr where folk were living in congested houses – then they would prove a great boon.
In the 1920s most people that had electricity installed in their home only had a lighting connection. And so on the 16th the St Helens Reporter was promoting the benefits of electricity for purposes other than lighting rooms:
"In almost every district it is possible to obtain electricity for cooking and heating at a low rate – one-fourth, perhaps, of the figure charged for lighting. There is a great variety of neat and robust appliances available to-day – reliable in use and safe in any hands. Consider how useful is the electrical kettle. It can be put into any lampholder operated from a plug point, and will provide two or three pints of boiling water quickly in any room at any hour of the day or night."
During the rest of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, St Helens Corporation's Electricity Board spent a lot of advertising cash persuading households to invest in electricity. Expansion was slowed by most people renting their homes and their landlords not wanting the expense of making electrical installations. And although much was made of the low cost of running electrical appliances in addition to basic lighting, customers had to buy the appliance in the first place.
And certainly the poor of Parr – who scavenged for the most disgusting rags that were being dumped on a council tip – would not have been thinking of going electric. Most of the rags came from people's middens – the dumps containing human waste that some householders with antiquated toilet systems still used.
The rags would covertly be fished out of the Parr tip; dried off and sold to firms that bought rags for various purposes, including converting them into paper. Recycling, as we know, is very good for the planet – but there are limits! In this week's Reporter this letter exposing the issue was published:
"Sir – May I, through the medium of your columns, make a vigorous protest against certain conditions existing in Parr? At Parr depot there is a waste heap on which are deposited all kinds of filthy and odious rags, and it has become a common practice among many of the residents to purloin the rags and sell them to rag dealers. Naturally, the rags on the heap are damp and the people who take them have to dry them before disposal to the rag dealers. So they have adopted the most repulsive and pernicious means of drying.
"On any sunny day the walls behind some of the houses, between Ramford-street and Tickle-street, especially, may be seen littered with old rags taken from the waste heap. Full of filth, vermin and disease, they are allowed to give off obnoxious odours and simply pollute the whole atmosphere. The walls are a seething mass of living matter and the whole business is disgusting from beginning to end.
"It is surprising that the authorities should allow such a terrible state of affairs to exist, but they should take a timely warning. If those rags are allowed to stifle the neighbourhood much longer I would not be surprised at a serious outbreak of disease."
Reading old newspaper reports from the 1920s, it does seem as if motorists when stopped by the police for some infringement were much more argumentative than carters using horses. Whether that was something to do with car drivers being better educated and, perhaps, more arrogant, I can't say.
But farmer Samuel Nixon seems to have accepted his fate when stopped by the St Helens police for not having any lights on his horse and wagon. He had been given wrong directions and had ended up in St Helens by mistake and was fined 10 shillings.
But Donald Marendan gave the point-duty policeman some abuse when he stopped him for not using his horn when driving his car along a crowded Church Street on market day. The reason he hadn't used his horn was that he did not have one, which was a clear-cut infringement of the law. But still he gave the officer a lot of grief and was fined £3.
If you were sick and had the requisite National Health Insurance stamps, the money you received from the State was barely enough to live on. When John Palin from Charles Street appeared in court charged with street betting, he claimed that he had been unable to work for four years through ill health. He said his only means of subsistence was to top up his National Health Insurance payments with "a bit of betting". Palin was fined £5.
One of the irritants to me while travelling on a bus is having to listen to some idiot who thinks that mobile phones only work if they shout into them at the top of their voice! But in the 1920s it was quite common for people in court to think they could only tell their tale at a loud pitch. I think it was more to do with getting worked up rather than being deaf. But PC Johnson told a court this week that Frances Price from Glover Street regularly yelled in the street:
"She is the noisiest woman in St. Helens. She never speaks in a normal way, but always shouts at the top of her voice." And the constable knew Frances well as he had the misfortune to live in the same street as her. On the previous Saturday night after going to bed, PC Johnson said he had heard shouting and screaming coming from outside his home.
Upon going outside to investigate, he found Mrs Price in the middle of a crowd using bad language and threatening a man. When the constable advised her to go inside her home, he was abused. In the courtroom the woman cross-examined PC Johnson in what the Reporter described as "high-pitched tones". The Chairman of the Bench said to Mrs Price, "Now just show him you can speak without shouting." She was bound over to keep the peace for three months.
William Miles who lived in Pendlebury Street in Clock Face seemed to have a kind landlady. He had been caught by a policeman walking down Gartons Lane carrying a pint glass valued at 1s 6d that he had nicked from the Clock Face Hotel. In court he was fined 10 shillings, to which he replied, "I have no money". But his landlady was in court and she chipped in with "I will pay for him".
What was described as the worst prosecution that the St Helens Employment Exchange ever had to bring concerned Philip Brogan of Clarence Street who had obtained unemployment benefit while being employed. It was not a case of a misunderstanding or confusion over the rules; it was a deliberate fraud in which Brogan received £27 dole money while working at Sutton Manor Colliery. In court this week the magistrates sent the man to prison for three months with hard labour.
On the 17th the well-known councillor and tradesman William Bell was found dead inside his lock-up grocer's shop in Peckers Hill Road (pictured above) after hanging himself. It did happen occasionally that traders in financial trouble took their own lives. But the cause of them being in such straits tended to be blamed on poor trade – or, perhaps, having an expensive lifestyle. However, William Bell, who lived in New Street, was owed almost £1,000, which was an extraordinary amount, as in today's money it's around £80,000.
Much of the owed cash was through Bell kindly allowing his customers who were unemployed or on strike during the mining disputes of the early 1920s to put their bills on the slate. The promise was made that once back in work they would pay off their debt – but that often didn't happen.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Sunday bird catching in Parr, St Helens Health Week begins, the attempted hold up in Rainhill, the woman fined £50 for receiving bets and the funeral of Councillor Bell takes place.
We begin on the 14th at a meeting of the council's Water Committee when it was stated that a delegation had visited Bolton to inspect their public washhouses. Such places were where people could inexpensively bathe themselves and launder their clothes. It was felt that if washhouses could be established in the poorer neighbourhoods of St Helens – such as in Newtown, Sutton and Parr where folk were living in congested houses – then they would prove a great boon.
In the 1920s most people that had electricity installed in their home only had a lighting connection. And so on the 16th the St Helens Reporter was promoting the benefits of electricity for purposes other than lighting rooms:
"In almost every district it is possible to obtain electricity for cooking and heating at a low rate – one-fourth, perhaps, of the figure charged for lighting. There is a great variety of neat and robust appliances available to-day – reliable in use and safe in any hands. Consider how useful is the electrical kettle. It can be put into any lampholder operated from a plug point, and will provide two or three pints of boiling water quickly in any room at any hour of the day or night."
During the rest of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, St Helens Corporation's Electricity Board spent a lot of advertising cash persuading households to invest in electricity. Expansion was slowed by most people renting their homes and their landlords not wanting the expense of making electrical installations. And although much was made of the low cost of running electrical appliances in addition to basic lighting, customers had to buy the appliance in the first place.
And certainly the poor of Parr – who scavenged for the most disgusting rags that were being dumped on a council tip – would not have been thinking of going electric. Most of the rags came from people's middens – the dumps containing human waste that some householders with antiquated toilet systems still used.
The rags would covertly be fished out of the Parr tip; dried off and sold to firms that bought rags for various purposes, including converting them into paper. Recycling, as we know, is very good for the planet – but there are limits! In this week's Reporter this letter exposing the issue was published:
"Sir – May I, through the medium of your columns, make a vigorous protest against certain conditions existing in Parr? At Parr depot there is a waste heap on which are deposited all kinds of filthy and odious rags, and it has become a common practice among many of the residents to purloin the rags and sell them to rag dealers. Naturally, the rags on the heap are damp and the people who take them have to dry them before disposal to the rag dealers. So they have adopted the most repulsive and pernicious means of drying.
"On any sunny day the walls behind some of the houses, between Ramford-street and Tickle-street, especially, may be seen littered with old rags taken from the waste heap. Full of filth, vermin and disease, they are allowed to give off obnoxious odours and simply pollute the whole atmosphere. The walls are a seething mass of living matter and the whole business is disgusting from beginning to end.
"It is surprising that the authorities should allow such a terrible state of affairs to exist, but they should take a timely warning. If those rags are allowed to stifle the neighbourhood much longer I would not be surprised at a serious outbreak of disease."
Reading old newspaper reports from the 1920s, it does seem as if motorists when stopped by the police for some infringement were much more argumentative than carters using horses. Whether that was something to do with car drivers being better educated and, perhaps, more arrogant, I can't say.
But farmer Samuel Nixon seems to have accepted his fate when stopped by the St Helens police for not having any lights on his horse and wagon. He had been given wrong directions and had ended up in St Helens by mistake and was fined 10 shillings.
If you were sick and had the requisite National Health Insurance stamps, the money you received from the State was barely enough to live on. When John Palin from Charles Street appeared in court charged with street betting, he claimed that he had been unable to work for four years through ill health. He said his only means of subsistence was to top up his National Health Insurance payments with "a bit of betting". Palin was fined £5.
One of the irritants to me while travelling on a bus is having to listen to some idiot who thinks that mobile phones only work if they shout into them at the top of their voice! But in the 1920s it was quite common for people in court to think they could only tell their tale at a loud pitch. I think it was more to do with getting worked up rather than being deaf. But PC Johnson told a court this week that Frances Price from Glover Street regularly yelled in the street:
"She is the noisiest woman in St. Helens. She never speaks in a normal way, but always shouts at the top of her voice." And the constable knew Frances well as he had the misfortune to live in the same street as her. On the previous Saturday night after going to bed, PC Johnson said he had heard shouting and screaming coming from outside his home.
Upon going outside to investigate, he found Mrs Price in the middle of a crowd using bad language and threatening a man. When the constable advised her to go inside her home, he was abused. In the courtroom the woman cross-examined PC Johnson in what the Reporter described as "high-pitched tones". The Chairman of the Bench said to Mrs Price, "Now just show him you can speak without shouting." She was bound over to keep the peace for three months.
William Miles who lived in Pendlebury Street in Clock Face seemed to have a kind landlady. He had been caught by a policeman walking down Gartons Lane carrying a pint glass valued at 1s 6d that he had nicked from the Clock Face Hotel. In court he was fined 10 shillings, to which he replied, "I have no money". But his landlady was in court and she chipped in with "I will pay for him".
What was described as the worst prosecution that the St Helens Employment Exchange ever had to bring concerned Philip Brogan of Clarence Street who had obtained unemployment benefit while being employed. It was not a case of a misunderstanding or confusion over the rules; it was a deliberate fraud in which Brogan received £27 dole money while working at Sutton Manor Colliery. In court this week the magistrates sent the man to prison for three months with hard labour.
Much of the owed cash was through Bell kindly allowing his customers who were unemployed or on strike during the mining disputes of the early 1920s to put their bills on the slate. The promise was made that once back in work they would pay off their debt – but that often didn't happen.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Sunday bird catching in Parr, St Helens Health Week begins, the attempted hold up in Rainhill, the woman fined £50 for receiving bets and the funeral of Councillor Bell takes place.
This week's many stories include the suicide of a Sutton councillor and grocer through his customers' unpaid debts, the disgusting scavenging of rags in Parr, the noisiest woman in St Helens appears in court to shout at the top of her voice, the campaign to persuade people of the benefits of using electricity and what was claimed to be the worst case of benefit fraud is committed in St Helens.
We begin on the 14th at a meeting of the council's Water Committee when it was stated that a delegation had visited Bolton to inspect their public washhouses.
Such places were where people could inexpensively bathe themselves and launder their clothes.
It was felt that if washhouses could be established in the poorer neighbourhoods of St Helens – such as in Newtown, Sutton and Parr where folk were living in congested houses – then they would prove a great boon.
In the 1920s most people that had electricity installed in their home only had a lighting connection.
And so on the 16th the St Helens Reporter was promoting the benefits of electricity for purposes other than lighting rooms:
"In almost every district it is possible to obtain electricity for cooking and heating at a low rate – one-fourth, perhaps, of the figure charged for lighting.
"There is a great variety of neat and robust appliances available to-day – reliable in use and safe in any hands.
"Consider how useful is the electrical kettle. It can be put into any lampholder operated from a plug point, and will provide two or three pints of boiling water quickly in any room at any hour of the day or night."
During the rest of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, St Helens Corporation's Electricity Board spent a lot of advertising cash persuading households to invest in electricity.
Expansion was slowed by most people renting their homes and their landlords not wanting the expense of making electrical installations.
And although much was made of the low cost of running electrical appliances in addition to basic lighting, customers had to buy the appliance in the first place.
And certainly the poor of Parr – who scavenged for the most disgusting rags that were being dumped on a council tip – would not have been thinking of going electric.
Most of the rags came from people's middens – the dumps containing human waste that some householders with antiquated toilet systems still used.
The rags would covertly be fished out of the Parr tip; dried off and sold to firms that bought rags for various purposes, including converting them into paper. Recycling, as we know, is very good for the planet – but there are limits!
In this week's Reporter this letter exposing the issue was published:
"Sir – May I, through the medium of your columns, make a vigorous protest against certain conditions existing in Parr?
"At Parr depot there is a waste heap on which are deposited all kinds of filthy and odious rags, and it has become a common practice among many of the residents to purloin the rags and sell them to rag dealers.
"Naturally, the rags on the heap are damp and the people who take them have to dry them before disposal to the rag dealers. So they have adopted the most repulsive and pernicious means of drying.
"On any sunny day the walls behind some of the houses, between Ramford-street and Tickle-street, especially, may be seen littered with old rags taken from the waste heap.
"Full of filth, vermin and disease, they are allowed to give off obnoxious odours and simply pollute the whole atmosphere. The walls are a seething mass of living matter and the whole business is disgusting from beginning to end.
"It is surprising that the authorities should allow such a terrible state of affairs to exist, but they should take a timely warning. If those rags are allowed to stifle the neighbourhood much longer I would not be surprised at a serious outbreak of disease."
Reading old newspaper reports from the 1920s, it does seem as if motorists when stopped by the police for some infringement were much more argumentative than carters using horses.
Whether that was something to do with car drivers being better educated and, perhaps, more arrogant, I can't say.
But farmer Samuel Nixon seems to have accepted his fate when stopped by the St Helens police for not having any lights on his horse and wagon.
He had been given wrong directions and had ended up in St Helens by mistake and was fined 10 shillings.
But Donald Marendan gave the point-duty policeman some abuse when he stopped him for not using his horn when driving his car along a crowded Church Street on market day.
The reason he hadn't used his horn was that he did not have one, which was a clear-cut infringement of the law. But still he gave the officer a lot of grief and was fined £3.
If you were sick and had the requisite National Health Insurance stamps, the money you received from the State was barely enough to live on.
When John Palin from Charles Street appeared in court charged with street betting, he claimed that he had been unable to work for four years through ill health.
He said his only means of subsistence was to top up his National Health Insurance payments with "a bit of betting". Palin was fined £5.
One of the irritants to me while travelling on a bus is having to listen to some idiot who thinks that mobile phones only work if they shout into them at the top of their voice!
But in the 1920s it was quite common for people in court to think they could only tell their tale at a loud pitch.
I think it was more to do with getting worked up rather than being deaf. But PC Johnson told a court this week that Frances Price from Glover Street regularly yelled in the street:
"She is the noisiest woman in St. Helens. She never speaks in a normal way, but always shouts at the top of her voice."
And the constable knew Frances well as he had the misfortune to live in the same street as her.
On the previous Saturday night after going to bed, PC Johnson said he had heard shouting and screaming coming from outside his home.
Upon going outside to investigate, he found Mrs Price in the middle of a crowd using bad language and threatening a man. When the constable advised her to go inside her home, he was abused.
In the courtroom the woman cross-examined PC Johnson in what the Reporter described as "high-pitched tones".
The Chairman of the Bench said to Mrs Price, "Now just show him you can speak without shouting." She was bound over to keep the peace for three months.
William Miles who lived in Pendlebury Street in Clock Face seemed to have a kind landlady.
He had been caught by a policeman walking down Gartons Lane carrying a pint glass valued at 1s 6d that he had nicked from the Clock Face Hotel.
In court he was fined 10 shillings, to which he replied, "I have no money". But his landlady was in court and she chipped in with "I will pay for him".
What was described as the worst prosecution that the St Helens Employment Exchange ever had to bring concerned Philip Brogan of Clarence Street who had obtained unemployment benefit while being employed.
It was not a case of a misunderstanding or confusion over the rules; it was a deliberate fraud in which Brogan received £27 dole money while working at Sutton Manor Colliery.
In court this week the magistrates sent the man to prison for three months with hard labour.
On the 17th the well-known councillor and tradesman William Bell was found dead inside his lock-up grocer's shop in Peckers Hill Road (pictured above) after hanging himself.
It did happen occasionally that traders in financial trouble took their own lives. But the cause of them being in such straits tended to be blamed on poor trade – or, perhaps, having an expensive lifestyle.
However, William Bell, who lived in New Street, was owed almost £1,000, which was an extraordinary amount, as in today's money it's around £80,000.
Much of the owed cash was through Bell kindly allowing his customers who were unemployed or on strike during the mining disputes of the early 1920s to put their bills on the slate.
The promise was made that once back in work they would pay off their debt – but that often didn't happen.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Sunday bird catching in Parr, St Helens Health Week begins, the attempted hold up in Rainhill, the woman fined £50 for receiving bets and the funeral of Councillor Bell takes place.
We begin on the 14th at a meeting of the council's Water Committee when it was stated that a delegation had visited Bolton to inspect their public washhouses.
Such places were where people could inexpensively bathe themselves and launder their clothes.
It was felt that if washhouses could be established in the poorer neighbourhoods of St Helens – such as in Newtown, Sutton and Parr where folk were living in congested houses – then they would prove a great boon.
In the 1920s most people that had electricity installed in their home only had a lighting connection.
And so on the 16th the St Helens Reporter was promoting the benefits of electricity for purposes other than lighting rooms:
"In almost every district it is possible to obtain electricity for cooking and heating at a low rate – one-fourth, perhaps, of the figure charged for lighting.
"There is a great variety of neat and robust appliances available to-day – reliable in use and safe in any hands.
"Consider how useful is the electrical kettle. It can be put into any lampholder operated from a plug point, and will provide two or three pints of boiling water quickly in any room at any hour of the day or night."
During the rest of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, St Helens Corporation's Electricity Board spent a lot of advertising cash persuading households to invest in electricity.
Expansion was slowed by most people renting their homes and their landlords not wanting the expense of making electrical installations.
And although much was made of the low cost of running electrical appliances in addition to basic lighting, customers had to buy the appliance in the first place.
And certainly the poor of Parr – who scavenged for the most disgusting rags that were being dumped on a council tip – would not have been thinking of going electric.
Most of the rags came from people's middens – the dumps containing human waste that some householders with antiquated toilet systems still used.
The rags would covertly be fished out of the Parr tip; dried off and sold to firms that bought rags for various purposes, including converting them into paper. Recycling, as we know, is very good for the planet – but there are limits!
In this week's Reporter this letter exposing the issue was published:
"Sir – May I, through the medium of your columns, make a vigorous protest against certain conditions existing in Parr?
"At Parr depot there is a waste heap on which are deposited all kinds of filthy and odious rags, and it has become a common practice among many of the residents to purloin the rags and sell them to rag dealers.
"Naturally, the rags on the heap are damp and the people who take them have to dry them before disposal to the rag dealers. So they have adopted the most repulsive and pernicious means of drying.
"On any sunny day the walls behind some of the houses, between Ramford-street and Tickle-street, especially, may be seen littered with old rags taken from the waste heap.
"Full of filth, vermin and disease, they are allowed to give off obnoxious odours and simply pollute the whole atmosphere. The walls are a seething mass of living matter and the whole business is disgusting from beginning to end.
"It is surprising that the authorities should allow such a terrible state of affairs to exist, but they should take a timely warning. If those rags are allowed to stifle the neighbourhood much longer I would not be surprised at a serious outbreak of disease."
Reading old newspaper reports from the 1920s, it does seem as if motorists when stopped by the police for some infringement were much more argumentative than carters using horses.
Whether that was something to do with car drivers being better educated and, perhaps, more arrogant, I can't say.
But farmer Samuel Nixon seems to have accepted his fate when stopped by the St Helens police for not having any lights on his horse and wagon.
He had been given wrong directions and had ended up in St Helens by mistake and was fined 10 shillings.
The reason he hadn't used his horn was that he did not have one, which was a clear-cut infringement of the law. But still he gave the officer a lot of grief and was fined £3.
If you were sick and had the requisite National Health Insurance stamps, the money you received from the State was barely enough to live on.
When John Palin from Charles Street appeared in court charged with street betting, he claimed that he had been unable to work for four years through ill health.
He said his only means of subsistence was to top up his National Health Insurance payments with "a bit of betting". Palin was fined £5.
One of the irritants to me while travelling on a bus is having to listen to some idiot who thinks that mobile phones only work if they shout into them at the top of their voice!
But in the 1920s it was quite common for people in court to think they could only tell their tale at a loud pitch.
I think it was more to do with getting worked up rather than being deaf. But PC Johnson told a court this week that Frances Price from Glover Street regularly yelled in the street:
"She is the noisiest woman in St. Helens. She never speaks in a normal way, but always shouts at the top of her voice."
And the constable knew Frances well as he had the misfortune to live in the same street as her.
On the previous Saturday night after going to bed, PC Johnson said he had heard shouting and screaming coming from outside his home.
Upon going outside to investigate, he found Mrs Price in the middle of a crowd using bad language and threatening a man. When the constable advised her to go inside her home, he was abused.
In the courtroom the woman cross-examined PC Johnson in what the Reporter described as "high-pitched tones".
The Chairman of the Bench said to Mrs Price, "Now just show him you can speak without shouting." She was bound over to keep the peace for three months.
William Miles who lived in Pendlebury Street in Clock Face seemed to have a kind landlady.
He had been caught by a policeman walking down Gartons Lane carrying a pint glass valued at 1s 6d that he had nicked from the Clock Face Hotel.
In court he was fined 10 shillings, to which he replied, "I have no money". But his landlady was in court and she chipped in with "I will pay for him".
What was described as the worst prosecution that the St Helens Employment Exchange ever had to bring concerned Philip Brogan of Clarence Street who had obtained unemployment benefit while being employed.
It was not a case of a misunderstanding or confusion over the rules; it was a deliberate fraud in which Brogan received £27 dole money while working at Sutton Manor Colliery.
In court this week the magistrates sent the man to prison for three months with hard labour.
It did happen occasionally that traders in financial trouble took their own lives. But the cause of them being in such straits tended to be blamed on poor trade – or, perhaps, having an expensive lifestyle.
However, William Bell, who lived in New Street, was owed almost £1,000, which was an extraordinary amount, as in today's money it's around £80,000.
Much of the owed cash was through Bell kindly allowing his customers who were unemployed or on strike during the mining disputes of the early 1920s to put their bills on the slate.
The promise was made that once back in work they would pay off their debt – but that often didn't happen.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Sunday bird catching in Parr, St Helens Health Week begins, the attempted hold up in Rainhill, the woman fined £50 for receiving bets and the funeral of Councillor Bell takes place.