IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (1st - 7th FEBRUARY 1921)
This week's stories include the councillor who wanted St Helens children to be taught peace in school, the man charged with stealing children's breakfasts, the Rainford headmaster who began teaching for threepence a week and the fishy sausage case.
I notice that pre-Covid some schools in St Helens were offering free breakfasts to their pupils. There's nothing new in that, of course, although a century ago only the very poor ones received them – and the kids were made to sit together at the front of the class so everybody knew who they were!
A number of schools in St Helens began providing free breakfasts as a result of the war. That's because many recruits proved so unhealthy after receiving a poor diet throughout their young lives that they failed medicals or had to be discharged. A report published in 1917 revealed that nationally 1 in 8 school children were so unfit and underweight with stunted growth that they couldn't benefit from education.
I mention this because on February 2nd Richard Rimmer appeared in St Helens Police Court charged with breaking into an unnamed school in the town. However all the 22-year-old appears to have taken was food prepared for the children's breakfasts on the following morning. Perhaps he thought he was Goldilocks? Rimmer was also charged with two other thefts and was sent to prison for three months.
During the war the number of prosecutions for drunkenness in St Helens was very low – dropping from 525 in 1914 to just 45 in 1918. That was due to a combination of many men being away in the forces, the curtailment of opening hours, price rises and the strength of ale and spirits being weakened. The so-called "Government ale" was known by some wags as "arms and legs beer" – as they said there was no body to it!
However the drink was now back to full strength and there was plenty of it leading to a commensurate rise in drunken behaviour. Convictions for drunkenness in St Helens had almost doubled to 82 during 1919 and on February 3rd the numbers for 1920 were revealed. In St Helens the increase in successful prosecutions had been 124% greater than in 1919 with the total number of convictions being 184. That was not as bad as Oldham whose rise had been 148% but Warrington fared better with only an 87% increase.
The well meaning but ineffective League of Nations had been founded a year earlier with the aim of maintaining world peace. In a rather naive leader column on the 3rd, the Liverpool Echo wrote:
"We observe that at a meeting of the St. Helens Town Council a lady member criticised the Education Committee because it had refused to lay down definitely that lessons on the League of Nations and its objects should be given in the schools of the town. It is impossible to deny her contention that if the children of the nations of the world were properly instructed in the matter, the idea of peace would soon spread through the world.
"We know how the idea of war was spread through the world, and how millions were spent on this purpose. It is surely worth while to propagate the idea of international peace and concord, and local education committees might well address themselves to this question in place of the petty squabbles and personalities which so often mar their proceedings."
It was common for head teachers within the St Helens district to undertake the job for many decades. That, I think, was through being appointed young and often having been brought up in the community that they were now top dog. Mobility in general was also much lower, of course, and people were then much more likely to stay local.
William Ashton was head of St Helens Parish Church Schools for 43 years and in Sutton, James Plews ran the National School in Ellamsbridge Road for 34 years with Hannah Parr acting as headmistress of the infants for 41 years. Then there was John Duffy, who in 1913 at the age of 24 had been appointed headmaster of St Anne's RC Boys School in Sutton, a position he held until 1950. Duffy was the man who at a teaching conference once compared his students to animals, saying teachers were like lion tamers and a class of 30 to 40 schoolboys could be "as lively as a cage of monkeys"!
On the 3rd it was reported that the headmaster of Rainford Village School in Cross Pit Lane (pictured above) had retired after being in charge for 35 years. Captain William Graham had been in the teaching profession for a total of 54 years having commenced in Liverpool at the age of twelve on a salary of just threepence a week! Graham was stated as having been "one of the pioneers of the evening school movement".
I expect that a Polish man called Ousalace from Chancery Lane in Parr regretted bringing charges against his daughter-in-law. His son had married a woman called Eliza in 1919 but had then joined the army and was now serving in Jerusalem. The father-in-law asked Eliza to be his housekeeper and on December 31st gave her £5 to buy things for the house. The 21-year-old woman instead took herself off to Liverpool where she was arrested for using insulting language in the street.
Appearing in St Helens Police Court on the 4th and accused of stealing the £5, Eliza Ousalace made the extraordinary claim that she want away because her father-in-law had got her "into trouble" and she did not want her parents to know. That was despite Mr Ousalace being described as a "grey-haired old man" who strongly denied the truth of what his daughter-in-law had said in court while under oath. The magistrates bound over Eliza to be of good behaviour for twelve months.
The St Helens Ladies (pictured above) played another charity football match against Dick Kerr's of Preston on the 5th. The game at Nelson was in aid of a poor children's fund and although St Helens was no doubt the second best women's team in the country, the Preston side were much better. Gail Newsham did not call her book on Dick Kerr's "In a League of Their Own" for nothing and they predictably thrashed the St Helens women 7 - 0.
The St Helens sausage went on trial on the 7th – or more accurately it was the Salford sausage bought from a Bridge Street shop. Last June I wrote how a large advert published on the front page of the St Helens Reporter had declared:
"A WONDERFUL SUCCESS! CROWDED OUT DAILY. Fresh Fish Supplies Ltd. the pioneers of Cheap Fresh Fish who recently opened a new shop at 22, Bridge Street, St. Helens, have proved to the public that fish can be brought from the coast and sold in St. Helens within 24 hours of leaving the trawler, and they have so pleased the housewives of St. Helens that their shop is besieged daily by vast crowds who realize that good fresh fish is an essential part of the family diet and that it means a great saving in the family exchequer."
Being a rather cynical sort I wrote at the time: "If the fish shop was being besieged daily by vast crowds, I wonder why they felt the need to spend so much money on advertising?" Well, the fresh fish firm clearly sold more than fish. I suppose if colossal crowds of shoppers are besieging your premises, you will want to get the most money out of the multitude.
So Fresh Fish Supplies also sold sausages but they were rather fishy ones. I don't mean they ponged of haddock but according to an analyst who gave evidence in court, the bangers only contained 36% of sausage meat. The rest was made up of bread and water. There was no expectation that the whole sausage should be 100% meat but the prosecution contended that at least half of it should.
The analyst from Liverpool – a Mr Davies – seemed quite impressed with the cunning way the sausage had been made, as bread had been included to allow the sausage to soak up water. He said in court: "Really and truly a great deal of ingenuity is bestowed on the material which is added, so that it should take as much water as possible, and so that it will swell out and make the sausage puff up, and look as plump as possible."
Fresh Fish Supplies said their Bridge Street store bought their sausages from a reputable firm in Manchester and they were unaware of any standard of sausage set in law. The company's argument was that they were selling these sausages at a low price and so it was acceptable for the amount of meat in them to be on the low side.
The Bench decided that the sausage supplied was not of the substance and quality expected and imposed a penalty of 40 shillings and two guineas costs. However the magistrates encouraged the defendant to appeal their case to a higher court so they could lay down a sausage standard. In case you were wondering, the pound of bangers that the police bought in their undercover sting cost the St Helens taxpayer 1s 4d.
Next week's stories will include the smoky steam-powered lorry at Eccleston Lane Ends, the boys that tramped for work, the St Helens clubs accused of being drinking and gambling dens and a bus tragedy at Marshalls Cross.
I notice that pre-Covid some schools in St Helens were offering free breakfasts to their pupils. There's nothing new in that, of course, although a century ago only the very poor ones received them – and the kids were made to sit together at the front of the class so everybody knew who they were!
A number of schools in St Helens began providing free breakfasts as a result of the war. That's because many recruits proved so unhealthy after receiving a poor diet throughout their young lives that they failed medicals or had to be discharged. A report published in 1917 revealed that nationally 1 in 8 school children were so unfit and underweight with stunted growth that they couldn't benefit from education.
I mention this because on February 2nd Richard Rimmer appeared in St Helens Police Court charged with breaking into an unnamed school in the town. However all the 22-year-old appears to have taken was food prepared for the children's breakfasts on the following morning. Perhaps he thought he was Goldilocks? Rimmer was also charged with two other thefts and was sent to prison for three months.
During the war the number of prosecutions for drunkenness in St Helens was very low – dropping from 525 in 1914 to just 45 in 1918. That was due to a combination of many men being away in the forces, the curtailment of opening hours, price rises and the strength of ale and spirits being weakened. The so-called "Government ale" was known by some wags as "arms and legs beer" – as they said there was no body to it!
However the drink was now back to full strength and there was plenty of it leading to a commensurate rise in drunken behaviour. Convictions for drunkenness in St Helens had almost doubled to 82 during 1919 and on February 3rd the numbers for 1920 were revealed. In St Helens the increase in successful prosecutions had been 124% greater than in 1919 with the total number of convictions being 184. That was not as bad as Oldham whose rise had been 148% but Warrington fared better with only an 87% increase.
The well meaning but ineffective League of Nations had been founded a year earlier with the aim of maintaining world peace. In a rather naive leader column on the 3rd, the Liverpool Echo wrote:
"We observe that at a meeting of the St. Helens Town Council a lady member criticised the Education Committee because it had refused to lay down definitely that lessons on the League of Nations and its objects should be given in the schools of the town. It is impossible to deny her contention that if the children of the nations of the world were properly instructed in the matter, the idea of peace would soon spread through the world.
"We know how the idea of war was spread through the world, and how millions were spent on this purpose. It is surely worth while to propagate the idea of international peace and concord, and local education committees might well address themselves to this question in place of the petty squabbles and personalities which so often mar their proceedings."
It was common for head teachers within the St Helens district to undertake the job for many decades. That, I think, was through being appointed young and often having been brought up in the community that they were now top dog. Mobility in general was also much lower, of course, and people were then much more likely to stay local.
William Ashton was head of St Helens Parish Church Schools for 43 years and in Sutton, James Plews ran the National School in Ellamsbridge Road for 34 years with Hannah Parr acting as headmistress of the infants for 41 years. Then there was John Duffy, who in 1913 at the age of 24 had been appointed headmaster of St Anne's RC Boys School in Sutton, a position he held until 1950. Duffy was the man who at a teaching conference once compared his students to animals, saying teachers were like lion tamers and a class of 30 to 40 schoolboys could be "as lively as a cage of monkeys"!
I expect that a Polish man called Ousalace from Chancery Lane in Parr regretted bringing charges against his daughter-in-law. His son had married a woman called Eliza in 1919 but had then joined the army and was now serving in Jerusalem. The father-in-law asked Eliza to be his housekeeper and on December 31st gave her £5 to buy things for the house. The 21-year-old woman instead took herself off to Liverpool where she was arrested for using insulting language in the street.
Appearing in St Helens Police Court on the 4th and accused of stealing the £5, Eliza Ousalace made the extraordinary claim that she want away because her father-in-law had got her "into trouble" and she did not want her parents to know. That was despite Mr Ousalace being described as a "grey-haired old man" who strongly denied the truth of what his daughter-in-law had said in court while under oath. The magistrates bound over Eliza to be of good behaviour for twelve months.
The St Helens sausage went on trial on the 7th – or more accurately it was the Salford sausage bought from a Bridge Street shop. Last June I wrote how a large advert published on the front page of the St Helens Reporter had declared:
"A WONDERFUL SUCCESS! CROWDED OUT DAILY. Fresh Fish Supplies Ltd. the pioneers of Cheap Fresh Fish who recently opened a new shop at 22, Bridge Street, St. Helens, have proved to the public that fish can be brought from the coast and sold in St. Helens within 24 hours of leaving the trawler, and they have so pleased the housewives of St. Helens that their shop is besieged daily by vast crowds who realize that good fresh fish is an essential part of the family diet and that it means a great saving in the family exchequer."
Being a rather cynical sort I wrote at the time: "If the fish shop was being besieged daily by vast crowds, I wonder why they felt the need to spend so much money on advertising?" Well, the fresh fish firm clearly sold more than fish. I suppose if colossal crowds of shoppers are besieging your premises, you will want to get the most money out of the multitude.
So Fresh Fish Supplies also sold sausages but they were rather fishy ones. I don't mean they ponged of haddock but according to an analyst who gave evidence in court, the bangers only contained 36% of sausage meat. The rest was made up of bread and water. There was no expectation that the whole sausage should be 100% meat but the prosecution contended that at least half of it should.
The analyst from Liverpool – a Mr Davies – seemed quite impressed with the cunning way the sausage had been made, as bread had been included to allow the sausage to soak up water. He said in court: "Really and truly a great deal of ingenuity is bestowed on the material which is added, so that it should take as much water as possible, and so that it will swell out and make the sausage puff up, and look as plump as possible."
Fresh Fish Supplies said their Bridge Street store bought their sausages from a reputable firm in Manchester and they were unaware of any standard of sausage set in law. The company's argument was that they were selling these sausages at a low price and so it was acceptable for the amount of meat in them to be on the low side.
The Bench decided that the sausage supplied was not of the substance and quality expected and imposed a penalty of 40 shillings and two guineas costs. However the magistrates encouraged the defendant to appeal their case to a higher court so they could lay down a sausage standard. In case you were wondering, the pound of bangers that the police bought in their undercover sting cost the St Helens taxpayer 1s 4d.
Next week's stories will include the smoky steam-powered lorry at Eccleston Lane Ends, the boys that tramped for work, the St Helens clubs accused of being drinking and gambling dens and a bus tragedy at Marshalls Cross.
This week's stories include the councillor who wanted St Helens children to be taught peace in school, the man charged with stealing children's breakfasts, the Rainford headmaster who began teaching for threepence a week and the fishy sausage case.
I notice that pre-Covid some schools in St Helens were offering free breakfasts to their pupils.
There's nothing new in that, of course, although a century ago only the very poor ones received them – and the kids were made to sit together at the front of the class so everybody knew who they were!
A number of schools in St Helens began providing free breakfasts as a result of the war.
That's because many recruits proved so unhealthy after receiving a poor diet throughout their young lives that they failed medicals or had to be discharged.
A report published in 1917 revealed that nationally 1 in 8 school children were so unfit and underweight with stunted growth that they couldn't benefit from education.
I mention this because on February 2nd Richard Rimmer appeared in St Helens Police Court charged with breaking into an unnamed school in the town.
However all the 22-year-old appears to have taken was food prepared for the children's breakfasts on the following morning. Perhaps he thought he was Goldilocks?
Rimmer was also charged with two other thefts and was sent to prison for three months.
During the war the number of prosecutions for drunkenness in St Helens was very low – dropping from 525 in 1914 to just 45 in 1918.
That was due to a combination of many men being away in the forces, the curtailment of opening hours, price rises and the strength of ale and spirits being weakened.
The so-called "Government ale" was known by some wags as "arms and legs beer" – as they said there was no body to it!
However the drink was now back to full strength and there was plenty of it leading to a commensurate rise in drunken behaviour.
Convictions for drunkenness in St Helens had almost doubled to 82 during 1919 and on February 3rd the numbers for 1920 were revealed.
In St Helens the increase in successful prosecutions had been 124% greater than in 1919 with the total number of convictions being 184.
That was not as bad as Oldham whose rise had been 148% but Warrington fared better with only an 87% increase.
The well meaning but ineffective League of Nations had been founded a year earlier with the aim of maintaining world peace.
In a rather naive leader column on the 3rd, the Liverpool Echo wrote:
"We observe that at a meeting of the St. Helens Town Council a lady member criticised the Education Committee because it had refused to lay down definitely that lessons on the League of Nations and its objects should be given in the schools of the town.
"It is impossible to deny her contention that if the children of the nations of the world were properly instructed in the matter, the idea of peace would soon spread through the world.
"We know how the idea of war was spread through the world, and how millions were spent on this purpose.
"It is surely worth while to propagate the idea of international peace and concord, and local education committees might well address themselves to this question in place of the petty squabbles and personalities which so often mar their proceedings."
It was common for head teachers within the St Helens district to undertake the job for many decades.
That, I think, was through being appointed young and often having been brought up in the community that they were now top dog.
Mobility in general was also much lower, of course, and people were then much more likely to stay local.
William Ashton was head of St Helens Parish Church Schools for 43 years and in Sutton, James Plews ran the National School in Ellamsbridge Road for 34 years with Hannah Parr acting as headmistress of the infants for 41 years.
Then there was John Duffy, who in 1913 at the age of 24 had been appointed headmaster of St Anne's RC Boys School in Sutton, a position he held until 1950.
Duffy was the man who at a teaching conference once compared his students to animals, saying teachers were like lion tamers and a class of 30 to 40 schoolboys could be "as lively as a cage of monkeys"!
On the 3rd it was reported that the headmaster of Rainford Village School in Cross Pit Lane (pictured above) had retired after being in charge for 35 years.
Captain William Graham had been in the teaching profession for a total of 54 years having commenced in Liverpool at the age of twelve on a salary of just threepence a week!
Graham was stated as having been "one of the pioneers of the evening school movement".
I expect that a Polish man called Ousalace from Chancery Lane in Parr regretted bringing charges against his daughter-in-law.
His son had married a woman called Eliza in 1919 but had then joined the army and was now serving in Jerusalem.
The father-in-law asked Eliza to be his housekeeper and on December 31st gave her £5 to buy things for the house.
The 21-year-old woman instead took herself off to Liverpool where she was arrested for using insulting language in the street.
Appearing in St Helens Police Court on the 4th and accused of stealing the £5, Eliza Ousalace made the extraordinary claim that she want away because her father-in-law had got her "into trouble" and she did not want her parents to know.
That was despite Mr Ousalace being described as a "grey-haired old man" who strongly denied the truth of what his daughter-in-law had said in court while under oath.
The magistrates bound over Eliza to be of good behaviour for twelve months.
The St Helens Ladies (pictured above) played another charity football match against Dick Kerr's of Preston on the 5th.
The game at Nelson was in aid of a poor children's fund and although St Helens was no doubt the second best women's team in the country, the Preston side were much better.
Gail Newsham did not call her book on Dick Kerr's "In a League of Their Own" for nothing and they predictably thrashed the St Helens women 7 - 0.
The St Helens sausage went on trial on the 7th – or more accurately it was the Salford sausage bought from a Bridge Street shop.
Last June I wrote how a large advert published on the front page of the St Helens Reporter had declared:
"A WONDERFUL SUCCESS! CROWDED OUT DAILY. Fresh Fish Supplies Ltd. the pioneers of Cheap Fresh Fish who recently opened a new shop at 22, Bridge Street, St. Helens, have proved to the public that fish can be brought from the coast and sold in St. Helens within 24 hours of leaving the trawler, and they have so pleased the housewives of St. Helens that their shop is besieged daily by vast crowds who realize that good fresh fish is an essential part of the family diet and that it means a great saving in the family exchequer."
Being a rather cynical sort I wrote at the time: "If the fish shop was being besieged daily by vast crowds, I wonder why they felt the need to spend so much money on advertising?"
Well, the fresh fish firm clearly sold more than fish. I suppose if colossal crowds of shoppers are besieging your premises, you will want to get the most money out of the multitude.
So Fresh Fish Supplies also sold sausages but they were rather fishy ones. I don't mean they ponged of haddock but according to an analyst who gave evidence in court, the bangers only contained 36% of sausage meat.
The rest was made up of bread and water. There was no expectation that the whole sausage should be 100% meat but the prosecution contended that at least half of it should.
The analyst from Liverpool – a Mr Davies – seemed quite impressed with the cunning way the sausage had been made, as bread had been included to allow the sausage to soak up water. He said in court:
"Really and truly a great deal of ingenuity is bestowed on the material which is added, so that it should take as much water as possible, and so that it will swell out and make the sausage puff up, and look as plump as possible."
Fresh Fish Supplies said their Bridge Street store bought their sausages from a reputable firm in Manchester and they were unaware of any standard of sausage set in law.
The company's argument was that they were selling these sausages at a low price and so it was acceptable for the amount of meat in them to be on the low side.
The Bench decided that the sausage supplied was not of the substance and quality expected and imposed a penalty of 40 shillings and two guineas costs.
However the magistrates encouraged the defendant to appeal their case to a higher court so they could lay down a sausage standard.
In case you were wondering, the pound of bangers that the police bought in their undercover sting cost the St Helens taxpayer 1s 4d.
Next week's stories will include the smoky steam-powered lorry at Eccleston Lane Ends, the boys that tramped for work, the St Helens clubs accused of being drinking and gambling dens and a bus tragedy at Marshalls Cross.
I notice that pre-Covid some schools in St Helens were offering free breakfasts to their pupils.
There's nothing new in that, of course, although a century ago only the very poor ones received them – and the kids were made to sit together at the front of the class so everybody knew who they were!
A number of schools in St Helens began providing free breakfasts as a result of the war.
That's because many recruits proved so unhealthy after receiving a poor diet throughout their young lives that they failed medicals or had to be discharged.
A report published in 1917 revealed that nationally 1 in 8 school children were so unfit and underweight with stunted growth that they couldn't benefit from education.
I mention this because on February 2nd Richard Rimmer appeared in St Helens Police Court charged with breaking into an unnamed school in the town.
However all the 22-year-old appears to have taken was food prepared for the children's breakfasts on the following morning. Perhaps he thought he was Goldilocks?
Rimmer was also charged with two other thefts and was sent to prison for three months.
During the war the number of prosecutions for drunkenness in St Helens was very low – dropping from 525 in 1914 to just 45 in 1918.
That was due to a combination of many men being away in the forces, the curtailment of opening hours, price rises and the strength of ale and spirits being weakened.
The so-called "Government ale" was known by some wags as "arms and legs beer" – as they said there was no body to it!
However the drink was now back to full strength and there was plenty of it leading to a commensurate rise in drunken behaviour.
Convictions for drunkenness in St Helens had almost doubled to 82 during 1919 and on February 3rd the numbers for 1920 were revealed.
In St Helens the increase in successful prosecutions had been 124% greater than in 1919 with the total number of convictions being 184.
That was not as bad as Oldham whose rise had been 148% but Warrington fared better with only an 87% increase.
The well meaning but ineffective League of Nations had been founded a year earlier with the aim of maintaining world peace.
In a rather naive leader column on the 3rd, the Liverpool Echo wrote:
"We observe that at a meeting of the St. Helens Town Council a lady member criticised the Education Committee because it had refused to lay down definitely that lessons on the League of Nations and its objects should be given in the schools of the town.
"It is impossible to deny her contention that if the children of the nations of the world were properly instructed in the matter, the idea of peace would soon spread through the world.
"We know how the idea of war was spread through the world, and how millions were spent on this purpose.
"It is surely worth while to propagate the idea of international peace and concord, and local education committees might well address themselves to this question in place of the petty squabbles and personalities which so often mar their proceedings."
It was common for head teachers within the St Helens district to undertake the job for many decades.
That, I think, was through being appointed young and often having been brought up in the community that they were now top dog.
Mobility in general was also much lower, of course, and people were then much more likely to stay local.
William Ashton was head of St Helens Parish Church Schools for 43 years and in Sutton, James Plews ran the National School in Ellamsbridge Road for 34 years with Hannah Parr acting as headmistress of the infants for 41 years.
Then there was John Duffy, who in 1913 at the age of 24 had been appointed headmaster of St Anne's RC Boys School in Sutton, a position he held until 1950.
Duffy was the man who at a teaching conference once compared his students to animals, saying teachers were like lion tamers and a class of 30 to 40 schoolboys could be "as lively as a cage of monkeys"!
Captain William Graham had been in the teaching profession for a total of 54 years having commenced in Liverpool at the age of twelve on a salary of just threepence a week!
Graham was stated as having been "one of the pioneers of the evening school movement".
I expect that a Polish man called Ousalace from Chancery Lane in Parr regretted bringing charges against his daughter-in-law.
His son had married a woman called Eliza in 1919 but had then joined the army and was now serving in Jerusalem.
The father-in-law asked Eliza to be his housekeeper and on December 31st gave her £5 to buy things for the house.
The 21-year-old woman instead took herself off to Liverpool where she was arrested for using insulting language in the street.
Appearing in St Helens Police Court on the 4th and accused of stealing the £5, Eliza Ousalace made the extraordinary claim that she want away because her father-in-law had got her "into trouble" and she did not want her parents to know.
That was despite Mr Ousalace being described as a "grey-haired old man" who strongly denied the truth of what his daughter-in-law had said in court while under oath.
The magistrates bound over Eliza to be of good behaviour for twelve months.
The game at Nelson was in aid of a poor children's fund and although St Helens was no doubt the second best women's team in the country, the Preston side were much better.
Gail Newsham did not call her book on Dick Kerr's "In a League of Their Own" for nothing and they predictably thrashed the St Helens women 7 - 0.
The St Helens sausage went on trial on the 7th – or more accurately it was the Salford sausage bought from a Bridge Street shop.
Last June I wrote how a large advert published on the front page of the St Helens Reporter had declared:
"A WONDERFUL SUCCESS! CROWDED OUT DAILY. Fresh Fish Supplies Ltd. the pioneers of Cheap Fresh Fish who recently opened a new shop at 22, Bridge Street, St. Helens, have proved to the public that fish can be brought from the coast and sold in St. Helens within 24 hours of leaving the trawler, and they have so pleased the housewives of St. Helens that their shop is besieged daily by vast crowds who realize that good fresh fish is an essential part of the family diet and that it means a great saving in the family exchequer."
Being a rather cynical sort I wrote at the time: "If the fish shop was being besieged daily by vast crowds, I wonder why they felt the need to spend so much money on advertising?"
Well, the fresh fish firm clearly sold more than fish. I suppose if colossal crowds of shoppers are besieging your premises, you will want to get the most money out of the multitude.
So Fresh Fish Supplies also sold sausages but they were rather fishy ones. I don't mean they ponged of haddock but according to an analyst who gave evidence in court, the bangers only contained 36% of sausage meat.
The rest was made up of bread and water. There was no expectation that the whole sausage should be 100% meat but the prosecution contended that at least half of it should.
The analyst from Liverpool – a Mr Davies – seemed quite impressed with the cunning way the sausage had been made, as bread had been included to allow the sausage to soak up water. He said in court:
"Really and truly a great deal of ingenuity is bestowed on the material which is added, so that it should take as much water as possible, and so that it will swell out and make the sausage puff up, and look as plump as possible."
Fresh Fish Supplies said their Bridge Street store bought their sausages from a reputable firm in Manchester and they were unaware of any standard of sausage set in law.
The company's argument was that they were selling these sausages at a low price and so it was acceptable for the amount of meat in them to be on the low side.
The Bench decided that the sausage supplied was not of the substance and quality expected and imposed a penalty of 40 shillings and two guineas costs.
However the magistrates encouraged the defendant to appeal their case to a higher court so they could lay down a sausage standard.
In case you were wondering, the pound of bangers that the police bought in their undercover sting cost the St Helens taxpayer 1s 4d.
Next week's stories will include the smoky steam-powered lorry at Eccleston Lane Ends, the boys that tramped for work, the St Helens clubs accused of being drinking and gambling dens and a bus tragedy at Marshalls Cross.