IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 3 - 9 MARCH 1925
This week's many stories include the cigarette thief's punishment that his mother couldn't help him with, the romantic bigamy case in which a man went to war and lost his girl, the Reporter criticises council meetings for being too political, the Hardshaw Street conman who took advantage of a landlady and the man that gave a chap a "slap on the jaw" because he'd heard him say something about his "missus".
We begin on the 3rd with a firedamp explosion at Clock Face Colliery (pictured above) that injured two men. What was essentially methane gas explosions used to be very common in coalmines and during the 1870s a total of seventeen such disasters took place in the Lancashire coalfield killing a huge number of men and boys. By the 1920s they were so rare that a question about the Clock Face accident was asked in Parliament to ensure a full enquiry would take place.
At the end of a case that was heard in St Helens Police Court on the 3rd, the Chairman of the magistrates said: "The Bench feel that by putting on a monetary fine they will be punishing your mother and not punishing you. You have been convicted before for this offence, and we have decided in your own interests to send you to prison for twenty-eight days." I doubt that Albert Lees from Pitt Street in St Helens agreed with that statement but the Bench had a point. There was no purpose in them continually fining the man for stealing if his mother always paid off his fines.
The 23-year-old had been charged with taking eight packets of cigarettes from Margaret Moglia's shop in Liverpool Street. Lees had called in to her little shop at 8:30am to buy a packet of cigarettes and later he returned to purchase chewing gum. After he'd seemingly left and Margaret had gone in the back, she heard a noise and through a window saw Lees bolting out of the shop after helping himself to more cigarettes. The shopkeeper did not know who the young man was but she was able to give a good description of him to the police who arrested Lees in Church Street.
For reasons I've never been fully able to comprehend, the police in those times preferred to search persons in their station rather than on the street. That gave the arrested person the opportunity to dispose of any evidence – although, of course, they had to do it out of sight of their police escort. Before taking Lees to their police station at the Town Hall, the two officers decided to escort him to the shop to get the shopkeeper to confirm that they had the right man.
But on the way Lees was seen to throw three packets of stolen cigarettes away and then, realising the game was up, said: "I may as well give myself up," and handed over the remaining packets. The young man's parents were described as respectable people who paid off their son's fines but as he was not learning any lessons that way a month in prison was seen as the solution.
"Went To The War & Lost His Girl" was the St Helens Reporter's headline to a romantic story told in St Helens Police Court on the 4th. That was when Margaret Smith and Peter Fearnley of Cairne Street in Thatto Heath faced charges of bigamy. Fearnley had been engaged to Margaret at the start of the war and would have married her before going to France but learnt she was only 16 and underage.
He was unheard of for some time and in October 1916 at Prescot Parish Church his fiancée married a 40-year-old widower called William Smith who had four children. Margaret had passed herself off as 21 and the couple went to live in Durham but she soon left her husband after claiming he had treated her badly. After the war Peter Fearnley returned home from France and searched for his beloved, eventually finding her in service in Liverpool and the couple went through a bigamous form of marriage in 1920 after Margaret became pregnant.
Of the allegations made at the court hearing, Margaret accused her real husband William Smith of making her sleep on a sofa when living in Durham with only an old coat as a covering and of keeping her short of food. Fearnley also claimed that Smith had recently told him at Thatto Heath Labour Club that he "wanted to swing a loose leg" – in other words he was happy to get a divorce so that he could marry again. Peter and Margaret were committed to take their trial at the Liverpool Assizes where they were both sentenced to 21 days in prison – a relatively mild punishment for such an offence.
The Reporter was getting very stroppy with its editorials and in its edition of the 6th was furious over councillors playing politics at their council meeting, writing: "The St. Helens Town Council sat for over two and a half hours on Wednesday night, and with the exception of the formal passing of the committee minutes, which occupied a few minutes, nothing was done which can, by any stretch of imagination, be said to have left St. Helens in the slightest degree any better off.
"In fact, Wednesday was a political night. Imperial politics, which should find no place in the Chamber, took the place of local affairs. It was, in a sentence, the most blatant display of partisanship, the most barefaced endeavour to make political capital, that has occurred during the last twenty years. So mightily was the political drum beaten, in fact, that Wednesday might well have been the last Wednesday in October, immediately before the municipal elections, instead of the fourth day of March."
In my 150 Years Ago articles from the 1870s, being caught begging meant a couple of weeks in Kirkdale Gaol. That prison in Liverpool was now long gone and so was the automatic custodial sentence for simply asking for a copper or two. When Matthew Donoghue appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 9th charged with "placing himself in a position to receive alms" on the previous Saturday night he was only fined 5 shillings.
That was despite offering the excuse that he had been stopping people in the street as he was in need of a few coppers. Which begs the question how he was to find the 5 bob if he had no cash? Did he have to go out begging again to pay the fine for his first lot of begging? Or if he was in default of payment, did he still have to go to prison? If so, effectively, there was no great difference between the 1920s approach and that from fifty years before. Rarely did answers to these questions ever make it into the newspaper reports, rather annoyingly.
Coal thieves in the 1870s were also routinely imprisoned, even if they had taken just a few bits through severe poverty. In the 1920s, just like beggars, coal thieves were fined instead of being sent to prison and Jane Brown was also in court where she was ordered to pay 10 shillings after taking just 8d worth of coal. Jane was a widow and she had stolen the coal from Ashtons Green Colliery. She had five previous convictions and somehow she now had to find ten bob, despite her likely to have been going through very hard times.
Michael Coggran of Sandfield Crescent in Greenbank was summoned to court charged with assaulting Edward Moraghan and, although he admitted the assault, he told the Bench that he refused to plead guilty "on principle." The complainant gave evidence that he had been having a drink in a hotel with his brother and a friend. The defendant Coggran had walked towards him and Moraghan, thinking the man only wanted to walk past, said he stepped to one side.
But instead he was punched in the face, with the force of the blow knocking him against a seat. Moraghan insisted that there had been no provocation and said he still did not know why the defendant had struck him. But Edward Moraghan said he gave Coggran what he called a "slap on the jaw" because he had heard the man make a derogatory comment about his "missus". Moraghan was fined 10 shillings but he also had to pay witness costs and a solicitor's fee, which totalled nearly £3.
A conman called Clifford Pye, alias Roy Darley, was also in court charged with having obtained £8 by false pretences. He had called at Louisa Williams' house in Hardshaw Street and claimed to have got a job at Pilkingtons as an engineer and needed rooms. Not only was he granted accommodation but also on the following day he persuaded Mrs Williams to lend him £8, supposedly so he could go to Liverpool to purchase some goods for his wife's shop in Manchester.
Eventually Mrs Williams became suspicious of her boarder and notified the police and the conman was arrested in Manchester. In court the police asked for a remand for a week to make further enquiries, which was granted.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the phony Irish star at the Hippodrome, the battered wife who said her husband drove her to take poison, the new Catholic Mission at Sutton Manor and the fluffy chicken in an Easter egg that killed a little girl.
At the end of a case that was heard in St Helens Police Court on the 3rd, the Chairman of the magistrates said: "The Bench feel that by putting on a monetary fine they will be punishing your mother and not punishing you. You have been convicted before for this offence, and we have decided in your own interests to send you to prison for twenty-eight days." I doubt that Albert Lees from Pitt Street in St Helens agreed with that statement but the Bench had a point. There was no purpose in them continually fining the man for stealing if his mother always paid off his fines.
The 23-year-old had been charged with taking eight packets of cigarettes from Margaret Moglia's shop in Liverpool Street. Lees had called in to her little shop at 8:30am to buy a packet of cigarettes and later he returned to purchase chewing gum. After he'd seemingly left and Margaret had gone in the back, she heard a noise and through a window saw Lees bolting out of the shop after helping himself to more cigarettes. The shopkeeper did not know who the young man was but she was able to give a good description of him to the police who arrested Lees in Church Street.
For reasons I've never been fully able to comprehend, the police in those times preferred to search persons in their station rather than on the street. That gave the arrested person the opportunity to dispose of any evidence – although, of course, they had to do it out of sight of their police escort. Before taking Lees to their police station at the Town Hall, the two officers decided to escort him to the shop to get the shopkeeper to confirm that they had the right man.
But on the way Lees was seen to throw three packets of stolen cigarettes away and then, realising the game was up, said: "I may as well give myself up," and handed over the remaining packets. The young man's parents were described as respectable people who paid off their son's fines but as he was not learning any lessons that way a month in prison was seen as the solution.
"Went To The War & Lost His Girl" was the St Helens Reporter's headline to a romantic story told in St Helens Police Court on the 4th. That was when Margaret Smith and Peter Fearnley of Cairne Street in Thatto Heath faced charges of bigamy. Fearnley had been engaged to Margaret at the start of the war and would have married her before going to France but learnt she was only 16 and underage.
He was unheard of for some time and in October 1916 at Prescot Parish Church his fiancée married a 40-year-old widower called William Smith who had four children. Margaret had passed herself off as 21 and the couple went to live in Durham but she soon left her husband after claiming he had treated her badly. After the war Peter Fearnley returned home from France and searched for his beloved, eventually finding her in service in Liverpool and the couple went through a bigamous form of marriage in 1920 after Margaret became pregnant.
Of the allegations made at the court hearing, Margaret accused her real husband William Smith of making her sleep on a sofa when living in Durham with only an old coat as a covering and of keeping her short of food. Fearnley also claimed that Smith had recently told him at Thatto Heath Labour Club that he "wanted to swing a loose leg" – in other words he was happy to get a divorce so that he could marry again. Peter and Margaret were committed to take their trial at the Liverpool Assizes where they were both sentenced to 21 days in prison – a relatively mild punishment for such an offence.
The Reporter was getting very stroppy with its editorials and in its edition of the 6th was furious over councillors playing politics at their council meeting, writing: "The St. Helens Town Council sat for over two and a half hours on Wednesday night, and with the exception of the formal passing of the committee minutes, which occupied a few minutes, nothing was done which can, by any stretch of imagination, be said to have left St. Helens in the slightest degree any better off.
"In fact, Wednesday was a political night. Imperial politics, which should find no place in the Chamber, took the place of local affairs. It was, in a sentence, the most blatant display of partisanship, the most barefaced endeavour to make political capital, that has occurred during the last twenty years. So mightily was the political drum beaten, in fact, that Wednesday might well have been the last Wednesday in October, immediately before the municipal elections, instead of the fourth day of March."
In my 150 Years Ago articles from the 1870s, being caught begging meant a couple of weeks in Kirkdale Gaol. That prison in Liverpool was now long gone and so was the automatic custodial sentence for simply asking for a copper or two. When Matthew Donoghue appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 9th charged with "placing himself in a position to receive alms" on the previous Saturday night he was only fined 5 shillings.
That was despite offering the excuse that he had been stopping people in the street as he was in need of a few coppers. Which begs the question how he was to find the 5 bob if he had no cash? Did he have to go out begging again to pay the fine for his first lot of begging? Or if he was in default of payment, did he still have to go to prison? If so, effectively, there was no great difference between the 1920s approach and that from fifty years before. Rarely did answers to these questions ever make it into the newspaper reports, rather annoyingly.
Coal thieves in the 1870s were also routinely imprisoned, even if they had taken just a few bits through severe poverty. In the 1920s, just like beggars, coal thieves were fined instead of being sent to prison and Jane Brown was also in court where she was ordered to pay 10 shillings after taking just 8d worth of coal. Jane was a widow and she had stolen the coal from Ashtons Green Colliery. She had five previous convictions and somehow she now had to find ten bob, despite her likely to have been going through very hard times.
Michael Coggran of Sandfield Crescent in Greenbank was summoned to court charged with assaulting Edward Moraghan and, although he admitted the assault, he told the Bench that he refused to plead guilty "on principle." The complainant gave evidence that he had been having a drink in a hotel with his brother and a friend. The defendant Coggran had walked towards him and Moraghan, thinking the man only wanted to walk past, said he stepped to one side.
But instead he was punched in the face, with the force of the blow knocking him against a seat. Moraghan insisted that there had been no provocation and said he still did not know why the defendant had struck him. But Edward Moraghan said he gave Coggran what he called a "slap on the jaw" because he had heard the man make a derogatory comment about his "missus". Moraghan was fined 10 shillings but he also had to pay witness costs and a solicitor's fee, which totalled nearly £3.
Eventually Mrs Williams became suspicious of her boarder and notified the police and the conman was arrested in Manchester. In court the police asked for a remand for a week to make further enquiries, which was granted.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the phony Irish star at the Hippodrome, the battered wife who said her husband drove her to take poison, the new Catholic Mission at Sutton Manor and the fluffy chicken in an Easter egg that killed a little girl.
This week's many stories include the cigarette thief's punishment that his mother couldn't help him with, the romantic bigamy case in which a man went to war and lost his girl, the Reporter criticises council meetings for being too political, the Hardshaw Street conman who took advantage of a landlady and the man that gave a chap a "slap on the jaw" because he'd heard him say something about his "missus".
We begin on the 3rd with a firedamp explosion at Clock Face Colliery (pictured above) that injured two men.
What was essentially methane gas explosions used to be very common in coalmines and during the 1870s a total of seventeen such disasters took place in the Lancashire coalfield killing a huge number of men and boys.
By the 1920s they were so rare that a question about the Clock Face accident was asked in Parliament to ensure a full enquiry would take place.
At the end of a case that was heard in St Helens Police Court on the 3rd, the Chairman of the magistrates said:
"The Bench feel that by putting on a monetary fine they will be punishing your mother and not punishing you. You have been convicted before for this offence, and we have decided in your own interests to send you to prison for twenty-eight days."
I doubt that Albert Lees from Pitt Street in St Helens agreed with that statement but the Bench had a point.
There was no purpose in them continually fining the man for stealing if his mother always paid off his fines.
The 23-year-old had been charged with taking eight packets of cigarettes from Margaret Moglia's shop in Liverpool Street.
Lees had called in to her little shop at 8:30am to buy a packet of cigarettes and later he returned to purchase chewing gum.
After he'd seemingly left and Margaret had gone in the back, she heard a noise and through a window saw Lees bolting out of the shop after helping himself to more cigarettes.
The shopkeeper did not know who the young man was but she was able to give a good description of him to the police who arrested Lees in Church Street.
For reasons I've never been fully able to comprehend, the police in those times preferred to search persons in their station rather than on the street.
That gave the arrested person the opportunity to dispose of any evidence – although, of course, they had to do it out of sight of their police escort.
Before taking Lees to their police station at the Town Hall, the two officers decided to escort him to the shop to get the shopkeeper to confirm that they had the right man.
But on the way Lees was seen to throw three packets of stolen cigarettes away and then, realising the game was up, said: "I may as well give myself up," and handed over the remaining packets.
The young man's parents were described as respectable people who paid off their son's fines but as he was not learning any lessons that way a month in prison was seen as the solution.
"Went To The War & Lost His Girl" was the St Helens Reporter's headline to a romantic story told in St Helens Police Court on the 4th.
That was when Margaret Smith and Peter Fearnley of Cairne Street in Thatto Heath faced charges of bigamy.
Fearnley had been engaged to Margaret at the start of the war and would have married her before going to France but learnt she was only 16 and underage.
He was unheard of for some time and in October 1916 at Prescot Parish Church his fiancée married a 40-year-old widower called William Smith who had four children.
Margaret had passed herself off as 21 and the couple went to live in Durham but she soon left her husband after claiming he had treated her badly.
After the war Peter Fearnley returned home from France and searched for his beloved, eventually finding her in service in Liverpool and the couple went through a bigamous form of marriage in 1920 after Margaret became pregnant.
Of the allegations made at the court hearing, Margaret accused her real husband William Smith of making her sleep on a sofa when living in Durham with only an old coat as a covering and of keeping her short of food.
Fearnley also claimed that Smith had recently told him at Thatto Heath Labour Club that he "wanted to swing a loose leg" – in other words he was happy to get a divorce so that he could marry again.
Peter and Margaret were committed to take their trial at the Liverpool Assizes where they were both sentenced to 21 days in prison – a relatively mild punishment for such an offence.
The Reporter was getting very stroppy with its editorials and in its edition of the 6th was furious over councillors playing politics at their council meeting, writing:
"The St. Helens Town Council sat for over two and a half hours on Wednesday night, and with the exception of the formal passing of the committee minutes, which occupied a few minutes, nothing was done which can, by any stretch of imagination, be said to have left St. Helens in the slightest degree any better off.
"In fact, Wednesday was a political night. Imperial politics, which should find no place in the Chamber, took the place of local affairs.
"It was, in a sentence, the most blatant display of partisanship, the most barefaced endeavour to make political capital, that has occurred during the last twenty years.
"So mightily was the political drum beaten, in fact, that Wednesday might well have been the last Wednesday in October, immediately before the municipal elections, instead of the fourth day of March."
In my 150 Years Ago articles from the 1870s, being caught begging meant a couple of weeks in Kirkdale Gaol.
That prison in Liverpool was now long gone and so was the automatic custodial sentence for simply asking for a copper or two.
When Matthew Donoghue appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 9th charged with "placing himself in a position to receive alms" on the previous Saturday night he was only fined 5 shillings.
That was despite offering the excuse that he had been stopping people in the street as he was in need of a few coppers. Which begs the question how he was to find the 5 bob if he had no cash?
Did he have to go out begging again to pay the fine for his first lot of begging?
Or if he was in default of payment, did he still have to go to prison? If so, effectively, there was no great difference between the 1920s approach and that from fifty years before.
Rarely did answers to these questions ever make it into the newspaper reports, rather annoyingly.
Coal thieves in the 1870s were also routinely imprisoned, even if they had taken just a few bits through severe poverty.
In the 1920s, just like beggars, coal thieves were fined instead of being sent to prison and Jane Brown was also in court where she was ordered to pay 10 shillings after taking just 8d worth of coal.
Jane was a widow and she had stolen the coal from Ashtons Green Colliery.
She had five previous convictions and somehow she now had to find ten bob, despite her likely to have been going through very hard times.
Michael Coggran of Sandfield Crescent in Greenbank was summoned to court charged with assaulting Edward Moraghan and, although he admitted the assault, he told the Bench that he refused to plead guilty "on principle."
The complainant gave evidence that he had been having a drink in a hotel with his brother and a friend.
The defendant Coggran had walked towards him and Moraghan, thinking the man only wanted to walk past, said he stepped to one side.
But instead he was punched in the face, with the force of the blow knocking him against a seat.
Moraghan insisted that there had been no provocation and said he still did not know why the defendant had struck him.
But Edward Moraghan said he gave Coggran what he called a "slap on the jaw" because he had heard the man make a derogatory comment about his "missus".
Moraghan was fined 10 shillings but he also had to pay witness costs and a solicitor's fee, which totalled nearly £3.
A conman called Clifford Pye, alias Roy Darley, was also in court charged with having obtained £8 by false pretences.
He had called at Louisa Williams' house in Hardshaw Street and claimed to have got a job at Pilkingtons as an engineer and needed rooms.
Not only was he granted accommodation but also on the following day he persuaded Mrs Williams to lend him £8, supposedly so he could go to Liverpool to purchase some goods for his wife's shop in Manchester.
Eventually Mrs Williams became suspicious of her boarder and notified the police and the conman was arrested in Manchester.
In court the police asked for a remand for a week to make further enquiries, which was granted.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the phony Irish star at the Hippodrome, the battered wife who said her husband drove her to take poison, the new Catholic Mission at Sutton Manor and the fluffy chicken in an Easter egg that killed a little girl.
What was essentially methane gas explosions used to be very common in coalmines and during the 1870s a total of seventeen such disasters took place in the Lancashire coalfield killing a huge number of men and boys.
By the 1920s they were so rare that a question about the Clock Face accident was asked in Parliament to ensure a full enquiry would take place.
At the end of a case that was heard in St Helens Police Court on the 3rd, the Chairman of the magistrates said:
"The Bench feel that by putting on a monetary fine they will be punishing your mother and not punishing you. You have been convicted before for this offence, and we have decided in your own interests to send you to prison for twenty-eight days."
I doubt that Albert Lees from Pitt Street in St Helens agreed with that statement but the Bench had a point.
There was no purpose in them continually fining the man for stealing if his mother always paid off his fines.
The 23-year-old had been charged with taking eight packets of cigarettes from Margaret Moglia's shop in Liverpool Street.
Lees had called in to her little shop at 8:30am to buy a packet of cigarettes and later he returned to purchase chewing gum.
After he'd seemingly left and Margaret had gone in the back, she heard a noise and through a window saw Lees bolting out of the shop after helping himself to more cigarettes.
The shopkeeper did not know who the young man was but she was able to give a good description of him to the police who arrested Lees in Church Street.
For reasons I've never been fully able to comprehend, the police in those times preferred to search persons in their station rather than on the street.
That gave the arrested person the opportunity to dispose of any evidence – although, of course, they had to do it out of sight of their police escort.
Before taking Lees to their police station at the Town Hall, the two officers decided to escort him to the shop to get the shopkeeper to confirm that they had the right man.
But on the way Lees was seen to throw three packets of stolen cigarettes away and then, realising the game was up, said: "I may as well give myself up," and handed over the remaining packets.
The young man's parents were described as respectable people who paid off their son's fines but as he was not learning any lessons that way a month in prison was seen as the solution.
"Went To The War & Lost His Girl" was the St Helens Reporter's headline to a romantic story told in St Helens Police Court on the 4th.
That was when Margaret Smith and Peter Fearnley of Cairne Street in Thatto Heath faced charges of bigamy.
Fearnley had been engaged to Margaret at the start of the war and would have married her before going to France but learnt she was only 16 and underage.
He was unheard of for some time and in October 1916 at Prescot Parish Church his fiancée married a 40-year-old widower called William Smith who had four children.
Margaret had passed herself off as 21 and the couple went to live in Durham but she soon left her husband after claiming he had treated her badly.
After the war Peter Fearnley returned home from France and searched for his beloved, eventually finding her in service in Liverpool and the couple went through a bigamous form of marriage in 1920 after Margaret became pregnant.
Of the allegations made at the court hearing, Margaret accused her real husband William Smith of making her sleep on a sofa when living in Durham with only an old coat as a covering and of keeping her short of food.
Fearnley also claimed that Smith had recently told him at Thatto Heath Labour Club that he "wanted to swing a loose leg" – in other words he was happy to get a divorce so that he could marry again.
Peter and Margaret were committed to take their trial at the Liverpool Assizes where they were both sentenced to 21 days in prison – a relatively mild punishment for such an offence.
The Reporter was getting very stroppy with its editorials and in its edition of the 6th was furious over councillors playing politics at their council meeting, writing:
"The St. Helens Town Council sat for over two and a half hours on Wednesday night, and with the exception of the formal passing of the committee minutes, which occupied a few minutes, nothing was done which can, by any stretch of imagination, be said to have left St. Helens in the slightest degree any better off.
"In fact, Wednesday was a political night. Imperial politics, which should find no place in the Chamber, took the place of local affairs.
"It was, in a sentence, the most blatant display of partisanship, the most barefaced endeavour to make political capital, that has occurred during the last twenty years.
"So mightily was the political drum beaten, in fact, that Wednesday might well have been the last Wednesday in October, immediately before the municipal elections, instead of the fourth day of March."
In my 150 Years Ago articles from the 1870s, being caught begging meant a couple of weeks in Kirkdale Gaol.
That prison in Liverpool was now long gone and so was the automatic custodial sentence for simply asking for a copper or two.
When Matthew Donoghue appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 9th charged with "placing himself in a position to receive alms" on the previous Saturday night he was only fined 5 shillings.
That was despite offering the excuse that he had been stopping people in the street as he was in need of a few coppers. Which begs the question how he was to find the 5 bob if he had no cash?
Did he have to go out begging again to pay the fine for his first lot of begging?
Or if he was in default of payment, did he still have to go to prison? If so, effectively, there was no great difference between the 1920s approach and that from fifty years before.
Rarely did answers to these questions ever make it into the newspaper reports, rather annoyingly.
Coal thieves in the 1870s were also routinely imprisoned, even if they had taken just a few bits through severe poverty.
In the 1920s, just like beggars, coal thieves were fined instead of being sent to prison and Jane Brown was also in court where she was ordered to pay 10 shillings after taking just 8d worth of coal.
Jane was a widow and she had stolen the coal from Ashtons Green Colliery.
She had five previous convictions and somehow she now had to find ten bob, despite her likely to have been going through very hard times.
Michael Coggran of Sandfield Crescent in Greenbank was summoned to court charged with assaulting Edward Moraghan and, although he admitted the assault, he told the Bench that he refused to plead guilty "on principle."
The complainant gave evidence that he had been having a drink in a hotel with his brother and a friend.
The defendant Coggran had walked towards him and Moraghan, thinking the man only wanted to walk past, said he stepped to one side.
But instead he was punched in the face, with the force of the blow knocking him against a seat.
Moraghan insisted that there had been no provocation and said he still did not know why the defendant had struck him.
But Edward Moraghan said he gave Coggran what he called a "slap on the jaw" because he had heard the man make a derogatory comment about his "missus".
Moraghan was fined 10 shillings but he also had to pay witness costs and a solicitor's fee, which totalled nearly £3.
A conman called Clifford Pye, alias Roy Darley, was also in court charged with having obtained £8 by false pretences.
Not only was he granted accommodation but also on the following day he persuaded Mrs Williams to lend him £8, supposedly so he could go to Liverpool to purchase some goods for his wife's shop in Manchester.
Eventually Mrs Williams became suspicious of her boarder and notified the police and the conman was arrested in Manchester.
In court the police asked for a remand for a week to make further enquiries, which was granted.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the phony Irish star at the Hippodrome, the battered wife who said her husband drove her to take poison, the new Catholic Mission at Sutton Manor and the fluffy chicken in an Easter egg that killed a little girl.