IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (7th - 13th MARCH 1922)
This week's many stories include the mean uncle who supped away the contents of his nephew's money box, a Sutton munition worker's compensation case, the complaint over the Hippodrome's film screenings, the Park Road Homing Club dispute, the curious domestic tangle in Windleshaw Road and St Helens' dreadful reputation is repudiated.
We begin with the Tuesday edition of the St Helens Reporter on the 7th, which contained this notice from the St Helens Master Cloggers Association: "Notice of reduction of prices in new clogs, re-clogging and re-ironing, on and after March 6th, 1922." However, no amounts were stated and I think today a body setting fees for their members' work would be considered to be price fixing and acting illegally under competition law.
What the St Helens Reporter described as a "curious domestic tangle" was heard in the Police Court on the 8th. A tailor called Charles Kenchington was charged with leaving his children chargeable to the Prescot Union, after his two boys had to be admitted to what used to be known as Whiston Workhouse. The couple had lived in Windleshaw Road but when Kenchington returned home from military service in 1918 he found his wife had been "carrying on an intrigue" with another man. She did not deny the affair and had told her husband that she could manage without him.
So he left St Helens and moved to Wales and obtained a divorce. His ex-wife fell ill and had to go into Eccleston Hall Sanatorium leaving her two boys in the care of their older sisters. They were only 15 and 17 and had difficulty coping and so their brothers had to be placed in the workhouse. More than £25 had been spent caring for the lads in the institution. So the Prescot Union who were in charge wanted Kensington to pay up or serve prison time for his desertion.
They had had the man arrested in Wales and brought by the police back to St Helens – however, it seemed someone had boobed. Kensington claimed that as part of the divorce arrangements, his wife had been awarded sole custody of their children, as there was "doubt over their parentage", as the Reporter put it. So he had no legal responsibility for his boys and his case was remanded for a week to allow Kensington time to produce evidence of his claim.
Also on the 8th, a dispute within a homing pigeon society was heard in St Helens County Court in East Street. The Park Road Homing Club met at the Half Mile pub and the son of its licensee was accused of refusing to pay back a £25 loan that the society's secretary had made him. The man had since died and an examination of his books showed two loans of £17 and £8 having been made to Jacob Highcock, who flatly denied receiving the cash. The judge asked Highcock to write his name while in the witness box and compared it to the signature on a receipt. He ruled there were sufficient similarities between the two and the young man was ordered to repay the money.
Mary Lloyd Roberts had been in the County Court on a number of occasions with regard to the injury that she had suffered in 1918 while employed at the Sutton Bond munitions works in Lancots Lane (pictured above). In Charles Forman's book 'Industrial Town' an anonymous female munitions worker described how she'd organised a trade union at Sutton Bond as a consequence of the dire working conditions. These included women forced to work outside in the rain and having to stack heavy 24" steel shells.
After the armistice signing, Mary Roberts had been given a job unloading shell castings from railway wagons. Normally she was told to slide them out but on one particular day she needed to pick them up. The shell castings each weighed one cwt and after lifting thirty of them, Mary collapsed and endured a severe strain. Compensation a century ago was usually made in the form of weekly payments and the judge had previously made an award of 6s 3d. However, the Government wanted the weekly award converted into a lump sum, claiming the woman aged about 24 was not as disabled as she claimed and could undertake light work.
At a previous hearing in the County Court, the judge had sat with a medical advisor and between them they sided with the Government. On the 8th the weekly award of 6s 3d was converted into a lump sum of £200. That was a reasonable outcome for Mary but she would not receive the whole award to spend as she wished. Instead small amounts would be doled out to her on what was probably a weekly basis until the money ran out.
Mary seemed to believe she had suffered a life-long disability and that weekly compensation would have served her better. The County Court judges in St Helens tended to be outspoken and talk down to those in court and Mary was bluntly told to forget about an operation. "You are not likely to get better so long as your mind worked upon a probability that would not occur", said the judge.
At the St Helens adjourned licensing sessions on the 9th, the question of the Hippodrome's film screenings was again considered. As an added attraction to their music hall turns, the Corporation Street theatre was currently featuring Brown's Royal Bioscope, which they advertised as "showing news in animation" – which later became known as a newsreel. As a theatre the Hippodrome had a drinks licence and the St Helens Branch of the Cinemas Exhibitors Association felt this was unfair, as alcohol could not be served in their members' picture houses.
During the hearing it was revealed that their complaint centred on the Hippodrome's screening of a film of a boxing match in January. Carpentier vs. Cook "on the Bioscope" had featured Georges Carpentier – a famous boxer and actor and formerly a World War I pilot. The Hippodrome had a very limited cinema licence and was not supposed to show films of a topical nature or exceeding one reel in length.
One would have thought that newsreels were topical by nature – but apparently not. However, the owners of the film had sent a letter to the court stating that it only lasted one reel and so the complaint was dismissed. As Carpentier had knocked his Australian rival out in the fourth round, the silent film of the event at the Royal Albert Hall was never going to be long.
Many shops baked their own bread but it wasn't until the 1930s that sliced bread was available. So a century ago loaves were sold unwrapped and bakers were required to have scales, even when making deliveries, so customers could confirm their weight. How many people bothered to check I cannot say – although I expect it was very few. Spot checks were regularly made by the authorities and on the 10th, Charles Critchley of Wellington Terrace, off Oldfield Street, was fined 20 shillings for not having scales on his handcart. He told St Helens Police Court that he did not know it was required when a boy was simply making deliveries.
It must have been difficult to bake a loaf to a precise weight. But you were summoned to court if during checks bread was found to be even slightly underweight. Albert Beattie of Tullis Street, off Prescot Road, was charged with "exposing bread for sale which was not of correct weight" and fined ten shillings. Two large white loaves were 1½ ounces short and three brown loaves were 4½ ounces shy of their required weights.
The St Helens Reporter on the 10th published an article by the Rev. Luke Beaumont. For three years he had been the minister of the Ormskirk Street Congregational Church (pictured above right), and his piece compared the reputation of the town and its reality:
"St. Helens is one of a number of towns with a reputation – in some respects – to live down, and I find that the reputation lingers only where the town is not known. Before deciding to settle here I consulted an old medical friend, a Scotsman. It was by 'phone, and the conversation was very brief. I asked had he any views of the matter from the health standpoint.
"“Did you know Dr. MacFadye?”, he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “he was minister there for some years.” “But do you know what he said about St. Helens?” and I thought I heard a laugh come along. “He said that he was an ideal minister for St. Helens,” – then another suggestion of a laugh – “because he had no sense of smell,” and with that he hung up the receiver and the interview ended. It has been my pleasure many times since to deal with that anachronism.
"Another suggestion against the town of the same order is that a blade of grass will not grow within three miles of it. This I find to be the belief of many who have seen no more of St. Helens than the chimney stacks, those towering symbols of world service. Residents hear, and smile. In the municipal area there is probably variation in nature's response to cultivation, and there are patches where floral cultivation is difficult, if not impossible; but St. Helens in summer time presents a fine refutation of the popular libel.
"I cannot say that any visitors to the town for whom I am responsible have ever burst into wild exclamations of delight and admiration on leaving the station for the tram car; but it can be written that such passers-by have expressed astonishment at the difference between popular reputation and the green and glory of the country-side."
And finally on the 13th, the magistrates in St Helens Police Court were told of a mean theft by an uncle. Edward Tipton had visited his sister Martha's house in Ravenhead and taken her child's moneybox. The theft was discovered a few hours later when the little boy wanted to put a penny in his piggybank. Although Tipton said he had been out of work for five weeks, he was in receipt of 15 shillings a week dole. And he was arrested while supping his nephew's five shillings' savings away in the Robin Hood pub in Tontine Street. He was fined 10 shillings.
Next week's stories will include the obstructive lorry drivers at Bold, the Sutton bigamy case after a hospital romance, the fatal lift-hitching at the Ravenhead glassworks, how St Helens courts treated young females and an army deserter is caught.
We begin with the Tuesday edition of the St Helens Reporter on the 7th, which contained this notice from the St Helens Master Cloggers Association: "Notice of reduction of prices in new clogs, re-clogging and re-ironing, on and after March 6th, 1922." However, no amounts were stated and I think today a body setting fees for their members' work would be considered to be price fixing and acting illegally under competition law.
What the St Helens Reporter described as a "curious domestic tangle" was heard in the Police Court on the 8th. A tailor called Charles Kenchington was charged with leaving his children chargeable to the Prescot Union, after his two boys had to be admitted to what used to be known as Whiston Workhouse. The couple had lived in Windleshaw Road but when Kenchington returned home from military service in 1918 he found his wife had been "carrying on an intrigue" with another man. She did not deny the affair and had told her husband that she could manage without him.
So he left St Helens and moved to Wales and obtained a divorce. His ex-wife fell ill and had to go into Eccleston Hall Sanatorium leaving her two boys in the care of their older sisters. They were only 15 and 17 and had difficulty coping and so their brothers had to be placed in the workhouse. More than £25 had been spent caring for the lads in the institution. So the Prescot Union who were in charge wanted Kensington to pay up or serve prison time for his desertion.
They had had the man arrested in Wales and brought by the police back to St Helens – however, it seemed someone had boobed. Kensington claimed that as part of the divorce arrangements, his wife had been awarded sole custody of their children, as there was "doubt over their parentage", as the Reporter put it. So he had no legal responsibility for his boys and his case was remanded for a week to allow Kensington time to produce evidence of his claim.
Also on the 8th, a dispute within a homing pigeon society was heard in St Helens County Court in East Street. The Park Road Homing Club met at the Half Mile pub and the son of its licensee was accused of refusing to pay back a £25 loan that the society's secretary had made him. The man had since died and an examination of his books showed two loans of £17 and £8 having been made to Jacob Highcock, who flatly denied receiving the cash. The judge asked Highcock to write his name while in the witness box and compared it to the signature on a receipt. He ruled there were sufficient similarities between the two and the young man was ordered to repay the money.
After the armistice signing, Mary Roberts had been given a job unloading shell castings from railway wagons. Normally she was told to slide them out but on one particular day she needed to pick them up. The shell castings each weighed one cwt and after lifting thirty of them, Mary collapsed and endured a severe strain. Compensation a century ago was usually made in the form of weekly payments and the judge had previously made an award of 6s 3d. However, the Government wanted the weekly award converted into a lump sum, claiming the woman aged about 24 was not as disabled as she claimed and could undertake light work.
At a previous hearing in the County Court, the judge had sat with a medical advisor and between them they sided with the Government. On the 8th the weekly award of 6s 3d was converted into a lump sum of £200. That was a reasonable outcome for Mary but she would not receive the whole award to spend as she wished. Instead small amounts would be doled out to her on what was probably a weekly basis until the money ran out.
Mary seemed to believe she had suffered a life-long disability and that weekly compensation would have served her better. The County Court judges in St Helens tended to be outspoken and talk down to those in court and Mary was bluntly told to forget about an operation. "You are not likely to get better so long as your mind worked upon a probability that would not occur", said the judge.
At the St Helens adjourned licensing sessions on the 9th, the question of the Hippodrome's film screenings was again considered. As an added attraction to their music hall turns, the Corporation Street theatre was currently featuring Brown's Royal Bioscope, which they advertised as "showing news in animation" – which later became known as a newsreel. As a theatre the Hippodrome had a drinks licence and the St Helens Branch of the Cinemas Exhibitors Association felt this was unfair, as alcohol could not be served in their members' picture houses.
During the hearing it was revealed that their complaint centred on the Hippodrome's screening of a film of a boxing match in January. Carpentier vs. Cook "on the Bioscope" had featured Georges Carpentier – a famous boxer and actor and formerly a World War I pilot. The Hippodrome had a very limited cinema licence and was not supposed to show films of a topical nature or exceeding one reel in length.
One would have thought that newsreels were topical by nature – but apparently not. However, the owners of the film had sent a letter to the court stating that it only lasted one reel and so the complaint was dismissed. As Carpentier had knocked his Australian rival out in the fourth round, the silent film of the event at the Royal Albert Hall was never going to be long.
Many shops baked their own bread but it wasn't until the 1930s that sliced bread was available. So a century ago loaves were sold unwrapped and bakers were required to have scales, even when making deliveries, so customers could confirm their weight. How many people bothered to check I cannot say – although I expect it was very few. Spot checks were regularly made by the authorities and on the 10th, Charles Critchley of Wellington Terrace, off Oldfield Street, was fined 20 shillings for not having scales on his handcart. He told St Helens Police Court that he did not know it was required when a boy was simply making deliveries.
It must have been difficult to bake a loaf to a precise weight. But you were summoned to court if during checks bread was found to be even slightly underweight. Albert Beattie of Tullis Street, off Prescot Road, was charged with "exposing bread for sale which was not of correct weight" and fined ten shillings. Two large white loaves were 1½ ounces short and three brown loaves were 4½ ounces shy of their required weights.
"St. Helens is one of a number of towns with a reputation – in some respects – to live down, and I find that the reputation lingers only where the town is not known. Before deciding to settle here I consulted an old medical friend, a Scotsman. It was by 'phone, and the conversation was very brief. I asked had he any views of the matter from the health standpoint.
"“Did you know Dr. MacFadye?”, he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “he was minister there for some years.” “But do you know what he said about St. Helens?” and I thought I heard a laugh come along. “He said that he was an ideal minister for St. Helens,” – then another suggestion of a laugh – “because he had no sense of smell,” and with that he hung up the receiver and the interview ended. It has been my pleasure many times since to deal with that anachronism.
"Another suggestion against the town of the same order is that a blade of grass will not grow within three miles of it. This I find to be the belief of many who have seen no more of St. Helens than the chimney stacks, those towering symbols of world service. Residents hear, and smile. In the municipal area there is probably variation in nature's response to cultivation, and there are patches where floral cultivation is difficult, if not impossible; but St. Helens in summer time presents a fine refutation of the popular libel.
"I cannot say that any visitors to the town for whom I am responsible have ever burst into wild exclamations of delight and admiration on leaving the station for the tram car; but it can be written that such passers-by have expressed astonishment at the difference between popular reputation and the green and glory of the country-side."
And finally on the 13th, the magistrates in St Helens Police Court were told of a mean theft by an uncle. Edward Tipton had visited his sister Martha's house in Ravenhead and taken her child's moneybox. The theft was discovered a few hours later when the little boy wanted to put a penny in his piggybank. Although Tipton said he had been out of work for five weeks, he was in receipt of 15 shillings a week dole. And he was arrested while supping his nephew's five shillings' savings away in the Robin Hood pub in Tontine Street. He was fined 10 shillings.
Next week's stories will include the obstructive lorry drivers at Bold, the Sutton bigamy case after a hospital romance, the fatal lift-hitching at the Ravenhead glassworks, how St Helens courts treated young females and an army deserter is caught.
This week's many stories include the mean uncle who supped away the contents of his nephew's money box, a Sutton munition worker's compensation case, the complaint over the Hippodrome's film screenings, the Park Road Homing Club dispute, the curious domestic tangle in Windleshaw Road and St Helens' dreadful reputation is repudiated.
We begin with the Tuesday edition of the St Helens Reporter on the 7th, which contained this notice from the St Helens Master Cloggers Association:
"Notice of reduction of prices in new clogs, re-clogging and re-ironing, on and after March 6th, 1922."
However, no amounts were stated and I think today a body setting fees for their members' work would be considered to be price fixing and acting illegally under competition law.
What the St Helens Reporter described as a "curious domestic tangle" was heard in the Police Court on the 8th.
A tailor called Charles Kenchington was charged with leaving his children chargeable to the Prescot Union, after his two boys had to be admitted to what used to be known as Whiston Workhouse.
The couple had lived in Windleshaw Road but when Kenchington returned home from military service in 1918 he found his wife had been "carrying on an intrigue" with another man.
She did not deny the affair and had told her husband that she could manage without him.
So he left St Helens and moved to Wales and obtained a divorce. His ex-wife fell ill and had to go into Eccleston Hall Sanatorium leaving her two boys in the care of their older sisters.
They were only 15 and 17 and had difficulty coping and so their brothers had to be placed in the workhouse.
More than £25 had been spent caring for the lads in the institution. So the Prescot Union who were in charge wanted Kensington to pay up or serve prison time for his desertion.
They had had the man arrested in Wales and brought by the police back to St Helens – however, it seemed someone had boobed.
Kensington claimed that as part of the divorce arrangements, his wife had been awarded sole custody of their children, as there was "doubt over their parentage", as the Reporter put it.
So he had no legal responsibility for his boys and his case was remanded for a week to allow Kensington time to produce evidence of his claim.
Also on the 8th, a dispute within a homing pigeon society was heard in St Helens County Court in East Street.
The Park Road Homing Club met at the Half Mile pub and the son of its licensee was accused of refusing to pay back a £25 loan that the society's secretary had made him.
The man had since died and an examination of his books showed two loans of £17 and £8 having been made to Jacob Highcock, who flatly denied receiving the cash.
The judge asked Highcock to write his name while in the witness box and compared it to the signature on a receipt.
He ruled there were sufficient similarities between the two and the young man was ordered to repay the money.
Mary Lloyd Roberts had been in the County Court on a number of occasions with regard to the injury that she had suffered in 1918 while employed at the Sutton Bond munitions works in Lancots Lane (pictured above).
In Charles Forman's book 'Industrial Town' an anonymous female munitions worker described how she'd organised a trade union at Sutton Bond as a consequence of the dire working conditions.
These included women forced to work outside in the rain and having to stack heavy 24" steel shells.
After the armistice signing, Mary Roberts had been given a job unloading shell castings from railway wagons.
Normally she was told to slide them out but on one particular day she needed to pick them up.
The shell castings each weighed one cwt and after lifting thirty of them, Mary collapsed and endured a severe strain.
Compensation a century ago was usually made in the form of weekly payments and the judge had previously made an award of 6s 3d.
However, the Government wanted the weekly award converted into a lump sum, claiming the woman aged about 24 was not as disabled as she claimed and could undertake light work.
At a previous hearing in the County Court, the judge had sat with a medical advisor and between them they sided with the Government.
On the 8th the weekly award of 6s 3d was converted into a lump sum of £200. That was a reasonable outcome for Mary but she would not receive the whole award to spend as she wished.
Instead small amounts would be doled out to her on what was probably a weekly basis until the money ran out.
Mary seemed to believe she had suffered a life-long disability and that weekly compensation would have served her better.
The County Court judges in St Helens tended to be outspoken and talk down to those in court and Mary was bluntly told to forget about an operation.
"You are not likely to get better so long as your mind worked upon a probability that would not occur", said the judge.
At the St Helens adjourned licensing sessions on the 9th, the question of the Hippodrome's film screenings was again considered.
As an added attraction to their music hall turns, the Corporation Street theatre was currently featuring Brown's Royal Bioscope, which they advertised as "showing news in animation" – which later became known as a newsreel.
As a theatre the Hippodrome had a drinks licence and the St Helens Branch of the Cinemas Exhibitors Association felt this was unfair, as alcohol could not be served in their members' picture houses.
During the hearing it was revealed that their complaint centred on the Hippodrome's screening of a film of a boxing match in January.
Carpentier vs. Cook "on the Bioscope" had featured Georges Carpentier – a famous boxer and actor and formerly a World War I pilot.
The Hippodrome had a very limited cinema licence and was not supposed to show films of a topical nature or exceeding one reel in length.
One would have thought that newsreels were topical by nature – but apparently not.
However, the owners of the film had sent a letter to the court stating that it only lasted one reel and so the complaint was dismissed.
As Carpentier had knocked his Australian rival out in the fourth round, the silent film of the event at the Royal Albert Hall was never going to be long.
Many shops baked their own bread but it wasn't until the 1930s that sliced bread was available.
So a century ago loaves were sold unwrapped and bakers were required to have scales, even when making deliveries, so customers could confirm their weight.
How many people bothered to check I cannot say – although I expect it was very few.
Spot checks were regularly made by the authorities and on the 10th, Charles Critchley of Wellington Terrace, off Oldfield Street, was fined 20 shillings for not having scales on his handcart.
He told St Helens Police Court that he did not know it was required when a boy was simply making deliveries.
It must have been difficult to bake a loaf to a precise weight. But you were summoned to court if during checks bread was found to be even slightly underweight.
Albert Beattie of Tullis Street, off Prescot Road, was charged with "exposing bread for sale which was not of correct weight" and fined ten shillings.
Two large white loaves were 1½ ounces short and three brown loaves were 4½ ounces shy of their required weights.
The St Helens Reporter on the 10th published an article by the Rev. Luke Beaumont.
For three years he had been the minister of the Ormskirk Street Congregational Church (pictured above) and his piece compared the reputation of the town and its reality:
"St. Helens is one of a number of towns with a reputation – in some respects – to live down, and I find that the reputation lingers only where the town is not known.
"Before deciding to settle here I consulted an old medical friend, a Scotsman. It was by 'phone, and the conversation was very brief. I asked had he any views of the matter from the health standpoint.
"“Did you know Dr. MacFadye?”, he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “he was minister there for some years.”
"“But do you know what he said about St. Helens?” and I thought I heard a laugh come along.
"“He said that he was an ideal minister for St. Helens,” – then another suggestion of a laugh – “because he had no sense of smell,” and with that he hung up the receiver and the interview ended. It has been my pleasure many times since to deal with that anachronism.
"Another suggestion against the town of the same order is that a blade of grass will not grow within three miles of it.
"This I find to be the belief of many who have seen no more of St. Helens than the chimney stacks, those towering symbols of world service. Residents hear, and smile.
"In the municipal area there is probably variation in nature's response to cultivation, and there are patches where floral cultivation is difficult, if not impossible; but St. Helens in summer time presents a fine refutation of the popular libel.
"I cannot say that any visitors to the town for whom I am responsible have ever burst into wild exclamations of delight and admiration on leaving the station for the tram car; but it can be written that such passers-by have expressed astonishment at the difference between popular reputation and the green and glory of the country-side."
And finally on the 13th, the magistrates in St Helens Police Court were told of a mean theft by an uncle.
Edward Tipton had visited his sister Martha's house in Ravenhead and taken her child's moneybox.
The theft was discovered a few hours later when the little boy wanted to put a penny in his piggybank.
Although Tipton said he had been out of work for five weeks, he was in receipt of 15 shillings a week dole.
And he was arrested while supping his nephew's five shillings' savings away in the Robin Hood pub in Tontine Street. He was fined 10 shillings.
Next week's stories will include the obstructive lorry drivers at Bold, the Sutton bigamy case after a hospital romance, the fatal lift-hitching at the Ravenhead glassworks, how St Helens courts treated young females and an army deserter is caught.
We begin with the Tuesday edition of the St Helens Reporter on the 7th, which contained this notice from the St Helens Master Cloggers Association:
"Notice of reduction of prices in new clogs, re-clogging and re-ironing, on and after March 6th, 1922."
However, no amounts were stated and I think today a body setting fees for their members' work would be considered to be price fixing and acting illegally under competition law.
What the St Helens Reporter described as a "curious domestic tangle" was heard in the Police Court on the 8th.
A tailor called Charles Kenchington was charged with leaving his children chargeable to the Prescot Union, after his two boys had to be admitted to what used to be known as Whiston Workhouse.
The couple had lived in Windleshaw Road but when Kenchington returned home from military service in 1918 he found his wife had been "carrying on an intrigue" with another man.
She did not deny the affair and had told her husband that she could manage without him.
So he left St Helens and moved to Wales and obtained a divorce. His ex-wife fell ill and had to go into Eccleston Hall Sanatorium leaving her two boys in the care of their older sisters.
They were only 15 and 17 and had difficulty coping and so their brothers had to be placed in the workhouse.
More than £25 had been spent caring for the lads in the institution. So the Prescot Union who were in charge wanted Kensington to pay up or serve prison time for his desertion.
They had had the man arrested in Wales and brought by the police back to St Helens – however, it seemed someone had boobed.
Kensington claimed that as part of the divorce arrangements, his wife had been awarded sole custody of their children, as there was "doubt over their parentage", as the Reporter put it.
So he had no legal responsibility for his boys and his case was remanded for a week to allow Kensington time to produce evidence of his claim.
Also on the 8th, a dispute within a homing pigeon society was heard in St Helens County Court in East Street.
The Park Road Homing Club met at the Half Mile pub and the son of its licensee was accused of refusing to pay back a £25 loan that the society's secretary had made him.
The man had since died and an examination of his books showed two loans of £17 and £8 having been made to Jacob Highcock, who flatly denied receiving the cash.
The judge asked Highcock to write his name while in the witness box and compared it to the signature on a receipt.
He ruled there were sufficient similarities between the two and the young man was ordered to repay the money.
In Charles Forman's book 'Industrial Town' an anonymous female munitions worker described how she'd organised a trade union at Sutton Bond as a consequence of the dire working conditions.
These included women forced to work outside in the rain and having to stack heavy 24" steel shells.
After the armistice signing, Mary Roberts had been given a job unloading shell castings from railway wagons.
Normally she was told to slide them out but on one particular day she needed to pick them up.
The shell castings each weighed one cwt and after lifting thirty of them, Mary collapsed and endured a severe strain.
Compensation a century ago was usually made in the form of weekly payments and the judge had previously made an award of 6s 3d.
However, the Government wanted the weekly award converted into a lump sum, claiming the woman aged about 24 was not as disabled as she claimed and could undertake light work.
At a previous hearing in the County Court, the judge had sat with a medical advisor and between them they sided with the Government.
On the 8th the weekly award of 6s 3d was converted into a lump sum of £200. That was a reasonable outcome for Mary but she would not receive the whole award to spend as she wished.
Instead small amounts would be doled out to her on what was probably a weekly basis until the money ran out.
Mary seemed to believe she had suffered a life-long disability and that weekly compensation would have served her better.
The County Court judges in St Helens tended to be outspoken and talk down to those in court and Mary was bluntly told to forget about an operation.
"You are not likely to get better so long as your mind worked upon a probability that would not occur", said the judge.
At the St Helens adjourned licensing sessions on the 9th, the question of the Hippodrome's film screenings was again considered.
As an added attraction to their music hall turns, the Corporation Street theatre was currently featuring Brown's Royal Bioscope, which they advertised as "showing news in animation" – which later became known as a newsreel.
As a theatre the Hippodrome had a drinks licence and the St Helens Branch of the Cinemas Exhibitors Association felt this was unfair, as alcohol could not be served in their members' picture houses.
During the hearing it was revealed that their complaint centred on the Hippodrome's screening of a film of a boxing match in January.
Carpentier vs. Cook "on the Bioscope" had featured Georges Carpentier – a famous boxer and actor and formerly a World War I pilot.
The Hippodrome had a very limited cinema licence and was not supposed to show films of a topical nature or exceeding one reel in length.
One would have thought that newsreels were topical by nature – but apparently not.
However, the owners of the film had sent a letter to the court stating that it only lasted one reel and so the complaint was dismissed.
As Carpentier had knocked his Australian rival out in the fourth round, the silent film of the event at the Royal Albert Hall was never going to be long.
Many shops baked their own bread but it wasn't until the 1930s that sliced bread was available.
So a century ago loaves were sold unwrapped and bakers were required to have scales, even when making deliveries, so customers could confirm their weight.
How many people bothered to check I cannot say – although I expect it was very few.
Spot checks were regularly made by the authorities and on the 10th, Charles Critchley of Wellington Terrace, off Oldfield Street, was fined 20 shillings for not having scales on his handcart.
He told St Helens Police Court that he did not know it was required when a boy was simply making deliveries.
It must have been difficult to bake a loaf to a precise weight. But you were summoned to court if during checks bread was found to be even slightly underweight.
Albert Beattie of Tullis Street, off Prescot Road, was charged with "exposing bread for sale which was not of correct weight" and fined ten shillings.
Two large white loaves were 1½ ounces short and three brown loaves were 4½ ounces shy of their required weights.
For three years he had been the minister of the Ormskirk Street Congregational Church (pictured above) and his piece compared the reputation of the town and its reality:
"St. Helens is one of a number of towns with a reputation – in some respects – to live down, and I find that the reputation lingers only where the town is not known.
"Before deciding to settle here I consulted an old medical friend, a Scotsman. It was by 'phone, and the conversation was very brief. I asked had he any views of the matter from the health standpoint.
"“Did you know Dr. MacFadye?”, he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “he was minister there for some years.”
"“But do you know what he said about St. Helens?” and I thought I heard a laugh come along.
"“He said that he was an ideal minister for St. Helens,” – then another suggestion of a laugh – “because he had no sense of smell,” and with that he hung up the receiver and the interview ended. It has been my pleasure many times since to deal with that anachronism.
"Another suggestion against the town of the same order is that a blade of grass will not grow within three miles of it.
"This I find to be the belief of many who have seen no more of St. Helens than the chimney stacks, those towering symbols of world service. Residents hear, and smile.
"In the municipal area there is probably variation in nature's response to cultivation, and there are patches where floral cultivation is difficult, if not impossible; but St. Helens in summer time presents a fine refutation of the popular libel.
"I cannot say that any visitors to the town for whom I am responsible have ever burst into wild exclamations of delight and admiration on leaving the station for the tram car; but it can be written that such passers-by have expressed astonishment at the difference between popular reputation and the green and glory of the country-side."
And finally on the 13th, the magistrates in St Helens Police Court were told of a mean theft by an uncle.
Edward Tipton had visited his sister Martha's house in Ravenhead and taken her child's moneybox.
The theft was discovered a few hours later when the little boy wanted to put a penny in his piggybank.
Although Tipton said he had been out of work for five weeks, he was in receipt of 15 shillings a week dole.
And he was arrested while supping his nephew's five shillings' savings away in the Robin Hood pub in Tontine Street. He was fined 10 shillings.
Next week's stories will include the obstructive lorry drivers at Bold, the Sutton bigamy case after a hospital romance, the fatal lift-hitching at the Ravenhead glassworks, how St Helens courts treated young females and an army deserter is caught.