IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (8th - 14th AUGUST 1922)
This week's stories include the proposal to build a main road between Liverpool and Manchester, the desperate Gladstone Street embezzler, the young man from Tontine Street without any horse sense and the old man walking outside the Sefton Arms who slipped into the path of a lorry.
We begin with an extract from a poem about the hard life of a coal miner that was published this week in a Nottingham newspaper and written by Patrick Norton of Tennyson Street in Sutton Manor:
"Down in the mine in his nakedness,
He toils in the jaws of Death,
Aware of the danger and perilousness
Which lies in his every breath.
He knows of the deadly gas, which steals
Like a thief in the air to its prey;
And the falling roof with its sickening peals
As it crushes the timber away.
He has seen the mangled and broken remain
Of a comrade stretched for the grave;
He has heard the shrieks (from the torturous pains)
Which the injured and dying gave.
And what if his tongue is unpolished and rough,
When his heart is so tender and true;
For a comrade in peril, we know well enough,
The deeds that a miner can do."
On the 9th Martha Appleton of Gladstone Street was charged in St Helens Police Court with embezzling £10 2s 6d from the Park Clothing and Supply Company. They were a Liverpool firm with a branch in Westfield Street in St Helens. Last December Mrs Appleton had been appointed agent to collect payments and secure orders. At the beginning of July the company discovered that some money had gone missing. Upon being questioned about the matter, Mrs Appleton absconded – but was soon arrested in Pontefract.
In court Martha explained how she had become desperate. She had a large family and her husband had been out of work for 16 months and her sons were also unemployed. "I had to sell everything in the house to get food for the children", Martha said. Mrs Appleton claimed that she gone to Pontefract to try to borrow the money from friends but found them all to be dead. The Bench was sympathetic and only fined Martha £2 and ordered that the missing £10 be repaid to the firm at 10 shillings a week.
Pictured here is the St Helens police force in 1920. On the 10th the second annual St Helens Police Recreation Club Sports was held on the Recs cricket ground at Ruskin Drive. Some races were again exclusively for members of the police force and others for all-comers. The Liverpool City Police Band was also in attendance.
On the following day naïve Matthias Holding appeared in St Helens Police Court after being taken to the cleaners. The young man who gave his address as the Churn Inn in Tontine Street was charged with working a horse in an unfit state. The animal was found to be in such a lame condition that it had to be destroyed. The police had spotted the aged nag hauling Matthias's trap in Arthur Street and it was so lame that passers-by were stopping to stare at it. One officer told the court that the brown gelding was in such a bad state that it had been stumbling along with its nose practically on the ground.
Matthias Holding had bought the horse from a man in Billinge for £14 only a few weeks before and explained to the Bench it had been the first horse he'd bought. The magistrates said they would only fine him £5 because of his inexperience with horses – otherwise he would have been fined £10 or £15. The Chairman of the Bench, Cllr. Arthur Rudd, said: "It should be a lesson to you not to buy horses unless you took someone with you who understood horses."
On the 11th the Reporter commented on proposals to build what would become known as the East Lancashire Road. The paper wrote: "The proposed new main road between Liverpool and Manchester is of great interest to St. Helens. If carried out it will very much relieve the heavy motor haulage traffic which now passes through the town. The proposed new road would pass to the north of the borough, for the most part through the rural area and, as mapped out, would only come inside the borough boundary to a very short distance on the Blackbrook side."
The scheme was currently in its infancy, with only conversations about it having so far taken place between Lancashire County Council and Manchester, Salford and Liverpool Corporations. The Reporter wondered whether those local authorities would be prepared to co-operate to make the scheme work – and then there was the question of who would pay for it. That's, no doubt, why it took twelve more years to turn a bright idea into a reality.
These days, of course, August Bank Holiday is on the last Monday of the month but up until 1964 it was held on the first Monday. The Reporter lamented what a rotten one it had been this year with bad weather causing field days to be cancelled and residents' plans to visit the seaside or countryside abandoned. Their headline to their article said everything you need to know: "August Monday Tears – The Gloom of a Wet Bank Holiday – St. Helens Stays at Home".
The paper also reproduced an article from the latest St Helens Parish Church magazine in which the Vicar of St Helens, Canon Albert Baines, had expressed his thoughts on the playing of Sunday games in parks and recreation grounds. That was after London County Council had controversially permitted such playing in some of their parks. Again the theme of the article can be summed up by its headline: "Canon Baines On Sunday Games – Outspoken Protest – Should Be No Encroachment On The Sabbath." It would be some decades yet before St Helens Corporation would decide to take on the church and relax its ban on Sunday activities.
On the 12th the Rainhill Carnival and Sports Day was held in the grounds of Rainhill Hall with its centrepiece being a fancy dress parade. The event had been scheduled for the previous bank holiday Monday but had been postponed due to bad weather.
The Clock Face Hotel began a charity bowling handicap on the 14th with all proceeds going to the St Helens Charities Committee. The latter organised some events of their own and each year donated cash to worthy causes such as St Helens Hospital, Providence Hospital, the Fresh Air Fund, the Clog and Stocking Fund, St Helens Crippled Children's Aid Society and the Crippled Children's Outing Fund.
I think it's fair to say that children and elderly people were the two groups most vulnerable to the motor transport revolution. Kids with boundless energy would dash off into the road into the path of lorries, buses or cars. And the old folks – more accustomed to horse-drawn traffic – had a habit of walking into the street without looking – or losing their balance on the pavement while standing too close to the edge. That appeared to be what happened to William Innes of Liverpool Road in St Helens who was struck down by a lorry at the junction of Bridge Street and Ormskirk Street.
The 72-year-old's inquest at the Town Hall on the 14th heard from a lorry driver called Patrick Frayne who said he'd been returning home after carrying stone from Billinge Quarry to the new road under construction at Clock Face. As he approached the policeman on point duty at the junction of Bridge Street and Church Street, Mr Frayne said he'd slowed his lorry down until a tram had left the Sefton Arms. Then, after the constable had waved him on, the lorry driver explained how he had only proceeded at a crawling pace.
As he passed Stringfellow's grocer's shop, Mr Frayne told the coroner that he saw Mr Innes standing on the pavement with his back to the road. Suddenly the old man staggered into the path of his lorry and his vehicle struck him on his head. Before dying, Mr Innes was asked by a police officer what had happened and he replied, "I slipped". The officer on point duty confirmed to the inquest that the lorry had been driven very slowly and the driver was completely exonerated from blame.
Next week's stories will include the harsh treatment of benefit cheats, the expansion of Grange Park Golf Club, Gentle Annie returns to court charged with lodging out and the paperboys on bikes that were racing to get their Echos on the streets of St Helens.
We begin with an extract from a poem about the hard life of a coal miner that was published this week in a Nottingham newspaper and written by Patrick Norton of Tennyson Street in Sutton Manor:
"Down in the mine in his nakedness,
He toils in the jaws of Death,
Aware of the danger and perilousness
Which lies in his every breath.
He knows of the deadly gas, which steals
Like a thief in the air to its prey;
And the falling roof with its sickening peals
As it crushes the timber away.
He has seen the mangled and broken remain
Of a comrade stretched for the grave;
He has heard the shrieks (from the torturous pains)
Which the injured and dying gave.
And what if his tongue is unpolished and rough,
When his heart is so tender and true;
For a comrade in peril, we know well enough,
The deeds that a miner can do."
On the 9th Martha Appleton of Gladstone Street was charged in St Helens Police Court with embezzling £10 2s 6d from the Park Clothing and Supply Company. They were a Liverpool firm with a branch in Westfield Street in St Helens. Last December Mrs Appleton had been appointed agent to collect payments and secure orders. At the beginning of July the company discovered that some money had gone missing. Upon being questioned about the matter, Mrs Appleton absconded – but was soon arrested in Pontefract.
In court Martha explained how she had become desperate. She had a large family and her husband had been out of work for 16 months and her sons were also unemployed. "I had to sell everything in the house to get food for the children", Martha said. Mrs Appleton claimed that she gone to Pontefract to try to borrow the money from friends but found them all to be dead. The Bench was sympathetic and only fined Martha £2 and ordered that the missing £10 be repaid to the firm at 10 shillings a week.
On the following day naïve Matthias Holding appeared in St Helens Police Court after being taken to the cleaners. The young man who gave his address as the Churn Inn in Tontine Street was charged with working a horse in an unfit state. The animal was found to be in such a lame condition that it had to be destroyed. The police had spotted the aged nag hauling Matthias's trap in Arthur Street and it was so lame that passers-by were stopping to stare at it. One officer told the court that the brown gelding was in such a bad state that it had been stumbling along with its nose practically on the ground.
Matthias Holding had bought the horse from a man in Billinge for £14 only a few weeks before and explained to the Bench it had been the first horse he'd bought. The magistrates said they would only fine him £5 because of his inexperience with horses – otherwise he would have been fined £10 or £15. The Chairman of the Bench, Cllr. Arthur Rudd, said: "It should be a lesson to you not to buy horses unless you took someone with you who understood horses."
On the 11th the Reporter commented on proposals to build what would become known as the East Lancashire Road. The paper wrote: "The proposed new main road between Liverpool and Manchester is of great interest to St. Helens. If carried out it will very much relieve the heavy motor haulage traffic which now passes through the town. The proposed new road would pass to the north of the borough, for the most part through the rural area and, as mapped out, would only come inside the borough boundary to a very short distance on the Blackbrook side."
The scheme was currently in its infancy, with only conversations about it having so far taken place between Lancashire County Council and Manchester, Salford and Liverpool Corporations. The Reporter wondered whether those local authorities would be prepared to co-operate to make the scheme work – and then there was the question of who would pay for it. That's, no doubt, why it took twelve more years to turn a bright idea into a reality.
These days, of course, August Bank Holiday is on the last Monday of the month but up until 1964 it was held on the first Monday. The Reporter lamented what a rotten one it had been this year with bad weather causing field days to be cancelled and residents' plans to visit the seaside or countryside abandoned. Their headline to their article said everything you need to know: "August Monday Tears – The Gloom of a Wet Bank Holiday – St. Helens Stays at Home".
The paper also reproduced an article from the latest St Helens Parish Church magazine in which the Vicar of St Helens, Canon Albert Baines, had expressed his thoughts on the playing of Sunday games in parks and recreation grounds. That was after London County Council had controversially permitted such playing in some of their parks. Again the theme of the article can be summed up by its headline: "Canon Baines On Sunday Games – Outspoken Protest – Should Be No Encroachment On The Sabbath." It would be some decades yet before St Helens Corporation would decide to take on the church and relax its ban on Sunday activities.
On the 12th the Rainhill Carnival and Sports Day was held in the grounds of Rainhill Hall with its centrepiece being a fancy dress parade. The event had been scheduled for the previous bank holiday Monday but had been postponed due to bad weather.
The Clock Face Hotel began a charity bowling handicap on the 14th with all proceeds going to the St Helens Charities Committee. The latter organised some events of their own and each year donated cash to worthy causes such as St Helens Hospital, Providence Hospital, the Fresh Air Fund, the Clog and Stocking Fund, St Helens Crippled Children's Aid Society and the Crippled Children's Outing Fund.
I think it's fair to say that children and elderly people were the two groups most vulnerable to the motor transport revolution. Kids with boundless energy would dash off into the road into the path of lorries, buses or cars. And the old folks – more accustomed to horse-drawn traffic – had a habit of walking into the street without looking – or losing their balance on the pavement while standing too close to the edge. That appeared to be what happened to William Innes of Liverpool Road in St Helens who was struck down by a lorry at the junction of Bridge Street and Ormskirk Street.
As he passed Stringfellow's grocer's shop, Mr Frayne told the coroner that he saw Mr Innes standing on the pavement with his back to the road. Suddenly the old man staggered into the path of his lorry and his vehicle struck him on his head. Before dying, Mr Innes was asked by a police officer what had happened and he replied, "I slipped". The officer on point duty confirmed to the inquest that the lorry had been driven very slowly and the driver was completely exonerated from blame.
Next week's stories will include the harsh treatment of benefit cheats, the expansion of Grange Park Golf Club, Gentle Annie returns to court charged with lodging out and the paperboys on bikes that were racing to get their Echos on the streets of St Helens.
This week's stories include the proposal to build a main road between Liverpool and Manchester, the desperate Gladstone Street embezzler, the young man from Tontine Street without any horse sense and the old man walking outside the Sefton Arms who slipped into the path of a lorry.
We begin with an extract from a poem about the hard life of a coal miner that was published this week in a Nottingham newspaper and written by Patrick Norton of Tennyson Street in Sutton Manor:
"Down in the mine in his nakedness,
He toils in the jaws of Death,
Aware of the danger and perilousness
Which lies in his every breath.
He knows of the deadly gas, which steals
Like a thief in the air to its prey;
And the falling roof with its sickening peals
As it crushes the timber away.
He has seen the mangled and broken remain
Of a comrade stretched for the grave;
He has heard the shrieks (from the torturous pains)
Which the injured and dying gave.
And what if his tongue is unpolished and rough,
When his heart is so tender and true;
For a comrade in peril, we know well enough,
The deeds that a miner can do."
On the 9th Martha Appleton of Gladstone Street was charged in St Helens Police Court with embezzling £10 2s 6d from the Park Clothing and Supply Company.
They were a Liverpool firm with a branch in Westfield Street in St Helens. Last December Mrs Appleton had been appointed agent to collect payments and secure orders.
At the beginning of July the company discovered that some money had gone missing. Upon being questioned about the matter, Mrs Appleton absconded – but was soon arrested in Pontefract.
In court Martha explained how she had become desperate. She had a large family and her husband had been out of work for 16 months and her sons were also unemployed. "I had to sell everything in the house to get food for the children", Martha said.
Mrs Appleton claimed that she gone to Pontefract to try to borrow the money from friends but found them all to be dead.
The Bench was sympathetic and only fined Martha £2 and ordered that the missing £10 be repaid to the firm at 10 shillings a week.
Pictured here is the St Helens police force in 1920. On the 10th the second annual St Helens Police Recreation Club Sports was held on the Recs cricket ground at Ruskin Drive.
Some races were again exclusively for members of the police force and others for all-comers. The Liverpool City Police Band was also in attendance.
On the following day naïve Matthias Holding appeared in St Helens Police Court after being taken to the cleaners.
The young man who gave his address as the Churn Inn in Tontine Street was charged with working a horse in an unfit state.
The animal was found to be in such a lame condition that it had to be destroyed.
The police had spotted the aged nag hauling Matthias's trap in Arthur Street and it was so lame that passers-by were stopping to stare at it.
One officer told the court that the brown gelding was in such a bad state that it had been stumbling along with its nose practically on the ground.
Matthias Holding had bought the horse from a man in Billinge for £14 only a few weeks before and explained to the Bench it had been the first horse he'd bought.
The magistrates said they would only fine him £5 because of his inexperience with horses – otherwise he would have been fined £10 or £15. The Chairman of the Bench, Cllr. Arthur Rudd, said:
"It should be a lesson to you not to buy horses unless you took someone with you who understood horses."
On the 11th the Reporter commented on proposals to build what would become known as the East Lancashire Road. The paper wrote:
"The proposed new main road between Liverpool and Manchester is of great interest to St. Helens. If carried out it will very much relieve the heavy motor haulage traffic which now passes through the town.
"The proposed new road would pass to the north of the borough, for the most part through the rural area and, as mapped out, would only come inside the borough boundary to a very short distance on the Blackbrook side."
The scheme was currently in its infancy, with only conversations about it having so far taken place between Lancashire County Council and Manchester, Salford and Liverpool Corporations.
The Reporter wondered whether those local authorities would be prepared to co-operate to make the scheme work – and then there was the question of who would pay for it.
That's, no doubt, why it took twelve more years to turn a bright idea into a reality.
These days, of course, August Bank Holiday is on the last Monday of the month but up until 1964 it was held on the first Monday.
The Reporter lamented what a rotten one it had been this year with bad weather causing field days to be cancelled and residents' plans to visit the seaside or countryside abandoned. Their headline to their article said everything you need to know:
"August Monday Tears – The Gloom of a Wet Bank Holiday – St. Helens Stays at Home".
The paper also reproduced an article from the latest St Helens Parish Church magazine in which st Canon Albert Baines, had expressed his thoughts on the playing of Sunday games in parks and recreation grounds.
That was after London County Council had controversially permitted such playing in some of their parks.
Again the theme of the article can be summed up by its headline: "Canon Baines On Sunday Games – Outspoken Protest – Should Be No Encroachment On The Sabbath."
It would be some decades yet before St Helens Corporation would decide to take on the church and relax its ban on Sunday activities.
On the 12th the Rainhill Carnival and Sports Day was held in the grounds of Rainhill Hall with its centrepiece being a fancy dress parade.
The event had been scheduled for the previous bank holiday Monday but had been postponed due to bad weather.
The Clock Face Hotel began a charity bowling handicap on the 14th with all proceeds going to the St Helens Charities Committee.
The latter organised some events of their own and each year donated cash to worthy causes such as St Helens Hospital, Providence Hospital, the Fresh Air Fund, the Clog and Stocking Fund, St Helens Crippled Children's Aid Society and the Crippled Children's Outing Fund.
I think it's fair to say that children and elderly people were the two groups most vulnerable to the motor transport revolution.
Kids with boundless energy would dash off into the road into the path of lorries, buses or cars.
And the old folks – more accustomed to horse-drawn traffic – had a habit of walking into the street without looking – or losing their balance on the pavement while standing too close to the edge.
That appeared to be what happened to William Innes of Liverpool Road in St Helens who was struck down by a lorry at the junction of Bridge Street and Ormskirk Street.
The 72-year-old's inquest at the Town Hall on the 14th heard from a lorry driver called Patrick Frayne who said he'd been returning home after carrying stone from Billinge Quarry to the new road under construction at Clock Face.
As he approached the policeman on point duty at the junction of Bridge Street and Church Street, Mr Frayne said he'd slowed his lorry down until a tram had left the Sefton Arms.
Then, after the constable had waved him on, the lorry driver explained how he had only proceeded at a crawling pace.
As he passed Stringfellow's grocer's shop, Mr Frayne told the coroner that he saw Mr Innes standing on the pavement with his back to the road.
Suddenly the old man staggered into the path of his lorry and his vehicle struck him on his head.
Before dying, Mr Innes was asked by a police officer what had happened and he replied, "I slipped".
The officer on point duty confirmed to the inquest that the lorry had been driven very slowly and the driver was completely exonerated from blame.
Next week's stories will include the harsh treatment of benefit cheats, the expansion of Grange Park Golf Club, Gentle Annie returns to court charged with lodging out and the paperboys on bikes that were racing to get their Echos on the streets of St Helens.
We begin with an extract from a poem about the hard life of a coal miner that was published this week in a Nottingham newspaper and written by Patrick Norton of Tennyson Street in Sutton Manor:
"Down in the mine in his nakedness,
He toils in the jaws of Death,
Aware of the danger and perilousness
Which lies in his every breath.
He knows of the deadly gas, which steals
Like a thief in the air to its prey;
And the falling roof with its sickening peals
As it crushes the timber away.
He has seen the mangled and broken remain
Of a comrade stretched for the grave;
He has heard the shrieks (from the torturous pains)
Which the injured and dying gave.
And what if his tongue is unpolished and rough,
When his heart is so tender and true;
For a comrade in peril, we know well enough,
The deeds that a miner can do."
On the 9th Martha Appleton of Gladstone Street was charged in St Helens Police Court with embezzling £10 2s 6d from the Park Clothing and Supply Company.
They were a Liverpool firm with a branch in Westfield Street in St Helens. Last December Mrs Appleton had been appointed agent to collect payments and secure orders.
At the beginning of July the company discovered that some money had gone missing. Upon being questioned about the matter, Mrs Appleton absconded – but was soon arrested in Pontefract.
In court Martha explained how she had become desperate. She had a large family and her husband had been out of work for 16 months and her sons were also unemployed. "I had to sell everything in the house to get food for the children", Martha said.
Mrs Appleton claimed that she gone to Pontefract to try to borrow the money from friends but found them all to be dead.
The Bench was sympathetic and only fined Martha £2 and ordered that the missing £10 be repaid to the firm at 10 shillings a week.
Some races were again exclusively for members of the police force and others for all-comers. The Liverpool City Police Band was also in attendance.
On the following day naïve Matthias Holding appeared in St Helens Police Court after being taken to the cleaners.
The young man who gave his address as the Churn Inn in Tontine Street was charged with working a horse in an unfit state.
The animal was found to be in such a lame condition that it had to be destroyed.
The police had spotted the aged nag hauling Matthias's trap in Arthur Street and it was so lame that passers-by were stopping to stare at it.
One officer told the court that the brown gelding was in such a bad state that it had been stumbling along with its nose practically on the ground.
Matthias Holding had bought the horse from a man in Billinge for £14 only a few weeks before and explained to the Bench it had been the first horse he'd bought.
The magistrates said they would only fine him £5 because of his inexperience with horses – otherwise he would have been fined £10 or £15. The Chairman of the Bench, Cllr. Arthur Rudd, said:
"It should be a lesson to you not to buy horses unless you took someone with you who understood horses."
On the 11th the Reporter commented on proposals to build what would become known as the East Lancashire Road. The paper wrote:
"The proposed new main road between Liverpool and Manchester is of great interest to St. Helens. If carried out it will very much relieve the heavy motor haulage traffic which now passes through the town.
"The proposed new road would pass to the north of the borough, for the most part through the rural area and, as mapped out, would only come inside the borough boundary to a very short distance on the Blackbrook side."
The scheme was currently in its infancy, with only conversations about it having so far taken place between Lancashire County Council and Manchester, Salford and Liverpool Corporations.
The Reporter wondered whether those local authorities would be prepared to co-operate to make the scheme work – and then there was the question of who would pay for it.
That's, no doubt, why it took twelve more years to turn a bright idea into a reality.
These days, of course, August Bank Holiday is on the last Monday of the month but up until 1964 it was held on the first Monday.
The Reporter lamented what a rotten one it had been this year with bad weather causing field days to be cancelled and residents' plans to visit the seaside or countryside abandoned. Their headline to their article said everything you need to know:
"August Monday Tears – The Gloom of a Wet Bank Holiday – St. Helens Stays at Home".
The paper also reproduced an article from the latest St Helens Parish Church magazine in which st Canon Albert Baines, had expressed his thoughts on the playing of Sunday games in parks and recreation grounds.
That was after London County Council had controversially permitted such playing in some of their parks.
Again the theme of the article can be summed up by its headline: "Canon Baines On Sunday Games – Outspoken Protest – Should Be No Encroachment On The Sabbath."
It would be some decades yet before St Helens Corporation would decide to take on the church and relax its ban on Sunday activities.
On the 12th the Rainhill Carnival and Sports Day was held in the grounds of Rainhill Hall with its centrepiece being a fancy dress parade.
The event had been scheduled for the previous bank holiday Monday but had been postponed due to bad weather.
The Clock Face Hotel began a charity bowling handicap on the 14th with all proceeds going to the St Helens Charities Committee.
The latter organised some events of their own and each year donated cash to worthy causes such as St Helens Hospital, Providence Hospital, the Fresh Air Fund, the Clog and Stocking Fund, St Helens Crippled Children's Aid Society and the Crippled Children's Outing Fund.
I think it's fair to say that children and elderly people were the two groups most vulnerable to the motor transport revolution.
Kids with boundless energy would dash off into the road into the path of lorries, buses or cars.
And the old folks – more accustomed to horse-drawn traffic – had a habit of walking into the street without looking – or losing their balance on the pavement while standing too close to the edge.
That appeared to be what happened to William Innes of Liverpool Road in St Helens who was struck down by a lorry at the junction of Bridge Street and Ormskirk Street.
The 72-year-old's inquest at the Town Hall on the 14th heard from a lorry driver called Patrick Frayne who said he'd been returning home after carrying stone from Billinge Quarry to the new road under construction at Clock Face.
Then, after the constable had waved him on, the lorry driver explained how he had only proceeded at a crawling pace.
As he passed Stringfellow's grocer's shop, Mr Frayne told the coroner that he saw Mr Innes standing on the pavement with his back to the road.
Suddenly the old man staggered into the path of his lorry and his vehicle struck him on his head.
Before dying, Mr Innes was asked by a police officer what had happened and he replied, "I slipped".
The officer on point duty confirmed to the inquest that the lorry had been driven very slowly and the driver was completely exonerated from blame.
Next week's stories will include the harsh treatment of benefit cheats, the expansion of Grange Park Golf Club, Gentle Annie returns to court charged with lodging out and the paperboys on bikes that were racing to get their Echos on the streets of St Helens.