IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (10th - 16th MAY 1921)
This week's stories include the riotous scenes in Higher Parr Street during the miners strike, the end of the free crop coal that was being dug in St Helens, the novelty of female magistrates sitting together on the Bench, the man considered to be the pest of Parr and a series of terrorist attacks takes place in Liverpool.
The national coal strike dominated the news again this week in St Helens with striking miners taking part in what was described as "riotous scenes" in Parr. As a result Thomas Durkin of Johnson Street – who the Liverpool Echo called a "young Irishman, with a huge mop of curly hair" – was charged in St Helens Police Court with assault.
Haulage contractor John Seddon gave evidence of being in Higher Parr Street (pictured above) driving his motor lorry and trailer laden with bags of flour. The 31-year-old from St Helens Road in Prescot said a huge crowd blocked the street and after stopping to go into Mercer's baker's shop, he was told that bags of flour were being pulled off his trailer. Seddon explained that after going to investigate, Thomas Durkin began to kick him severely on his legs.
PC Holland told the court that over 200 people had been stopping motor lorries in the street and Durkin had been inciting the crowd, shouting: "Are we going to starve? Let us make trouble, boys". Sergeant Bate said Durkin was a pest to the neighbourhood and as he had previously been bound over for breaching the peace, the magistrates sent him to prison for 28 days hard labour. Durkin also had to find sureties to be of good behaviour for six months.
The dispute had begun because the mine owners wanted to slash wages and change working conditions, as the present economic climate meant the "masters" were losing money. With mining being such a labour intensive industry, the owners' first instinct at times of reduced demand and a drop in the price of coal was always to cut wages.
However as a result of temporary Government control of the industry during the war, the miners were now being paid decent money to do their dreadful, dangerous job and understandably refused to accept any reductions. Presently there was deadlock with both sides adopting entrenched positions, as the halfway mark in what would prove to be a 3-month long strike was approached. Six weeks into such a strike tended to be the time when desperate people did desperate things – hence the trouble in Parr.
Also making an appearance in St Helens Police Court was Joseph Appleby who was charged with stealing three sacks of potatoes at Fingerpost. The miner from Parr Stocks Road had jumped onto the back of a motor lorry belonging to John Charnock, a potato dealer from Higher Parr Street. After shouting: "It is not coal", Appleby began to throw bags of potatoes off the lorry, allegedly for people to take away. Jake Highcock of Park Road was accused of being an accomplice and the potato man was hurt after falling off his wagon while attempting to protect his spuds.
Appleby explained to the magistrates that he was simply examining the lorry but Superintendent Dunn said the whole street had been in a state of uproar all afternoon and evening. Five cwts of potatoes had been taken from another lorry and two bags of coal stolen from a third. The superintendent asked the magistrates to assist in putting a stop to these "riotous scenes" and Joseph Appleby was fined £5 or 28 days in prison and Samuel Pennington was fined £2 or 14 days for receiving stolen potatoes.
On the 11th a meeting of between 2,000 to 3,000 miners was held on the waste ground in Bridge Street – near to where the Savoy cinema would later be built. It was confirmed that the working of the free "crop coal" had stopped in St Helens with those involved having fallen into line with a request from their union.
The "crop coal" was so named because it outcropped near the surface of disused pits and digging it out was dangerous and illegal. There was a fear that striking miners in other towns that did not have such surface seams available to them might give up the strike and return to work.
The big talking point of the meeting was whether they should give St Helens Corporation's own Gas Committee permission to buy up to 400 tons of coal from Ashton's Green Colliery in Parr. The dispensation was intended to have two purposes. The coal would power the gas lamps of the town and also supply gas to continue cooking meals for schoolchildren. St Helens had been the first town to provide free food for its children during the strike.
Many men at the meeting were against the concession. One man got on the platform and said if they allowed the Corporation to have coal they would be helping their masters. This he said was unfair when the local miner was being penalised by being refused permission to work the surface mines. The crowd received this statement with cheers, despite the fact that many of them would benefit by their own children continuing to be fed. The meeting decided to postpone making a decision until the weekend.
The trouble at Parr also led to a young man called David Benyon appearing in court charged with assaulting Richard Simms and cutting him with a knife. The defendant from Sutton Road strongly denied that he had ever used a knife and the only evidence against him was that Dr Reid thought a blade had cut Simms' cheek. It was a dispute over "crop coal" after Richard Simms had been working at a surface mine at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow. The miner from Orrell Street alleged that David Benyon along with his brother had first threatened to "throw him down the hole".
And then, after the miners' had voted to stop working the crop coal, there was a "great to-do" at Parr and the Benyon brothers had attacked him. Richard Simms added that he was "immediately deluged with blood" and had to be treated by Dr Reid. David Benyon had been employed at Ravenhead Colliery before the strike and had been earning £5 a week – which was a good wage. His brother Henry gave evidence that there had been a "tremendous crowd – the number of people being uncountable" and he insisted that David had not used a knife. The magistrates told Benyon that he'd had a narrow escape of being sent to the assizes for trial – where sentences could be more severe – but he would instead be fined £2.
And before leaving the thorny subject of the coal strike, James Sexton had a letter published in the Echo this week. The St Helens Labour MP attacked the Government for selectively quoting wholesale prices of food in support of their argument that the cost of living was going down and so miners should be prepared to accept wage reductions. Sexton labelled their claims as a "mere mockery, a delusion, and a sham", as the prices the consumer was paying had only been reduced slightly, if at all. In his list of food items, Sexton stated that milk then cost 1 shilling per quart in the shops or more likely on the doorstep, where the milkman poured it into the customer's own container from a jug.
It was less than a year since Evelyn Pilkington, Caroline Masson and Mary Dodd had become the first female magistrates on the Borough Bench and so it was still a bit of a novelty for women to be adjudicating in court. On the 12th the Echo felt it necessary to have "Lady Magistrates At St. Helens" as the headline to their report of how Mrs Dodd and Mrs Masson had been the sole female JPs at a hearing on that day.
It was probably the first occasion on which no man had been on the St Helens Bench and the pair fined a man called Edward Kelly for being drunk and assaulting a policeman. I wonder what the drunks – many of whom probably bossed their own households – thought about women sentencing them on the Bench!
The turns that were appearing at the Hippodrome Theatre in St Helens throughout this week included: O’Brien and Lady (Acrobatic dancers and tumblers); Nat D’Ayer ("His songs at the piano are a joy"); Tambo and Tambo ("Clever tambourine-spinning act"); Murphy and Mack ("In a clever and highly entertaining comedy sketch"); Victor King ("The new light comedian"); Eddie Morrell ("Novel vocal act") and Dolce Cariello ("Anglo-Italian songstress").
And finally my now customary non-St Helens news article that caught my eye this week. Although this time it's taken from the Sheffield Independent newspaper and was published under the headline "Motor Bandits In Liverpool – Several Houses Set On Fire – Sinn Fein Trail":
"Motor bandits, believed to be Sinn Feiners, made a raid on Liverpool on Saturday night, setting fire to numerous dwelling houses in various parts of the city. The men, numbering about 50 in all, worked in gangs, and made great use of motor cars, always having them within handy distance to facilitate escape after achieving their object. Their modus operandi was to descend on a house which was evidently a marked one and hold up the occupants at the point of the revolver. One of the gang would then saturate the furniture with petrol, apply a match, and the miscreants would then decamp. In several cases the contents of the houses were entirely destroyed.
"The raiders did not have it all their own way. In one instance an Airedale terrier chased the intruders out of a house, holding on to one by the seat of his trousers. The dog was shot by the men, but the trail of blood 100 yards long, showed that had he had left his mark on one them. An ex-naval man upon whose home the Sinn Feiners descended was reading a newspaper when they entered. In reply to their demand “Hands up,” the man – a Zeebrugge hero – calmly laid down his paper and picking up a sewing machine, flung it at them. This warm reception proved too much for the intruders, who made a hurried exit."
Next week's stories will include the insoluble problem of how to make Saints great again, the Berry's Lane miner who claimed he'd taken a colliery wheelbarrow to stop it from being stolen and does taking Beecham's Pills make a man more virile?
The national coal strike dominated the news again this week in St Helens with striking miners taking part in what was described as "riotous scenes" in Parr. As a result Thomas Durkin of Johnson Street – who the Liverpool Echo called a "young Irishman, with a huge mop of curly hair" – was charged in St Helens Police Court with assault.
PC Holland told the court that over 200 people had been stopping motor lorries in the street and Durkin had been inciting the crowd, shouting: "Are we going to starve? Let us make trouble, boys". Sergeant Bate said Durkin was a pest to the neighbourhood and as he had previously been bound over for breaching the peace, the magistrates sent him to prison for 28 days hard labour. Durkin also had to find sureties to be of good behaviour for six months.
The dispute had begun because the mine owners wanted to slash wages and change working conditions, as the present economic climate meant the "masters" were losing money. With mining being such a labour intensive industry, the owners' first instinct at times of reduced demand and a drop in the price of coal was always to cut wages.
However as a result of temporary Government control of the industry during the war, the miners were now being paid decent money to do their dreadful, dangerous job and understandably refused to accept any reductions. Presently there was deadlock with both sides adopting entrenched positions, as the halfway mark in what would prove to be a 3-month long strike was approached. Six weeks into such a strike tended to be the time when desperate people did desperate things – hence the trouble in Parr.
Also making an appearance in St Helens Police Court was Joseph Appleby who was charged with stealing three sacks of potatoes at Fingerpost. The miner from Parr Stocks Road had jumped onto the back of a motor lorry belonging to John Charnock, a potato dealer from Higher Parr Street. After shouting: "It is not coal", Appleby began to throw bags of potatoes off the lorry, allegedly for people to take away. Jake Highcock of Park Road was accused of being an accomplice and the potato man was hurt after falling off his wagon while attempting to protect his spuds.
Appleby explained to the magistrates that he was simply examining the lorry but Superintendent Dunn said the whole street had been in a state of uproar all afternoon and evening. Five cwts of potatoes had been taken from another lorry and two bags of coal stolen from a third. The superintendent asked the magistrates to assist in putting a stop to these "riotous scenes" and Joseph Appleby was fined £5 or 28 days in prison and Samuel Pennington was fined £2 or 14 days for receiving stolen potatoes.
On the 11th a meeting of between 2,000 to 3,000 miners was held on the waste ground in Bridge Street – near to where the Savoy cinema would later be built. It was confirmed that the working of the free "crop coal" had stopped in St Helens with those involved having fallen into line with a request from their union.
The "crop coal" was so named because it outcropped near the surface of disused pits and digging it out was dangerous and illegal. There was a fear that striking miners in other towns that did not have such surface seams available to them might give up the strike and return to work.
The big talking point of the meeting was whether they should give St Helens Corporation's own Gas Committee permission to buy up to 400 tons of coal from Ashton's Green Colliery in Parr. The dispensation was intended to have two purposes. The coal would power the gas lamps of the town and also supply gas to continue cooking meals for schoolchildren. St Helens had been the first town to provide free food for its children during the strike.
Many men at the meeting were against the concession. One man got on the platform and said if they allowed the Corporation to have coal they would be helping their masters. This he said was unfair when the local miner was being penalised by being refused permission to work the surface mines. The crowd received this statement with cheers, despite the fact that many of them would benefit by their own children continuing to be fed. The meeting decided to postpone making a decision until the weekend.
The trouble at Parr also led to a young man called David Benyon appearing in court charged with assaulting Richard Simms and cutting him with a knife. The defendant from Sutton Road strongly denied that he had ever used a knife and the only evidence against him was that Dr Reid thought a blade had cut Simms' cheek. It was a dispute over "crop coal" after Richard Simms had been working at a surface mine at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow. The miner from Orrell Street alleged that David Benyon along with his brother had first threatened to "throw him down the hole".
And then, after the miners' had voted to stop working the crop coal, there was a "great to-do" at Parr and the Benyon brothers had attacked him. Richard Simms added that he was "immediately deluged with blood" and had to be treated by Dr Reid. David Benyon had been employed at Ravenhead Colliery before the strike and had been earning £5 a week – which was a good wage. His brother Henry gave evidence that there had been a "tremendous crowd – the number of people being uncountable" and he insisted that David had not used a knife. The magistrates told Benyon that he'd had a narrow escape of being sent to the assizes for trial – where sentences could be more severe – but he would instead be fined £2.
And before leaving the thorny subject of the coal strike, James Sexton had a letter published in the Echo this week. The St Helens Labour MP attacked the Government for selectively quoting wholesale prices of food in support of their argument that the cost of living was going down and so miners should be prepared to accept wage reductions. Sexton labelled their claims as a "mere mockery, a delusion, and a sham", as the prices the consumer was paying had only been reduced slightly, if at all. In his list of food items, Sexton stated that milk then cost 1 shilling per quart in the shops or more likely on the doorstep, where the milkman poured it into the customer's own container from a jug.
It was less than a year since Evelyn Pilkington, Caroline Masson and Mary Dodd had become the first female magistrates on the Borough Bench and so it was still a bit of a novelty for women to be adjudicating in court. On the 12th the Echo felt it necessary to have "Lady Magistrates At St. Helens" as the headline to their report of how Mrs Dodd and Mrs Masson had been the sole female JPs at a hearing on that day.
It was probably the first occasion on which no man had been on the St Helens Bench and the pair fined a man called Edward Kelly for being drunk and assaulting a policeman. I wonder what the drunks – many of whom probably bossed their own households – thought about women sentencing them on the Bench!
The turns that were appearing at the Hippodrome Theatre in St Helens throughout this week included: O’Brien and Lady (Acrobatic dancers and tumblers); Nat D’Ayer ("His songs at the piano are a joy"); Tambo and Tambo ("Clever tambourine-spinning act"); Murphy and Mack ("In a clever and highly entertaining comedy sketch"); Victor King ("The new light comedian"); Eddie Morrell ("Novel vocal act") and Dolce Cariello ("Anglo-Italian songstress").
And finally my now customary non-St Helens news article that caught my eye this week. Although this time it's taken from the Sheffield Independent newspaper and was published under the headline "Motor Bandits In Liverpool – Several Houses Set On Fire – Sinn Fein Trail":
"Motor bandits, believed to be Sinn Feiners, made a raid on Liverpool on Saturday night, setting fire to numerous dwelling houses in various parts of the city. The men, numbering about 50 in all, worked in gangs, and made great use of motor cars, always having them within handy distance to facilitate escape after achieving their object. Their modus operandi was to descend on a house which was evidently a marked one and hold up the occupants at the point of the revolver. One of the gang would then saturate the furniture with petrol, apply a match, and the miscreants would then decamp. In several cases the contents of the houses were entirely destroyed.
"The raiders did not have it all their own way. In one instance an Airedale terrier chased the intruders out of a house, holding on to one by the seat of his trousers. The dog was shot by the men, but the trail of blood 100 yards long, showed that had he had left his mark on one them. An ex-naval man upon whose home the Sinn Feiners descended was reading a newspaper when they entered. In reply to their demand “Hands up,” the man – a Zeebrugge hero – calmly laid down his paper and picking up a sewing machine, flung it at them. This warm reception proved too much for the intruders, who made a hurried exit."
Next week's stories will include the insoluble problem of how to make Saints great again, the Berry's Lane miner who claimed he'd taken a colliery wheelbarrow to stop it from being stolen and does taking Beecham's Pills make a man more virile?
This week's stories include the riotous scenes in Higher Parr Street during the miners strike, the end of the free crop coal that was being dug in St Helens, the novelty of female magistrates sitting together on the Bench, the man considered to be the pest of Parr and a series of terrorist attacks takes place in Liverpool.
The national coal strike dominated the news again this week in St Helens with striking miners taking part in what was described as "riotous scenes" in Parr.
As a result Thomas Durkin of Johnson Street – who the Liverpool Echo called a "young Irishman, with a huge mop of curly hair" – was charged in St Helens Police Court with assault.
Haulage contractor John Seddon gave evidence of being in Higher Parr Street (pictured above) driving his motor lorry and trailer laden with bags of flour.
The 31-year-old from St Helens Road in Prescot said a huge crowd blocked the street and after stopping to go into Mercer's baker's shop, he was told that bags of flour were being pulled off his trailer.
Seddon explained that after going to investigate, Thomas Durkin began to kick him severely on his legs.
PC Holland told the court that over 200 people had been stopping motor lorries in the street and Durkin had been inciting the crowd, shouting:
"Are we going to starve? Let us make trouble, boys".
Sergeant Bate said Durkin was a pest to the neighbourhood and as he had previously been bound over for breaching the peace, the magistrates sent him to prison for 28 days hard labour.
Durkin also had to find sureties to be of good behaviour for six months.
The dispute had begun because the mine owners wanted to slash wages and change working conditions, as the present economic climate meant the "masters" were losing money.
With mining being such a labour intensive industry, the owners' first instinct at times of reduced demand and a drop in the price of coal was always to cut wages.
However as a result of temporary Government control of the industry during the war, the miners were now being paid decent money to do their dreadful, dangerous job and understandably refused to accept any reductions.
Presently there was deadlock with both sides adopting entrenched positions, as the halfway mark in what would prove to be a 3-month long strike was approached.
Six weeks into such a strike tended to be the time when desperate people did desperate things – hence the trouble in Parr.
Also making an appearance in St Helens Police Court was Joseph Appleby who was charged with stealing three sacks of potatoes at Fingerpost.
The miner from Parr Stocks Road had jumped onto the back of a motor lorry belonging to John Charnock, a potato dealer from Higher Parr Street.
After shouting: "It is not coal", Appleby began to throw bags of potatoes off the lorry, allegedly for people to take away.
Jake Highcock of Park Road was accused of being an accomplice and the potato man was hurt after falling off his wagon while attempting to protect his spuds.
Appleby explained to the magistrates that he was simply examining the lorry but Superintendent Dunn said the whole street had been in a state of uproar all afternoon and evening.
Five cwts of potatoes had been taken from another lorry and two bags of coal stolen from a third.
The superintendent asked the magistrates to assist in putting a stop to these "riotous scenes" and Joseph Appleby was fined £5 or 28 days in prison and Samuel Pennington was fined £2 or 14 days for receiving stolen potatoes.
On the 11th a meeting of between 2,000 to 3,000 miners was held on the waste ground in Bridge Street – near to where the Savoy cinema would later be built.
It was confirmed that the working of the free "crop coal" had stopped in St Helens with those involved having fallen into line with a request from their union.
The "crop coal" was so named because it outcropped near the surface of disused pits and digging it out was dangerous and illegal.
There was a fear that striking miners in other towns that did not have such surface seams available to them might give up the strike and return to work.
The big talking point of the meeting was whether they should give St Helens Corporation's own Gas Committee permission to buy up to 400 tons of coal from Ashton's Green Colliery in Parr.
The dispensation was intended to have two purposes. The coal would power the gas lamps of the town and also supply gas to continue cooking meals for schoolchildren.
St Helens had been the first town to provide free food for its children during the strike.
Many men at the meeting were against the concession. One man got on the platform and said if they allowed the Corporation to have coal they would be helping their masters.
This he said was unfair when the local miner was being penalised by being refused permission to work the surface mines.
The crowd received this statement with cheers, despite the fact that many of them would benefit by their own children continuing to be fed.
The meeting decided to postpone making a decision until the weekend.
The trouble at Parr also led to a young man called David Benyon appearing in court charged with assaulting Richard Simms and cutting him with a knife.
The defendant from Sutton Road strongly denied that he had ever used a knife and the only evidence against him was that Dr Reid thought a blade had cut Simms' cheek.
It was a dispute over "crop coal" after Richard Simms had been working at a surface mine at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow.
The miner from Orrell Street alleged that David Benyon along with his brother had first threatened to "throw him down the hole".
And then, after the miners' had voted to stop working the crop coal, there was a "great to-do" at Parr and the Benyon brothers had attacked him.
Richard Simms added that he was "immediately deluged with blood" and had to be treated by Dr Reid.
David Benyon had been employed at Ravenhead Colliery before the strike and had been earning £5 a week – which was a good wage.
His brother Henry gave evidence that there had been a "tremendous crowd – the number of people being uncountable" and he insisted that David had not used a knife.
The magistrates told Benyon that he'd had a narrow escape of being sent to the assizes for trial – where sentences could be more severe – but he would instead be fined £2.
And before leaving the thorny subject of the coal strike, James Sexton had a letter published in the Echo this week.
The St Helens Labour MP attacked the Government for selectively quoting wholesale prices of food in support of their argument that the cost of living was going down and so miners should be prepared to accept wage reductions.
Sexton labelled their claims as a "mere mockery, a delusion, and a sham", as the prices the consumer was paying had only been reduced slightly, if at all.
In his list of food items, Sexton stated that milk then cost 1 shilling per quart in the shops or more likely on the doorstep, where the milkman poured it into the customer's own container from a jug.
It was less than a year since Evelyn Pilkington, Caroline Masson and Mary Dodd had become the first female magistrates on the Borough Bench and so it was still a bit of a novelty for women to be adjudicating in court.
On the 12th the Echo felt it necessary to have "Lady Magistrates At St. Helens" as the headline to their report of how Mrs Dodd and Mrs Masson had been the sole female JPs at a hearing on that day.
It was probably the first occasion on which no man had been on the St Helens Bench and the pair fined a man called Edward Kelly for being drunk and assaulting a policeman.
I wonder what the drunks – many of whom probably bossed their own households – thought about women sentencing them on the Bench!
The turns that were appearing at the Hippodrome Theatre in St Helens throughout this week included:
O’Brien and Lady (Acrobatic dancers and tumblers); Nat D’Ayer ("His songs at the piano are a joy"); Tambo and Tambo ("Clever tambourine-spinning act"); Murphy and Mack ("In a clever and highly entertaining comedy sketch"); Victor King ("The new light comedian"); Eddie Morrell ("Novel vocal act") and Dolce Cariello ("Anglo-Italian songstress").
And finally my now customary non-St Helens news article that caught my eye this week.
Although this time it's taken from the Sheffield Independent newspaper and was published under the headline "Motor Bandits In Liverpool – Several Houses Set On Fire – Sinn Fein Trail":
"Motor bandits, believed to be Sinn Feiners, made a raid on Liverpool on Saturday night, setting fire to numerous dwelling houses in various parts of the city.
"The men, numbering about 50 in all, worked in gangs, and made great use of motor cars, always having them within handy distance to facilitate escape after achieving their object.
"Their modus operandi was to descend on a house which was evidently a marked one and hold up the occupants at the point of the revolver.
"One of the gang would then saturate the furniture with petrol, apply a match, and the miscreants would then decamp. In several cases the contents of the houses were entirely destroyed.
"The raiders did not have it all their own way. In one instance an Airedale terrier chased the intruders out of a house, holding on to one by the seat of his trousers.
"The dog was shot by the men, but the trail of blood 100 yards long, showed that had he had left his mark on one them.
"An ex-naval man upon whose home the Sinn Feiners descended was reading a newspaper when they entered.
"In reply to their demand “Hands up,” the man – a Zeebrugge hero – calmly laid down his paper and picking up a sewing machine, flung it at them.
"This warm reception proved too much for the intruders, who made a hurried exit."
Next week's stories will include the insoluble problem of how to make Saints great again, the Berry's Lane miner who claimed he'd taken a colliery wheelbarrow to stop it from being stolen and does taking Beecham's Pills make a man more virile?
The national coal strike dominated the news again this week in St Helens with striking miners taking part in what was described as "riotous scenes" in Parr.
As a result Thomas Durkin of Johnson Street – who the Liverpool Echo called a "young Irishman, with a huge mop of curly hair" – was charged in St Helens Police Court with assault.
The 31-year-old from St Helens Road in Prescot said a huge crowd blocked the street and after stopping to go into Mercer's baker's shop, he was told that bags of flour were being pulled off his trailer.
Seddon explained that after going to investigate, Thomas Durkin began to kick him severely on his legs.
PC Holland told the court that over 200 people had been stopping motor lorries in the street and Durkin had been inciting the crowd, shouting:
"Are we going to starve? Let us make trouble, boys".
Sergeant Bate said Durkin was a pest to the neighbourhood and as he had previously been bound over for breaching the peace, the magistrates sent him to prison for 28 days hard labour.
Durkin also had to find sureties to be of good behaviour for six months.
The dispute had begun because the mine owners wanted to slash wages and change working conditions, as the present economic climate meant the "masters" were losing money.
With mining being such a labour intensive industry, the owners' first instinct at times of reduced demand and a drop in the price of coal was always to cut wages.
However as a result of temporary Government control of the industry during the war, the miners were now being paid decent money to do their dreadful, dangerous job and understandably refused to accept any reductions.
Presently there was deadlock with both sides adopting entrenched positions, as the halfway mark in what would prove to be a 3-month long strike was approached.
Six weeks into such a strike tended to be the time when desperate people did desperate things – hence the trouble in Parr.
Also making an appearance in St Helens Police Court was Joseph Appleby who was charged with stealing three sacks of potatoes at Fingerpost.
The miner from Parr Stocks Road had jumped onto the back of a motor lorry belonging to John Charnock, a potato dealer from Higher Parr Street.
After shouting: "It is not coal", Appleby began to throw bags of potatoes off the lorry, allegedly for people to take away.
Jake Highcock of Park Road was accused of being an accomplice and the potato man was hurt after falling off his wagon while attempting to protect his spuds.
Appleby explained to the magistrates that he was simply examining the lorry but Superintendent Dunn said the whole street had been in a state of uproar all afternoon and evening.
Five cwts of potatoes had been taken from another lorry and two bags of coal stolen from a third.
The superintendent asked the magistrates to assist in putting a stop to these "riotous scenes" and Joseph Appleby was fined £5 or 28 days in prison and Samuel Pennington was fined £2 or 14 days for receiving stolen potatoes.
On the 11th a meeting of between 2,000 to 3,000 miners was held on the waste ground in Bridge Street – near to where the Savoy cinema would later be built.
It was confirmed that the working of the free "crop coal" had stopped in St Helens with those involved having fallen into line with a request from their union.
The "crop coal" was so named because it outcropped near the surface of disused pits and digging it out was dangerous and illegal.
There was a fear that striking miners in other towns that did not have such surface seams available to them might give up the strike and return to work.
The big talking point of the meeting was whether they should give St Helens Corporation's own Gas Committee permission to buy up to 400 tons of coal from Ashton's Green Colliery in Parr.
The dispensation was intended to have two purposes. The coal would power the gas lamps of the town and also supply gas to continue cooking meals for schoolchildren.
St Helens had been the first town to provide free food for its children during the strike.
Many men at the meeting were against the concession. One man got on the platform and said if they allowed the Corporation to have coal they would be helping their masters.
This he said was unfair when the local miner was being penalised by being refused permission to work the surface mines.
The crowd received this statement with cheers, despite the fact that many of them would benefit by their own children continuing to be fed.
The meeting decided to postpone making a decision until the weekend.
The trouble at Parr also led to a young man called David Benyon appearing in court charged with assaulting Richard Simms and cutting him with a knife.
The defendant from Sutton Road strongly denied that he had ever used a knife and the only evidence against him was that Dr Reid thought a blade had cut Simms' cheek.
It was a dispute over "crop coal" after Richard Simms had been working at a surface mine at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow.
The miner from Orrell Street alleged that David Benyon along with his brother had first threatened to "throw him down the hole".
And then, after the miners' had voted to stop working the crop coal, there was a "great to-do" at Parr and the Benyon brothers had attacked him.
Richard Simms added that he was "immediately deluged with blood" and had to be treated by Dr Reid.
David Benyon had been employed at Ravenhead Colliery before the strike and had been earning £5 a week – which was a good wage.
His brother Henry gave evidence that there had been a "tremendous crowd – the number of people being uncountable" and he insisted that David had not used a knife.
The magistrates told Benyon that he'd had a narrow escape of being sent to the assizes for trial – where sentences could be more severe – but he would instead be fined £2.
And before leaving the thorny subject of the coal strike, James Sexton had a letter published in the Echo this week.
The St Helens Labour MP attacked the Government for selectively quoting wholesale prices of food in support of their argument that the cost of living was going down and so miners should be prepared to accept wage reductions.
Sexton labelled their claims as a "mere mockery, a delusion, and a sham", as the prices the consumer was paying had only been reduced slightly, if at all.
In his list of food items, Sexton stated that milk then cost 1 shilling per quart in the shops or more likely on the doorstep, where the milkman poured it into the customer's own container from a jug.
It was less than a year since Evelyn Pilkington, Caroline Masson and Mary Dodd had become the first female magistrates on the Borough Bench and so it was still a bit of a novelty for women to be adjudicating in court.
On the 12th the Echo felt it necessary to have "Lady Magistrates At St. Helens" as the headline to their report of how Mrs Dodd and Mrs Masson had been the sole female JPs at a hearing on that day.
It was probably the first occasion on which no man had been on the St Helens Bench and the pair fined a man called Edward Kelly for being drunk and assaulting a policeman.
I wonder what the drunks – many of whom probably bossed their own households – thought about women sentencing them on the Bench!
The turns that were appearing at the Hippodrome Theatre in St Helens throughout this week included:
O’Brien and Lady (Acrobatic dancers and tumblers); Nat D’Ayer ("His songs at the piano are a joy"); Tambo and Tambo ("Clever tambourine-spinning act"); Murphy and Mack ("In a clever and highly entertaining comedy sketch"); Victor King ("The new light comedian"); Eddie Morrell ("Novel vocal act") and Dolce Cariello ("Anglo-Italian songstress").
And finally my now customary non-St Helens news article that caught my eye this week.
Although this time it's taken from the Sheffield Independent newspaper and was published under the headline "Motor Bandits In Liverpool – Several Houses Set On Fire – Sinn Fein Trail":
"Motor bandits, believed to be Sinn Feiners, made a raid on Liverpool on Saturday night, setting fire to numerous dwelling houses in various parts of the city.
"The men, numbering about 50 in all, worked in gangs, and made great use of motor cars, always having them within handy distance to facilitate escape after achieving their object.
"Their modus operandi was to descend on a house which was evidently a marked one and hold up the occupants at the point of the revolver.
"One of the gang would then saturate the furniture with petrol, apply a match, and the miscreants would then decamp. In several cases the contents of the houses were entirely destroyed.
"The raiders did not have it all their own way. In one instance an Airedale terrier chased the intruders out of a house, holding on to one by the seat of his trousers.
"The dog was shot by the men, but the trail of blood 100 yards long, showed that had he had left his mark on one them.
"An ex-naval man upon whose home the Sinn Feiners descended was reading a newspaper when they entered.
"In reply to their demand “Hands up,” the man – a Zeebrugge hero – calmly laid down his paper and picking up a sewing machine, flung it at them.
"This warm reception proved too much for the intruders, who made a hurried exit."
Next week's stories will include the insoluble problem of how to make Saints great again, the Berry's Lane miner who claimed he'd taken a colliery wheelbarrow to stop it from being stolen and does taking Beecham's Pills make a man more virile?