IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 13 - 19 APRIL 1926
This week's many stories include Parr's rag picking scandal, a reprieve for the Abbotsfield Road poison gas tenants, the wayward boy in Bold who was disowned by his parents, the plans to extend the Town Hall, the Parr Moss tenant who claimed he put a hole in his roof to rescue a cat and the widow denied the right to use her own compensation money to take a holiday in Blackpool.
The week began with a fire at the large garage owned by Greenall's brewery. The fuel tank of a car belonging to one of the directors was being repaired and as petrol was being drawn off, an electric lamp was described as having burst, which ignited the petrol. The vehicle was practically destroyed but the outbreak was prevented from spreading to their fuel store and other parts of the garage.
In the House of Commons on the 13th in answer to a question from the St Helens MP, James Sexton (pictured above), it was revealed that the threat of eviction against the 103 persons living in 16 houses in Abbotsfield Road in Sutton was being lifted. The cottages' close proximity to the government's poison gas works had been stated as the reason for the evictions. But St Helens Corporation was rushing to build some new homes for the tenants and these would be available in a few weeks and so the eviction order was being delayed until June 23rd when the houses would be ready.
The miners' strike was only weeks away and in the Commons in answer to another member's question, the government released some sobering statistics. During 1924 1,218 miners had been killed and 197,111 persons were described as having been disabled in accidents in mines in Great Britain. During 1925 the death toll was 1,158 men and boys.
On the same day six miners were fined 5 shillings each for stealing coal and damaging the coal pit at Clock Face Colliery (pictured above). John Waring, Frank Thomson, William Malkin, John Lacey, Herbert Eden and John Simpson had been part of a group of 150 people picking pieces of coal out of the waste heap. However, the railway line, which carried 100-ton trains at the top of the heap, began to sink and so the colliery management had called in the police.
Although the colliery's solicitor claimed the coal was valued for commercial purposes at 15 shillings per ton, in reality it was embedded within waste and would never be sold. In an article entitled "Who Picks the Coal? – Dangerous Practice at Clock Face", the St Helens Reporter described how it had been the custom for some months for local people to regularly visit the heap and "purloin some of the coal which they found there". The practice had continued despite the death of a man, which the newspaper described as a "raider", who some weeks earlier had been buried alive while taking coal.
What to do with a 19-year-old youth from Bold was a puzzle for the magistrates in the St Helens County Sessions on the 13th. "Because of his wayward behaviour this boy's parents will have nothing more to do with him," said Superintendent Lewis to the Bench. As a result Charles Clarke had been sleeping in an outbuilding at Bank House Farm in Bold.
He had been allowed to sleep there and had even been given food but had rewarded the kindly farmer by stealing a bicycle. That he then sold to a man called Jeff Dean from Crawford Village. The Chairman of the Bench said: "What are we to do with Clarke? If we bind him over where will he go?" To that the Clerk to the court replied: "He will have to sleep out again, as his parents will not have anything to do with him."
But the court missionary / probation officer said he would visit Clarke's father to see if he would take him back and the youth was bound over. However, Dean from Crawford was fined £5 or 28 days for receiving the stolen bike.
"The idea of workmen’s compensation is not to provide a holiday at Blackpool", said Judge Challenor Dowdall at St Helens County Court on the 14th. His Honour was laying down the law to a widow who wanted £8 of her own compensation money awarded after the death of her husband for a break at the seaside. In the early days of compensation for industrial accidents, those awarded cash had to go cap in hand to the County Court for the right to spend it.
With a maximum award of £300, typically around £150 to £200 was awarded to a widow for the death of her spouse, with much less for injured workers. However, the compensation was usually doled out bit by bit upon application to the court and refusal was commonplace. That was what occurred with the unnamed woman who was denied the right to use her own money to go to the seaside for her health.
In another curious case in the County Court, Mary Round of Parr Moss Cottages sought possession of the house next door. She had rented her property to Adam Seddon but claimed that he and his brother regularly got drunk at night and fought each other and the language they used was "lurid" and shouts of "murder" could be heard. On one occasion they had 15 men in the house playing cards and the Round family next door could get no sleep through the noise.
Adam Seddon was also accused of coming home in the middle of the night and pulling down part of the roof and leaving the sky visible through the hole. However, Seddon offered a bizarre reason for what he had done, claiming that he had created the hole to rescue a cat trapped on the roof. Seddon told the judge: "It was my cat. It was coughing and spitting and meowing all night. We could not sleep so we had to go after it."
A neighbour giving evidence said that Mrs Round had come to Parr from Wales: "She is a stranger in a strange land and it is impossible for her to live next door to two terrible dirty men." The Liverpool Evening Express in their account of the hearing wrote: "Seddon, whose voice almost made the court windows rattle, shouted that it was Mrs. Round who was threatening to murder him.
"The judge (sarcastically): “I suppose you and your brother must protect yourselves as best you can.” Seddon: “Certainly”." The sarcasm clearly went over the head of Adam Seddon who was then told by the judge that he considered him and his brother to be noisy and troublesome and they would have to clear out of their house within a month.
On the 14th the St Helens Health Committee discussed proposals to extend their Medical Officer's department by adding additional buildings to the rear of the Town Hall. 1926 was the 50th anniversary of the opening of St Helens Town Hall, which in 1876 was considered spacious and probably designed as future-proofed against additional needs. But things had changed considerably as the population had greatly increased, with departments that did not exist in the 1870s having been created.
Cllr McCormick warned at the meeting that the Town Hall would soon be very overcrowded and it was necessary that something should immediately be done. But the suggested extensions, he insisted, were nothing like what was required to alleviate the problem. And Alderman Peet said the Town Hall needed to be made twice as big. However, that was for another day and the committee chose to approve the proposed scheme.
Thomas Ward from Holly Bank Street in St Helens appeared in court on the 15th charged with burglary and shop-breaking. Superintendent Dunn told the court that the police had received a telephone message from the Conservative Club in Hall Street at 11:45pm to say that a man had entered the club through a window. The individual had managed to escape but two hours later Ward was captured on the roof of the parcels office at St Helens Railway Station.
A search of Ward's house revealed a pair of scissors with one end broken off. The police already possessed the broken bit, as it had been found near the safe in the Co-op Stores in Parr. The 30-year-old was committed to take his trial at the next assizes hearing where he was sentenced to serve 6 months hard labour.
Under the headline "Parr's Rag-Picking Scandal – Revolting State Of Things", the St Helens Reporter on the 16th described some unsavoury activities on Parr's rubbish tip near Fleet Lane:
"The rags were gathered from middens and deposited in great numbers on the tip, and people turned out and raked amongst the filth and garbage for the rags, which they dried and sold to several rag merchants who called for them with motor vans. ...[A local man] took our representative to the rear of the houses and showed him a long array of filthy rags, covered with excreta, drying in the sun. The less said about the smell the better."
And finally, on the 16th the St Helens Co-operative Society was again in court through problems with its milk. It had been common practice for farmers and milk sellers to adulterate their milk with water and so the authorities would carry out regular checks. A sample of the Co-op's milk had found it to be 9% deficient in fat and so a prosecution followed.
The Co-op's solicitor explained to the court that they were the largest milk dealers in St Helens, selling over 4,000 gallons of milk every week. He said they repeatedly tested the milk and had written guarantees of pureness from the farmers of Lancashire and Cheshire who supplied the milk. However, the magistrates fined the Co-operative Society 40 shillings and said there had been gross carelessness with instructions not carried out.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the barefooted Greenbank kids passing on bets, the 50 Irishmen fighting a dozen police, the Sutton Sheeting Sheds strike, the youth killed on a Rainford farm and the two widows of a dead miner that sought compensation.
The week began with a fire at the large garage owned by Greenall's brewery. The fuel tank of a car belonging to one of the directors was being repaired and as petrol was being drawn off, an electric lamp was described as having burst, which ignited the petrol. The vehicle was practically destroyed but the outbreak was prevented from spreading to their fuel store and other parts of the garage.
The miners' strike was only weeks away and in the Commons in answer to another member's question, the government released some sobering statistics. During 1924 1,218 miners had been killed and 197,111 persons were described as having been disabled in accidents in mines in Great Britain. During 1925 the death toll was 1,158 men and boys.
Although the colliery's solicitor claimed the coal was valued for commercial purposes at 15 shillings per ton, in reality it was embedded within waste and would never be sold. In an article entitled "Who Picks the Coal? – Dangerous Practice at Clock Face", the St Helens Reporter described how it had been the custom for some months for local people to regularly visit the heap and "purloin some of the coal which they found there". The practice had continued despite the death of a man, which the newspaper described as a "raider", who some weeks earlier had been buried alive while taking coal.
What to do with a 19-year-old youth from Bold was a puzzle for the magistrates in the St Helens County Sessions on the 13th. "Because of his wayward behaviour this boy's parents will have nothing more to do with him," said Superintendent Lewis to the Bench. As a result Charles Clarke had been sleeping in an outbuilding at Bank House Farm in Bold.
He had been allowed to sleep there and had even been given food but had rewarded the kindly farmer by stealing a bicycle. That he then sold to a man called Jeff Dean from Crawford Village. The Chairman of the Bench said: "What are we to do with Clarke? If we bind him over where will he go?" To that the Clerk to the court replied: "He will have to sleep out again, as his parents will not have anything to do with him."
But the court missionary / probation officer said he would visit Clarke's father to see if he would take him back and the youth was bound over. However, Dean from Crawford was fined £5 or 28 days for receiving the stolen bike.
"The idea of workmen’s compensation is not to provide a holiday at Blackpool", said Judge Challenor Dowdall at St Helens County Court on the 14th. His Honour was laying down the law to a widow who wanted £8 of her own compensation money awarded after the death of her husband for a break at the seaside. In the early days of compensation for industrial accidents, those awarded cash had to go cap in hand to the County Court for the right to spend it.
With a maximum award of £300, typically around £150 to £200 was awarded to a widow for the death of her spouse, with much less for injured workers. However, the compensation was usually doled out bit by bit upon application to the court and refusal was commonplace. That was what occurred with the unnamed woman who was denied the right to use her own money to go to the seaside for her health.
In another curious case in the County Court, Mary Round of Parr Moss Cottages sought possession of the house next door. She had rented her property to Adam Seddon but claimed that he and his brother regularly got drunk at night and fought each other and the language they used was "lurid" and shouts of "murder" could be heard. On one occasion they had 15 men in the house playing cards and the Round family next door could get no sleep through the noise.
Adam Seddon was also accused of coming home in the middle of the night and pulling down part of the roof and leaving the sky visible through the hole. However, Seddon offered a bizarre reason for what he had done, claiming that he had created the hole to rescue a cat trapped on the roof. Seddon told the judge: "It was my cat. It was coughing and spitting and meowing all night. We could not sleep so we had to go after it."
A neighbour giving evidence said that Mrs Round had come to Parr from Wales: "She is a stranger in a strange land and it is impossible for her to live next door to two terrible dirty men." The Liverpool Evening Express in their account of the hearing wrote: "Seddon, whose voice almost made the court windows rattle, shouted that it was Mrs. Round who was threatening to murder him.
"The judge (sarcastically): “I suppose you and your brother must protect yourselves as best you can.” Seddon: “Certainly”." The sarcasm clearly went over the head of Adam Seddon who was then told by the judge that he considered him and his brother to be noisy and troublesome and they would have to clear out of their house within a month.
On the 14th the St Helens Health Committee discussed proposals to extend their Medical Officer's department by adding additional buildings to the rear of the Town Hall. 1926 was the 50th anniversary of the opening of St Helens Town Hall, which in 1876 was considered spacious and probably designed as future-proofed against additional needs. But things had changed considerably as the population had greatly increased, with departments that did not exist in the 1870s having been created.
Cllr McCormick warned at the meeting that the Town Hall would soon be very overcrowded and it was necessary that something should immediately be done. But the suggested extensions, he insisted, were nothing like what was required to alleviate the problem. And Alderman Peet said the Town Hall needed to be made twice as big. However, that was for another day and the committee chose to approve the proposed scheme.
Thomas Ward from Holly Bank Street in St Helens appeared in court on the 15th charged with burglary and shop-breaking. Superintendent Dunn told the court that the police had received a telephone message from the Conservative Club in Hall Street at 11:45pm to say that a man had entered the club through a window. The individual had managed to escape but two hours later Ward was captured on the roof of the parcels office at St Helens Railway Station.
A search of Ward's house revealed a pair of scissors with one end broken off. The police already possessed the broken bit, as it had been found near the safe in the Co-op Stores in Parr. The 30-year-old was committed to take his trial at the next assizes hearing where he was sentenced to serve 6 months hard labour.
Under the headline "Parr's Rag-Picking Scandal – Revolting State Of Things", the St Helens Reporter on the 16th described some unsavoury activities on Parr's rubbish tip near Fleet Lane:
"The rags were gathered from middens and deposited in great numbers on the tip, and people turned out and raked amongst the filth and garbage for the rags, which they dried and sold to several rag merchants who called for them with motor vans. ...[A local man] took our representative to the rear of the houses and showed him a long array of filthy rags, covered with excreta, drying in the sun. The less said about the smell the better."
And finally, on the 16th the St Helens Co-operative Society was again in court through problems with its milk. It had been common practice for farmers and milk sellers to adulterate their milk with water and so the authorities would carry out regular checks. A sample of the Co-op's milk had found it to be 9% deficient in fat and so a prosecution followed.
The Co-op's solicitor explained to the court that they were the largest milk dealers in St Helens, selling over 4,000 gallons of milk every week. He said they repeatedly tested the milk and had written guarantees of pureness from the farmers of Lancashire and Cheshire who supplied the milk. However, the magistrates fined the Co-operative Society 40 shillings and said there had been gross carelessness with instructions not carried out.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the barefooted Greenbank kids passing on bets, the 50 Irishmen fighting a dozen police, the Sutton Sheeting Sheds strike, the youth killed on a Rainford farm and the two widows of a dead miner that sought compensation.
This week's many stories include Parr's rag picking scandal, a reprieve for the Abbotsfield Road poison gas tenants, the wayward boy in Bold who was disowned by his parents, the plans to extend the Town Hall, the Parr Moss tenant who claimed he put a hole in his roof to rescue a cat and the widow denied the right to use her own compensation money to take a holiday in Blackpool.
The week began with a fire at the large garage owned by Greenall's brewery.
The fuel tank of a car belonging to one of the directors was being repaired and as petrol was being drawn off, an electric lamp was described as having burst, which ignited the petrol.
The vehicle was practically destroyed but the outbreak was prevented from spreading to their fuel store and other parts of the garage.
In the House of Commons on the 13th in answer to a question from the St Helens MP, James Sexton (pictured above), it was revealed that the threat of eviction against the 103 persons living in 16 houses in Abbotsfield Road in Sutton was being lifted.
The cottages' close proximity to the government's poison gas works had been stated as the reason for the evictions.
But St Helens Corporation was rushing to build some new homes for the tenants and these would be available in a few weeks and so the eviction order was being delayed until June 23rd when the houses would be ready.
The miners' strike was only weeks away and in the Commons in answer to another member's question, the government released some sobering statistics.
During 1924 1,218 miners had been killed and 197,111 persons were described as having been disabled in accidents in mines in Great Britain. During 1925 the death toll was 1,158 men and boys.
On the same day six miners were fined 5 shillings each for stealing coal and damaging the coal pit at Clock Face Colliery (pictured above).
John Waring, Frank Thomson, William Malkin, John Lacey, Herbert Eden and John Simpson had been part of a group of 150 people picking pieces of coal out of the waste heap.
However, the railway line, which carried 100-ton trains at the top of the heap, began to sink and so the colliery management had called in the police.
Although the colliery's solicitor claimed the coal was valued for commercial purposes at 15 shillings per ton, in reality it was embedded within waste and would never be sold.
In an article entitled "Who Picks the Coal? – Dangerous Practice at Clock Face", the St Helens Reporter described how it had been the custom for some months for local people to regularly visit the heap and "purloin some of the coal which they found there".
The practice had continued despite the death of a man, which the newspaper described as a "raider", who some weeks earlier had been buried alive while taking coal.
What to do with a 19-year-old youth from Bold was a puzzle for the magistrates in the St Helens County Sessions on the 13th.
"Because of his wayward behaviour this boy's parents will have nothing more to do with him," said Superintendent Lewis to the Bench.
As a result Charles Clarke had been sleeping in an outbuilding at Bank House Farm in Bold.
He had been allowed to sleep there and had even been given food but had rewarded the kindly farmer by stealing a bicycle. That he then sold to a man called Jeff Dean from Crawford Village.
The Chairman of the Bench said: "What are we to do with Clarke? If we bind him over where will he go?"
To that the Clerk to the court replied: "He will have to sleep out again, as his parents will not have anything to do with him."
But the court missionary / probation officer said he would visit Clarke's father to see if he would take him back and the youth was bound over.
However, Dean from Crawford was fined £5 or 28 days for receiving the stolen bike.
"The idea of workmen’s compensation is not to provide a holiday at Blackpool", said Judge Challenor Dowdall at St Helens County Court on the 14th.
His Honour was laying down the law to a widow who wanted £8 of her own compensation money awarded after the death of her husband for a break at the seaside.
In the early days of compensation for industrial accidents, those awarded cash had to go cap in hand to the County Court for the right to spend it.
With a maximum award of £300, typically around £150 to £200 was awarded to a widow for the death of her spouse, with much less for injured workers.
However, the compensation was usually doled out bit by bit upon application to the court and refusal was commonplace.
That was what occurred with the unnamed woman who was denied the right to use her own money to go to the seaside for her health.
In another curious case in the County Court, Mary Round of Parr Moss Cottages sought possession of the house next door.
She had rented her property to Adam Seddon but claimed that he and his brother regularly got drunk at night and fought each other and the language they used was "lurid" and shouts of "murder" could be heard.
On one occasion they had 15 men in the house playing cards and the Round family next door could get no sleep through the noise.
Adam Seddon was also accused of coming home in the middle of the night and pulling down part of the roof and leaving the sky visible through the hole.
However, Seddon offered a bizarre reason for what he had done, claiming that he had created the hole to rescue a cat trapped on the roof.
Seddon told the judge: "It was my cat. It was coughing and spitting and meowing all night. We could not sleep so we had to go after it."
A neighbour giving evidence said that Mrs Round had come to Parr from Wales:
"She is a stranger in a strange land and it is impossible for her to live next door to two terrible dirty men."
The Liverpool Evening Express in their account of the hearing wrote: "Seddon, whose voice almost made the court windows rattle, shouted that it was Mrs. Round who was threatening to murder him.
"The judge (sarcastically): “I suppose you and your brother must protect yourselves as best you can.”
"Seddon: “Certainly”."
The sarcasm clearly went over the head of Adam Seddon who was then told by the judge that he considered him and his brother to be noisy and troublesome and they would have to clear out of their house within a month.
On the 14th the St Helens Health Committee discussed proposals to extend their Medical Officer's department by adding additional buildings to the rear of the Town Hall.
1926 was the 50th anniversary of the opening of St Helens Town Hall, which in 1876 was considered spacious and probably designed as future-proofed against additional needs.
But things had changed considerably as the population had greatly increased, with departments that did not exist in the 1870s having been created.
Cllr McCormick warned at the meeting that the Town Hall would soon be very overcrowded and it was necessary that something should immediately be done.
But the suggested extensions, he insisted, were nothing like what was required to alleviate the problem.
And Alderman Peet said the Town Hall needed to be made twice as big.
However, that was for another day and the committee chose to approve the proposed scheme.
Thomas Ward from Holly Bank Street in St Helens appeared in court on the 15th charged with burglary and shop-breaking.
Superintendent Dunn told the court that the police had received a telephone message from the Conservative Club in Hall Street at 11:45pm to say that a man had entered the club through a window.
The individual had managed to escape but two hours later Ward was captured on the roof of the parcels office at St Helens Railway Station.
A search of Ward's house revealed a pair of scissors with one end broken off.
The police already possessed the broken bit, as it had been found near the safe in the Co-op Stores in Parr.
The 30-year-old was committed to take his trial at the next assizes hearing where he was sentenced to serve 6 months hard labour.
Under the headline "Parr's Rag-Picking Scandal – Revolting State Of Things", the St Helens Reporter on the 16th described some unsavoury activities on Parr's rubbish tip near Fleet Lane:
"The rags were gathered from middens and deposited in great numbers on the tip, and people turned out and raked amongst the filth and garbage for the rags, which they dried and sold to several rag merchants who called for them with motor vans.
"...[A local man] took our representative to the rear of the houses and showed him a long array of filthy rags, covered with excreta, drying in the sun. The less said about the smell the better."
And finally, on the 16th the St Helens Co-operative Society was again in court through problems with its milk.
It had been common practice for farmers and milk sellers to adulterate their milk with water and so the authorities would carry out regular checks.
A sample of the Co-op's milk had found it to be 9% deficient in fat and so a prosecution followed.
The Co-op's solicitor explained to the court that they were the largest milk dealers in St Helens, selling over 4,000 gallons of milk every week.
He said they repeatedly tested the milk and had written guarantees of pureness from the farmers of Lancashire and Cheshire who supplied the milk.
However, the magistrates fined the Co-operative Society 40 shillings and said there had been gross carelessness with instructions not carried out.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the barefooted Greenbank kids passing on bets, the 50 Irishmen fighting a dozen police, the Sutton Sheeting Sheds strike, the youth killed on a Rainford farm and the two widows of a dead miner that sought compensation.
The week began with a fire at the large garage owned by Greenall's brewery.
The fuel tank of a car belonging to one of the directors was being repaired and as petrol was being drawn off, an electric lamp was described as having burst, which ignited the petrol.
The vehicle was practically destroyed but the outbreak was prevented from spreading to their fuel store and other parts of the garage.
The cottages' close proximity to the government's poison gas works had been stated as the reason for the evictions.
But St Helens Corporation was rushing to build some new homes for the tenants and these would be available in a few weeks and so the eviction order was being delayed until June 23rd when the houses would be ready.
The miners' strike was only weeks away and in the Commons in answer to another member's question, the government released some sobering statistics.
During 1924 1,218 miners had been killed and 197,111 persons were described as having been disabled in accidents in mines in Great Britain. During 1925 the death toll was 1,158 men and boys.
John Waring, Frank Thomson, William Malkin, John Lacey, Herbert Eden and John Simpson had been part of a group of 150 people picking pieces of coal out of the waste heap.
However, the railway line, which carried 100-ton trains at the top of the heap, began to sink and so the colliery management had called in the police.
Although the colliery's solicitor claimed the coal was valued for commercial purposes at 15 shillings per ton, in reality it was embedded within waste and would never be sold.
In an article entitled "Who Picks the Coal? – Dangerous Practice at Clock Face", the St Helens Reporter described how it had been the custom for some months for local people to regularly visit the heap and "purloin some of the coal which they found there".
The practice had continued despite the death of a man, which the newspaper described as a "raider", who some weeks earlier had been buried alive while taking coal.
What to do with a 19-year-old youth from Bold was a puzzle for the magistrates in the St Helens County Sessions on the 13th.
"Because of his wayward behaviour this boy's parents will have nothing more to do with him," said Superintendent Lewis to the Bench.
As a result Charles Clarke had been sleeping in an outbuilding at Bank House Farm in Bold.
He had been allowed to sleep there and had even been given food but had rewarded the kindly farmer by stealing a bicycle. That he then sold to a man called Jeff Dean from Crawford Village.
The Chairman of the Bench said: "What are we to do with Clarke? If we bind him over where will he go?"
To that the Clerk to the court replied: "He will have to sleep out again, as his parents will not have anything to do with him."
But the court missionary / probation officer said he would visit Clarke's father to see if he would take him back and the youth was bound over.
However, Dean from Crawford was fined £5 or 28 days for receiving the stolen bike.
"The idea of workmen’s compensation is not to provide a holiday at Blackpool", said Judge Challenor Dowdall at St Helens County Court on the 14th.
His Honour was laying down the law to a widow who wanted £8 of her own compensation money awarded after the death of her husband for a break at the seaside.
In the early days of compensation for industrial accidents, those awarded cash had to go cap in hand to the County Court for the right to spend it.
With a maximum award of £300, typically around £150 to £200 was awarded to a widow for the death of her spouse, with much less for injured workers.
However, the compensation was usually doled out bit by bit upon application to the court and refusal was commonplace.
That was what occurred with the unnamed woman who was denied the right to use her own money to go to the seaside for her health.
In another curious case in the County Court, Mary Round of Parr Moss Cottages sought possession of the house next door.
She had rented her property to Adam Seddon but claimed that he and his brother regularly got drunk at night and fought each other and the language they used was "lurid" and shouts of "murder" could be heard.
On one occasion they had 15 men in the house playing cards and the Round family next door could get no sleep through the noise.
Adam Seddon was also accused of coming home in the middle of the night and pulling down part of the roof and leaving the sky visible through the hole.
However, Seddon offered a bizarre reason for what he had done, claiming that he had created the hole to rescue a cat trapped on the roof.
Seddon told the judge: "It was my cat. It was coughing and spitting and meowing all night. We could not sleep so we had to go after it."
A neighbour giving evidence said that Mrs Round had come to Parr from Wales:
"She is a stranger in a strange land and it is impossible for her to live next door to two terrible dirty men."
The Liverpool Evening Express in their account of the hearing wrote: "Seddon, whose voice almost made the court windows rattle, shouted that it was Mrs. Round who was threatening to murder him.
"The judge (sarcastically): “I suppose you and your brother must protect yourselves as best you can.”
"Seddon: “Certainly”."
The sarcasm clearly went over the head of Adam Seddon who was then told by the judge that he considered him and his brother to be noisy and troublesome and they would have to clear out of their house within a month.
On the 14th the St Helens Health Committee discussed proposals to extend their Medical Officer's department by adding additional buildings to the rear of the Town Hall.
1926 was the 50th anniversary of the opening of St Helens Town Hall, which in 1876 was considered spacious and probably designed as future-proofed against additional needs.
But things had changed considerably as the population had greatly increased, with departments that did not exist in the 1870s having been created.
Cllr McCormick warned at the meeting that the Town Hall would soon be very overcrowded and it was necessary that something should immediately be done.
But the suggested extensions, he insisted, were nothing like what was required to alleviate the problem.
And Alderman Peet said the Town Hall needed to be made twice as big.
However, that was for another day and the committee chose to approve the proposed scheme.
Thomas Ward from Holly Bank Street in St Helens appeared in court on the 15th charged with burglary and shop-breaking.
Superintendent Dunn told the court that the police had received a telephone message from the Conservative Club in Hall Street at 11:45pm to say that a man had entered the club through a window.
The individual had managed to escape but two hours later Ward was captured on the roof of the parcels office at St Helens Railway Station.
A search of Ward's house revealed a pair of scissors with one end broken off.
The police already possessed the broken bit, as it had been found near the safe in the Co-op Stores in Parr.
The 30-year-old was committed to take his trial at the next assizes hearing where he was sentenced to serve 6 months hard labour.
Under the headline "Parr's Rag-Picking Scandal – Revolting State Of Things", the St Helens Reporter on the 16th described some unsavoury activities on Parr's rubbish tip near Fleet Lane:
"The rags were gathered from middens and deposited in great numbers on the tip, and people turned out and raked amongst the filth and garbage for the rags, which they dried and sold to several rag merchants who called for them with motor vans.
"...[A local man] took our representative to the rear of the houses and showed him a long array of filthy rags, covered with excreta, drying in the sun. The less said about the smell the better."
And finally, on the 16th the St Helens Co-operative Society was again in court through problems with its milk.
It had been common practice for farmers and milk sellers to adulterate their milk with water and so the authorities would carry out regular checks.
A sample of the Co-op's milk had found it to be 9% deficient in fat and so a prosecution followed.
The Co-op's solicitor explained to the court that they were the largest milk dealers in St Helens, selling over 4,000 gallons of milk every week.
He said they repeatedly tested the milk and had written guarantees of pureness from the farmers of Lancashire and Cheshire who supplied the milk.
However, the magistrates fined the Co-operative Society 40 shillings and said there had been gross carelessness with instructions not carried out.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the barefooted Greenbank kids passing on bets, the 50 Irishmen fighting a dozen police, the Sutton Sheeting Sheds strike, the youth killed on a Rainford farm and the two widows of a dead miner that sought compensation.