IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (13th - 19th JUNE 1922)
This week's stories include the heavy death toll caused by a measles epidemic, St Helens miners are told they are treated worse than slaves, the illegal Sunday ice-cream sellers in St Helens and why many married women teachers in the town were expecting to be sacked.
We begin on the 13th with a performance by the British Legion Band on Parr Recreation Ground, one of many band performances during the summer that were promoted by the council's Parks Committee.
On the 14th the St Helens Medical Officer of Health told the Health Committee that the measles epidemic in the town had taken a heavy toll in May. As many as 1,119 cases had been notified to the authorities and 20 deaths had been caused. During April the number of notified cases had been 873, however, the contagious disease now appeared to be on the wane.
Very young children had suffered the most from the measles outbreak with a high number dying from pneumonia following attacks of measles. Such deaths had boosted the infantile mortality rate for May in St Helens to 88 per 1,000 births. Can you imagine that today? Out of a thousand children being born at Whiston Hospital, 88 of them not reaching their first birthday?
The Reporter on the 16th told of trouble in Thatto Heath when Abraham and Annie Hawcroft appeared in court accused of breaching the peace. A constable said that he had been in Sunbury Street when he saw Abraham Hawcroft stripped to the waist on his doorstep cursing "something cruel". Meanwhile his wife Annie was fighting with a neighbour. Just what had sparked the trouble was not stated in the report and both were bound over to keep the peace for six months.
In a separate case of breach of the peace, Thomas Leonard from Barber Street in Pocket Nook was said to have been fighting with an unknown man on wasteland near St Helens market. When the police descended on the pugilists, the other combatant made his escape. Leonard in court claimed he had no idea who the other man had been and that he was only defending himself after being attacked. Whether true or not, it was a good defence to the charge. The police could not prove otherwise and so the case against the bottlehand was dismissed.
I've described many cases in my '150 Years Ago' articles in which beggars were routinely sentenced to a week or two in Kirkdale Gaol. However, by 1922 times were a bit more humane and instead of prison, the magistrates would often sentence vagrants to leave town. Well, fining someone who had nothing was a waste of time and if the problem person could be shifted onto some other place, then all the better.
Thomas McLean of no fixed address appeared in St Helens Police Court this week charged with begging from customers in the Lingholme Hotel. Upon being searched at the police station, 33 pennies and 8 halfpennies were found in his possession. McLean said he wanted to obtain work in the shipyards at Glasgow and the Bench told him that if he promised to leave St Helens, the charge would be dropped.
A big talking point in the letters column of the Reporter was the recent announcement that the school fees for Cowley (pictured above) were set to rise. It was not a private school, as such, but parents were expected to contribute around £3 a term towards the cost of their child's education – although some scholarships were available. The question that correspondents demanded an answer to was simply why the increase had been considered necessary at a time when the rising cost of living was showing signs of stabilising.
The people running St Helens schools used to have some odd rules when it came to women teachers. In 1916 it was revealed that Cowley Girls School banned females from St Helens from teaching there. In fact it was claimed that nearly all secondary schools in the country practiced discrimination against women teachers from their own locality. Just why they did that I don't know – but St Helens Education Committee subsequently passed a resolution not to enforce the rule.
Women teachers were also expected to resign upon getting married – but that policy had also been revoked. This week the Reporter described how a rumour had "got about" that the council's Education Committee were bringing back the rule that dispensed with married women teachers. The Reporter subsequently made enquiries and discovered that the rumour wasn't true – although married women teachers could still end up unemployed.
That was because "drastic economies" were currently being planned for all council departments. This week the town's Medical Officer of Health revealed that two vacant health visitor posts would not be filled as part of the austerity drive. Similarly, the Education Committee had been told to make savings and a number of schoolteachers would lose their jobs.
Although the decision as to who would be sacked would be left up to the managers of each school, women could expect to be in the firing line. The Reporter wrote: "It may be taken for granted that, in order to prevent hardship, a married woman teacher without responsibilities would be among the first to be dispensed with, but there is no definite recommendation to the managers, who will make their own selections."
So who were these married women teachers that were considered to have no responsibilities? They were referring to those who were not widows or did not have a disabled husband. And so a woman teacher with four kids of her own would be considered not to have any responsibilities as long as her husband was in work.
The Reporter also described a shocking case of child neglect that had been brought by Inspector Lycett of the NSPCC, whose office was in Croppers Hill. The magistrates in St Helens Police Court were told that a miner called James Davies had regularly left his wife without cash to buy food for their children, while he had an affair with a widow. Inspector Lycett described Davies as a "callous, worthless, inhuman fellow" who had "maintained an attitude of defiance and indifference" throughout his investigation. Davies was sent to prison for two months with hard labour.
On Sundays, during the summer months, the parks of St Helens were well patronised. One would not have thought that the selling of ice-cream to the pleasure seekers on a sunny Sabbath did anyone any harm. But that was illegal under St Helens Corporation byelaws – although that didn't stop the ice-cream vendors from being out in force with their little barrows.
This week nine such sellers were prosecuted for hawking ice-cream on a Sunday in St Helens. Some were also selling sweets and oranges, which were just as illegal. Most traders were fined ten shillings, which was not too high and with a big demand for ice-cream on a Sunday, it was probably worth them taking the risk of being prosecuted.
On the 17th a garden fete was held in the Vicarage gardens of Christ Church in Eccleston (pictured above) with proceeds going towards their lychgate and clock funds. The Reporter wrote that the church's parishioners had earned "a big reputation for originality in the organising of amusements."
Another mass meeting of disenchanted coal miners was held at St Helens on the 18th. The main speaker was Tom Greenall, the President of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners Federation. That was the trade union that preceded the NUM. Mr Greenall said: "Taking into account the cost of living, miners' wages today are worse than they have been for half a century. In the key industry of the world [coal mining] the men engaged in it have a worse status than slaves. For the slave had a better standard of living in times gone by than the miners have."
Last year the colliers had reluctantly accepted a pay cut as a result of a fall in the price of coal on world markets. As a result, claimed Greenall, the miners were now 60% worse off than they had been in 1914.
Next week's stories will include the Sutton councillor on trial for perjury, the charabanc driver prosecuted for driving at 16 mph, the school baseball league in St Helens and the Duke Street garage in court for leaving a car on the street for half-an-hour.
We begin on the 13th with a performance by the British Legion Band on Parr Recreation Ground, one of many band performances during the summer that were promoted by the council's Parks Committee.
On the 14th the St Helens Medical Officer of Health told the Health Committee that the measles epidemic in the town had taken a heavy toll in May. As many as 1,119 cases had been notified to the authorities and 20 deaths had been caused. During April the number of notified cases had been 873, however, the contagious disease now appeared to be on the wane.
Very young children had suffered the most from the measles outbreak with a high number dying from pneumonia following attacks of measles. Such deaths had boosted the infantile mortality rate for May in St Helens to 88 per 1,000 births. Can you imagine that today? Out of a thousand children being born at Whiston Hospital, 88 of them not reaching their first birthday?
The Reporter on the 16th told of trouble in Thatto Heath when Abraham and Annie Hawcroft appeared in court accused of breaching the peace. A constable said that he had been in Sunbury Street when he saw Abraham Hawcroft stripped to the waist on his doorstep cursing "something cruel". Meanwhile his wife Annie was fighting with a neighbour. Just what had sparked the trouble was not stated in the report and both were bound over to keep the peace for six months.
In a separate case of breach of the peace, Thomas Leonard from Barber Street in Pocket Nook was said to have been fighting with an unknown man on wasteland near St Helens market. When the police descended on the pugilists, the other combatant made his escape. Leonard in court claimed he had no idea who the other man had been and that he was only defending himself after being attacked. Whether true or not, it was a good defence to the charge. The police could not prove otherwise and so the case against the bottlehand was dismissed.
I've described many cases in my '150 Years Ago' articles in which beggars were routinely sentenced to a week or two in Kirkdale Gaol. However, by 1922 times were a bit more humane and instead of prison, the magistrates would often sentence vagrants to leave town. Well, fining someone who had nothing was a waste of time and if the problem person could be shifted onto some other place, then all the better.
Thomas McLean of no fixed address appeared in St Helens Police Court this week charged with begging from customers in the Lingholme Hotel. Upon being searched at the police station, 33 pennies and 8 halfpennies were found in his possession. McLean said he wanted to obtain work in the shipyards at Glasgow and the Bench told him that if he promised to leave St Helens, the charge would be dropped.
The people running St Helens schools used to have some odd rules when it came to women teachers. In 1916 it was revealed that Cowley Girls School banned females from St Helens from teaching there. In fact it was claimed that nearly all secondary schools in the country practiced discrimination against women teachers from their own locality. Just why they did that I don't know – but St Helens Education Committee subsequently passed a resolution not to enforce the rule.
Women teachers were also expected to resign upon getting married – but that policy had also been revoked. This week the Reporter described how a rumour had "got about" that the council's Education Committee were bringing back the rule that dispensed with married women teachers. The Reporter subsequently made enquiries and discovered that the rumour wasn't true – although married women teachers could still end up unemployed.
That was because "drastic economies" were currently being planned for all council departments. This week the town's Medical Officer of Health revealed that two vacant health visitor posts would not be filled as part of the austerity drive. Similarly, the Education Committee had been told to make savings and a number of schoolteachers would lose their jobs.
Although the decision as to who would be sacked would be left up to the managers of each school, women could expect to be in the firing line. The Reporter wrote: "It may be taken for granted that, in order to prevent hardship, a married woman teacher without responsibilities would be among the first to be dispensed with, but there is no definite recommendation to the managers, who will make their own selections."
So who were these married women teachers that were considered to have no responsibilities? They were referring to those who were not widows or did not have a disabled husband. And so a woman teacher with four kids of her own would be considered not to have any responsibilities as long as her husband was in work.
The Reporter also described a shocking case of child neglect that had been brought by Inspector Lycett of the NSPCC, whose office was in Croppers Hill. The magistrates in St Helens Police Court were told that a miner called James Davies had regularly left his wife without cash to buy food for their children, while he had an affair with a widow. Inspector Lycett described Davies as a "callous, worthless, inhuman fellow" who had "maintained an attitude of defiance and indifference" throughout his investigation. Davies was sent to prison for two months with hard labour.
On Sundays, during the summer months, the parks of St Helens were well patronised. One would not have thought that the selling of ice-cream to the pleasure seekers on a sunny Sabbath did anyone any harm. But that was illegal under St Helens Corporation byelaws – although that didn't stop the ice-cream vendors from being out in force with their little barrows.
This week nine such sellers were prosecuted for hawking ice-cream on a Sunday in St Helens. Some were also selling sweets and oranges, which were just as illegal. Most traders were fined ten shillings, which was not too high and with a big demand for ice-cream on a Sunday, it was probably worth them taking the risk of being prosecuted.
Another mass meeting of disenchanted coal miners was held at St Helens on the 18th. The main speaker was Tom Greenall, the President of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners Federation. That was the trade union that preceded the NUM. Mr Greenall said: "Taking into account the cost of living, miners' wages today are worse than they have been for half a century. In the key industry of the world [coal mining] the men engaged in it have a worse status than slaves. For the slave had a better standard of living in times gone by than the miners have."
Last year the colliers had reluctantly accepted a pay cut as a result of a fall in the price of coal on world markets. As a result, claimed Greenall, the miners were now 60% worse off than they had been in 1914.
Next week's stories will include the Sutton councillor on trial for perjury, the charabanc driver prosecuted for driving at 16 mph, the school baseball league in St Helens and the Duke Street garage in court for leaving a car on the street for half-an-hour.
This week's stories include the heavy death toll caused by a measles epidemic, St Helens miners are told they are treated worse than slaves, the illegal Sunday ice-cream sellers in St Helens and why many married women teachers in the town were expecting to be sacked.
We begin on the 13th with a performance by the British Legion Band on Parr Recreation Ground, one of many band performances during the summer that were promoted by the council's Parks Committee.
On the 14th the St Helens Medical Officer of Health told the Health Committee that the measles epidemic in the town had taken a heavy toll in May.
As many as 1,119 cases had been notified to the authorities and 20 deaths had been caused.
During April the number of notified cases had been 873, however, the contagious disease now appeared to be on the wane.
Very young children had suffered the most from the measles outbreak with a high number dying from pneumonia following attacks of measles.
Such deaths had boosted the infantile mortality rate for May in St Helens to 88 per 1,000 births.
Can you imagine that today? Out of a thousand children being born at Whiston Hospital, 88 of them not reaching their first birthday?
The Reporter on the 16th told of trouble in Thatto Heath when Abraham and Annie Hawcroft appeared in court accused of breaching the peace.
A constable said that he had been in Sunbury Street when he saw Abraham Hawcroft stripped to the waist on his doorstep cursing "something cruel". Meanwhile his wife Annie was fighting with a neighbour.
Just what had sparked the trouble was not stated in the report and both were bound over to keep the peace for six months.
In a separate case of breach of the peace, Thomas Leonard from Barber Street in Pocket Nook was said to have been fighting with an unknown man on wasteland near St Helens market.
When the police descended on the pugilists, the other combatant made his escape.
Leonard in court claimed he had no idea who the other man had been and that he was only defending himself after being attacked.
Whether true or not, it was a good defence to the charge. The police could not prove otherwise and so the case against the bottlehand was dismissed.
I've described many cases in my '150 Years Ago' articles in which beggars were routinely sentenced to a week or two in Kirkdale Gaol.
However, by 1922 times were a bit more humane and instead of prison, the magistrates would often sentence vagrants to leave town.
Well, fining someone who had nothing was a waste of time and if the problem person could be shifted onto some other place, then all the better.
Thomas McLean of no fixed address appeared in St Helens Police Court this week charged with begging from customers in the Lingholme Hotel.
Upon being searched at the police station, 33 pennies and 8 halfpennies were found in his possession.
McLean said he wanted to obtain work in the shipyards at Glasgow and the Bench told him that if he promised to leave St Helens, the charge would be dropped.
A big talking point in the letters column of the Reporter was the recent announcement that the school fees for Cowley (pictured above) were set to rise.
It was not a private school, as such, but parents were expected to contribute around £3 a term towards the cost of their child's education – although some scholarships were available.
The question that correspondents demanded an answer to was simply why the increase had been considered necessary at a time when the rising cost of living was showing signs of stabilising.
The people running St Helens schools used to have some odd rules when it came to women teachers.
In 1916 it was revealed that Cowley Girls School banned females from St Helens from teaching there.
In fact it was claimed that nearly all secondary schools in the country practiced discrimination against women teachers from their own locality.
Just why they did that I don't know – but St Helens Education Committee subsequently passed a resolution not to enforce the rule.
Women teachers were also expected to resign upon getting married – but that policy had also been revoked.
This week the Reporter described how a rumour had "got about" that the council's Education Committee were bringing back the rule that dispensed with married women teachers.
The Reporter subsequently made enquiries and discovered that the rumour wasn't true – although married women teachers could still end up unemployed.
That was because "drastic economies" were currently being planned for all council departments.
This week the town's Medical Officer of Health revealed that two vacant health visitor posts would not be filled as part of the austerity drive.
Similarly, the Education Committee had been told to make savings and a number of schoolteachers would lose their jobs.
Although the decision as to who would be sacked would be left up to the managers of each school, women could expect to be in the firing line. The Reporter wrote:
"It may be taken for granted that, in order to prevent hardship, a married woman teacher without responsibilities would be among the first to be dispensed with, but there is no definite recommendation to the managers, who will make their own selections."
So who were these married women teachers that were considered to have no responsibilities?
They were referring to those who were not widows or did not have a disabled husband.
And so a woman teacher with four kids of her own would be considered not to have any responsibilities as long as her husband was in work.
The Reporter also described a shocking case of child neglect that had been brought by Inspector Lycett of the NSPCC, whose office was in Croppers Hill.
The magistrates in St Helens Police Court were told that a miner called James Davies had regularly left his wife without cash to buy food for their children, while he had an affair with a widow.
Inspector Lycett described Davies as a "callous, worthless, inhuman fellow" who had "maintained an attitude of defiance and indifference" throughout his investigation.
Davies was sent to prison for two months with hard labour.
On Sundays, during the summer months, the parks of St Helens were well patronised.
One would not have thought that the selling of ice-cream to the pleasure seekers on a sunny Sabbath did anyone any harm.
But that was illegal under St Helens Corporation byelaws – although that didn't stop the ice-cream vendors from being out in force with their little barrows.
This week nine such sellers were prosecuted for hawking ice-cream on a Sunday in St Helens. Some were also selling sweets and oranges, which were just as illegal.
Most traders were fined ten shillings, which was not too high and with a big demand for ice-cream on a Sunday, it was probably worth them taking the risk of being prosecuted.
On the 17th a garden fete was held in the Vicarage gardens of Christ Church in Eccleston (pictured above) with proceeds going towards their lychgate and clock funds.
The Reporter wrote that the church's parishioners had earned "a big reputation for originality in the organising of amusements."
Another mass meeting of disenchanted coal miners was held at St Helens on the 18th.
The main speaker was Tom Greenall, the President of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners Federation. That was the trade union that preceded the NUM.
Mr Greenall said: "Taking into account the cost of living, miners' wages today are worse than they have been for half a century. In the key industry of the world [coal mining] the men engaged in it have a worse status than slaves. For the slave had a better standard of living in times gone by than the miners have."
Last year the colliers had reluctantly accepted a pay cut as a result of a fall in the price of coal on world markets.
As a result, claimed Greenall, the miners were now 60% worse off than they had been in 1914.
Next week's stories will include the Sutton councillor on trial for perjury, the charabanc driver prosecuted for driving at 16 mph, the school baseball league in St Helens and the Duke Street garage in court for leaving a car on the street for half-an-hour.
We begin on the 13th with a performance by the British Legion Band on Parr Recreation Ground, one of many band performances during the summer that were promoted by the council's Parks Committee.
On the 14th the St Helens Medical Officer of Health told the Health Committee that the measles epidemic in the town had taken a heavy toll in May.
As many as 1,119 cases had been notified to the authorities and 20 deaths had been caused.
During April the number of notified cases had been 873, however, the contagious disease now appeared to be on the wane.
Very young children had suffered the most from the measles outbreak with a high number dying from pneumonia following attacks of measles.
Such deaths had boosted the infantile mortality rate for May in St Helens to 88 per 1,000 births.
Can you imagine that today? Out of a thousand children being born at Whiston Hospital, 88 of them not reaching their first birthday?
The Reporter on the 16th told of trouble in Thatto Heath when Abraham and Annie Hawcroft appeared in court accused of breaching the peace.
A constable said that he had been in Sunbury Street when he saw Abraham Hawcroft stripped to the waist on his doorstep cursing "something cruel". Meanwhile his wife Annie was fighting with a neighbour.
Just what had sparked the trouble was not stated in the report and both were bound over to keep the peace for six months.
In a separate case of breach of the peace, Thomas Leonard from Barber Street in Pocket Nook was said to have been fighting with an unknown man on wasteland near St Helens market.
When the police descended on the pugilists, the other combatant made his escape.
Leonard in court claimed he had no idea who the other man had been and that he was only defending himself after being attacked.
Whether true or not, it was a good defence to the charge. The police could not prove otherwise and so the case against the bottlehand was dismissed.
I've described many cases in my '150 Years Ago' articles in which beggars were routinely sentenced to a week or two in Kirkdale Gaol.
However, by 1922 times were a bit more humane and instead of prison, the magistrates would often sentence vagrants to leave town.
Well, fining someone who had nothing was a waste of time and if the problem person could be shifted onto some other place, then all the better.
Thomas McLean of no fixed address appeared in St Helens Police Court this week charged with begging from customers in the Lingholme Hotel.
Upon being searched at the police station, 33 pennies and 8 halfpennies were found in his possession.
McLean said he wanted to obtain work in the shipyards at Glasgow and the Bench told him that if he promised to leave St Helens, the charge would be dropped.
It was not a private school, as such, but parents were expected to contribute around £3 a term towards the cost of their child's education – although some scholarships were available.
The question that correspondents demanded an answer to was simply why the increase had been considered necessary at a time when the rising cost of living was showing signs of stabilising.
The people running St Helens schools used to have some odd rules when it came to women teachers.
In 1916 it was revealed that Cowley Girls School banned females from St Helens from teaching there.
In fact it was claimed that nearly all secondary schools in the country practiced discrimination against women teachers from their own locality.
Just why they did that I don't know – but St Helens Education Committee subsequently passed a resolution not to enforce the rule.
Women teachers were also expected to resign upon getting married – but that policy had also been revoked.
This week the Reporter described how a rumour had "got about" that the council's Education Committee were bringing back the rule that dispensed with married women teachers.
The Reporter subsequently made enquiries and discovered that the rumour wasn't true – although married women teachers could still end up unemployed.
That was because "drastic economies" were currently being planned for all council departments.
This week the town's Medical Officer of Health revealed that two vacant health visitor posts would not be filled as part of the austerity drive.
Similarly, the Education Committee had been told to make savings and a number of schoolteachers would lose their jobs.
Although the decision as to who would be sacked would be left up to the managers of each school, women could expect to be in the firing line. The Reporter wrote:
"It may be taken for granted that, in order to prevent hardship, a married woman teacher without responsibilities would be among the first to be dispensed with, but there is no definite recommendation to the managers, who will make their own selections."
So who were these married women teachers that were considered to have no responsibilities?
They were referring to those who were not widows or did not have a disabled husband.
And so a woman teacher with four kids of her own would be considered not to have any responsibilities as long as her husband was in work.
The Reporter also described a shocking case of child neglect that had been brought by Inspector Lycett of the NSPCC, whose office was in Croppers Hill.
The magistrates in St Helens Police Court were told that a miner called James Davies had regularly left his wife without cash to buy food for their children, while he had an affair with a widow.
Inspector Lycett described Davies as a "callous, worthless, inhuman fellow" who had "maintained an attitude of defiance and indifference" throughout his investigation.
Davies was sent to prison for two months with hard labour.
On Sundays, during the summer months, the parks of St Helens were well patronised.
One would not have thought that the selling of ice-cream to the pleasure seekers on a sunny Sabbath did anyone any harm.
But that was illegal under St Helens Corporation byelaws – although that didn't stop the ice-cream vendors from being out in force with their little barrows.
This week nine such sellers were prosecuted for hawking ice-cream on a Sunday in St Helens. Some were also selling sweets and oranges, which were just as illegal.
Most traders were fined ten shillings, which was not too high and with a big demand for ice-cream on a Sunday, it was probably worth them taking the risk of being prosecuted.
The Reporter wrote that the church's parishioners had earned "a big reputation for originality in the organising of amusements."
Another mass meeting of disenchanted coal miners was held at St Helens on the 18th.
The main speaker was Tom Greenall, the President of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners Federation. That was the trade union that preceded the NUM.
Mr Greenall said: "Taking into account the cost of living, miners' wages today are worse than they have been for half a century. In the key industry of the world [coal mining] the men engaged in it have a worse status than slaves. For the slave had a better standard of living in times gone by than the miners have."
Last year the colliers had reluctantly accepted a pay cut as a result of a fall in the price of coal on world markets.
As a result, claimed Greenall, the miners were now 60% worse off than they had been in 1914.
Next week's stories will include the Sutton councillor on trial for perjury, the charabanc driver prosecuted for driving at 16 mph, the school baseball league in St Helens and the Duke Street garage in court for leaving a car on the street for half-an-hour.