IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 14 - 20 SEPTEMBER 1926
This week's many stories include the outcropping coal thieves that were brought to book, the foundation stone is laid for the new church of St Teresa in Newtown, the street that had 200 people in an uproar, the injured boy at a copper works who was denied compensation and the tearful old man caught taking coal from the bottleworks where he'd been employed for 49 years.
We begin on the 14th with a report in the Daily Herald in which they stated that the previous day had been a test for the striking miners of Lancashire. That was when the men could return to their jobs on newly revised terms. The strike – or lockout as the miners preferred to call it – had occurred because they had refused to accept a reduction in their wages and a longer working day. These had been introduced after the government's removal of a subsidy.
Under the newly revised offer, the men would work an extra hour a day but for 8 months there would be no reduction in their pay. The Herald wrote: "The miners' reply was emphatic. Of the mineworkers in St. Helens, Lancs., only one man returned to work yesterday. In the Leigh district not one man returned."
During the miners' strike, free coal could be obtained by digging it out from where old mines outcropped at the surface. But that was a dangerous business and a couple of weeks ago two men had been killed in an outcrop accident at Old Hall Farm at Garswood when the earth suddenly collapsed.
The owners of outcrop sites also objected to people trespassing on their land and so on the 14th, seven men from the Park Road area appeared in St Helens Petty Sessions charged with stealing a ton of coal valued at £2. The Orrell Estate Company had brought the prosecution and they insisted they were not being vindictive but wanted to protect their property rights and cooperate with the police in maintaining law and order.
They claimed that during the 1921 miners' strike, something like 20,000 tons of coal had been taken from their estate. Curiously, some of the seven defendants claimed they had been detained while simply out for a walk. But as they fined the men 5 or 10 shillings each, the magistrates pointed out that 1am when it was raining was a strange time to go for a stroll!
John Martindale from Sandy Lane in Moss Bank had been working at Nuttalls bottleworks in St Helens for 49 years and was currently employed as a night watchman. He was described as an old man aged 60 and so must have joined the firm when 11. In a separate case he was fined 5 shillings after stealing 24 pounds of coal from the works.
A constable had seen him at 5:30am and asked why his pockets were bulging. Mr Martindale was said to have burst into tears as he admitted carrying stolen coal. It was his first offence and the magistrates were told he was very likely to be sacked, bringing his 49 years of service to an ignominious end.
Railway sidings where wagons containing coal were often temporarily located were popular targets for coal thieves at the dead of night. And six young men also appeared in court after being found at 1:30am carrying coal belonging to the St Helens Corporation gasworks that they had taken from a railway siding in Phythian Street. They were fined between 5 shillings and £1.
On the 15th at a meeting of the Central Children's Care Committee, it was stated that there were a large number of poorly clad children in the town. The committee called on the Mayor to make a grant from his distress fund in order to provide footwear to the most needy children in St Helens. The Mayor replied that his fund was a little overspent.
But in view of the extreme urgency, he said he had already donated £5 for materials to seven shoemakers in different parts of the town. It was explained that those persons made clogs for "these unfortunate little ones" out of old shoes. The Mayor added that in future he intended to devote his distress fund to the provision of footwear for children and called for public donations of both money and old shoes that could be recycled.
The St Helens Reporter on the 17th described how an extraordinary statement had been made at a miners' meeting at Sutton Manor this week. A man called Davies, who was the president of the local branch of the Miners Association, had claimed that several men who were "noted pugilists and fighters" were employed at Sutton Manor Colliery. He claimed that they had been walking the streets, challenging union men to fights and using language of a "nauseating and irritating character".
The Reporter also described how the foundation stone had been laid for the temporary new church of St Teresa in Newtown. Bishop Dobson, the Auxiliary Bishop of Liverpool, did the honours and told those assembled that he understood that the Catholics of St Helens claimed the proud distinction that it was the most Catholic town in England as far as numbers were concerned.
The mission of St Teresa had begun as a large school chapel that now had almost 600 scholars and the temporary church they were constructing – prior to a permanent place of worship being built – would seat a further 600 churchgoers.
There used to be many shocking accidents involving young people working in factories who, in some fashion, got themselves entangled in machines. It does seem astonishing that such dangerous machinery was not properly fenced off, so that only properly trained operatives went anywhere near it.
Many boys and girls were killed or lost arms after such accidents and Joseph Knapper of Sutton Road seems fortunate to have escaped with only crushed fingers after his hand had been drawn into such a machine. The 16-year-old worked for Thomas Bolton and Sons who ran the Sutton Copper Works.
On the 15th in St Helens County Court (pictured above), his father brought a claim for compensation for his son's injury. But the company said the boy should never have been near the machine, although Thomas insisted that a foreman had told him to undertake some work on it. The judge supported the employer's version of events and said he thought a prank was the cause of the accident, which the boy had brought upon himself and consequently he dismissed the case.
The dock in the courtroom at Wigan must have been bulging on the 17th when nearly 80 young men from Haydock and St Helens were summoned for causing wilful damage to land in Ashton-in-Makerfield. Many had cycled to get to the place in Bluebell Wood and some had walked there.
But they were not vandals, as they were another group caught taking coal from old outcrop mines, not far from where the two miners had recently lost their lives. Some damage was done to trees, as their branches were used as makeshift pit props. The men were all bound over for 12 months and ordered to pay the costs and the amount of damage claimed.
Giving evidence in a court case on behalf of the police could be a dangerous business in some parts of St Helens. Margaret Brownbill, Joseph Brownbill, Gertrude Duffy, Jane Duffy and Henry Brownbill appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 17th accused of breaching the peace in Havelock Street, which used to be in the Croppers Hill area.
Mary Orford told the court that her husband was in hospital and that she had been on her doorstep seeing her children off to school when the Brownbills threatened her for giving evidence against their parents. "We will give you the finest thrashing you ever had in your life", they were alleged to have said. The Brownbills then dragged Mrs Orford into the street and struck her.
The Reporter described the latter as "remarkably voluble" during her testimony, which is a nice way of calling someone loud-mouthed! In their version the Liverpool Evening Express wrote: "There was a general fight, and several of them had bumps on their heads as big as duck eggs. There were over 200 people all engaged in an uproar." Sgt Stevenson described the situation as "pandemonium" and all the parties were bound over.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the carnival dance in Rainford Village Hall, Lord John Sanger's Circus comes to town, the two little children from Dentons Green who ran away from home and the Lea Green farmer in a pickle with his pikel.
We begin on the 14th with a report in the Daily Herald in which they stated that the previous day had been a test for the striking miners of Lancashire. That was when the men could return to their jobs on newly revised terms. The strike – or lockout as the miners preferred to call it – had occurred because they had refused to accept a reduction in their wages and a longer working day. These had been introduced after the government's removal of a subsidy.
Under the newly revised offer, the men would work an extra hour a day but for 8 months there would be no reduction in their pay. The Herald wrote: "The miners' reply was emphatic. Of the mineworkers in St. Helens, Lancs., only one man returned to work yesterday. In the Leigh district not one man returned."
During the miners' strike, free coal could be obtained by digging it out from where old mines outcropped at the surface. But that was a dangerous business and a couple of weeks ago two men had been killed in an outcrop accident at Old Hall Farm at Garswood when the earth suddenly collapsed.
The owners of outcrop sites also objected to people trespassing on their land and so on the 14th, seven men from the Park Road area appeared in St Helens Petty Sessions charged with stealing a ton of coal valued at £2. The Orrell Estate Company had brought the prosecution and they insisted they were not being vindictive but wanted to protect their property rights and cooperate with the police in maintaining law and order.
They claimed that during the 1921 miners' strike, something like 20,000 tons of coal had been taken from their estate. Curiously, some of the seven defendants claimed they had been detained while simply out for a walk. But as they fined the men 5 or 10 shillings each, the magistrates pointed out that 1am when it was raining was a strange time to go for a stroll!
John Martindale from Sandy Lane in Moss Bank had been working at Nuttalls bottleworks in St Helens for 49 years and was currently employed as a night watchman. He was described as an old man aged 60 and so must have joined the firm when 11. In a separate case he was fined 5 shillings after stealing 24 pounds of coal from the works.
A constable had seen him at 5:30am and asked why his pockets were bulging. Mr Martindale was said to have burst into tears as he admitted carrying stolen coal. It was his first offence and the magistrates were told he was very likely to be sacked, bringing his 49 years of service to an ignominious end.
Railway sidings where wagons containing coal were often temporarily located were popular targets for coal thieves at the dead of night. And six young men also appeared in court after being found at 1:30am carrying coal belonging to the St Helens Corporation gasworks that they had taken from a railway siding in Phythian Street. They were fined between 5 shillings and £1.
On the 15th at a meeting of the Central Children's Care Committee, it was stated that there were a large number of poorly clad children in the town. The committee called on the Mayor to make a grant from his distress fund in order to provide footwear to the most needy children in St Helens. The Mayor replied that his fund was a little overspent.
But in view of the extreme urgency, he said he had already donated £5 for materials to seven shoemakers in different parts of the town. It was explained that those persons made clogs for "these unfortunate little ones" out of old shoes. The Mayor added that in future he intended to devote his distress fund to the provision of footwear for children and called for public donations of both money and old shoes that could be recycled.
The St Helens Reporter on the 17th described how an extraordinary statement had been made at a miners' meeting at Sutton Manor this week. A man called Davies, who was the president of the local branch of the Miners Association, had claimed that several men who were "noted pugilists and fighters" were employed at Sutton Manor Colliery. He claimed that they had been walking the streets, challenging union men to fights and using language of a "nauseating and irritating character".
The Reporter also described how the foundation stone had been laid for the temporary new church of St Teresa in Newtown. Bishop Dobson, the Auxiliary Bishop of Liverpool, did the honours and told those assembled that he understood that the Catholics of St Helens claimed the proud distinction that it was the most Catholic town in England as far as numbers were concerned.
The mission of St Teresa had begun as a large school chapel that now had almost 600 scholars and the temporary church they were constructing – prior to a permanent place of worship being built – would seat a further 600 churchgoers.
There used to be many shocking accidents involving young people working in factories who, in some fashion, got themselves entangled in machines. It does seem astonishing that such dangerous machinery was not properly fenced off, so that only properly trained operatives went anywhere near it.
Many boys and girls were killed or lost arms after such accidents and Joseph Knapper of Sutton Road seems fortunate to have escaped with only crushed fingers after his hand had been drawn into such a machine. The 16-year-old worked for Thomas Bolton and Sons who ran the Sutton Copper Works.
The dock in the courtroom at Wigan must have been bulging on the 17th when nearly 80 young men from Haydock and St Helens were summoned for causing wilful damage to land in Ashton-in-Makerfield. Many had cycled to get to the place in Bluebell Wood and some had walked there.
But they were not vandals, as they were another group caught taking coal from old outcrop mines, not far from where the two miners had recently lost their lives. Some damage was done to trees, as their branches were used as makeshift pit props. The men were all bound over for 12 months and ordered to pay the costs and the amount of damage claimed.
Giving evidence in a court case on behalf of the police could be a dangerous business in some parts of St Helens. Margaret Brownbill, Joseph Brownbill, Gertrude Duffy, Jane Duffy and Henry Brownbill appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 17th accused of breaching the peace in Havelock Street, which used to be in the Croppers Hill area.
Mary Orford told the court that her husband was in hospital and that she had been on her doorstep seeing her children off to school when the Brownbills threatened her for giving evidence against their parents. "We will give you the finest thrashing you ever had in your life", they were alleged to have said. The Brownbills then dragged Mrs Orford into the street and struck her.
The Reporter described the latter as "remarkably voluble" during her testimony, which is a nice way of calling someone loud-mouthed! In their version the Liverpool Evening Express wrote: "There was a general fight, and several of them had bumps on their heads as big as duck eggs. There were over 200 people all engaged in an uproar." Sgt Stevenson described the situation as "pandemonium" and all the parties were bound over.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the carnival dance in Rainford Village Hall, Lord John Sanger's Circus comes to town, the two little children from Dentons Green who ran away from home and the Lea Green farmer in a pickle with his pikel.
This week's many stories include the outcropping coal thieves that were brought to book, the foundation stone is laid for the new church of St Teresa in Newtown, the street that had 200 people in an uproar, the injured boy at a copper works who was denied compensation and the tearful old man caught taking coal from the bottleworks where he'd been employed for 49 years.
We begin on the 14th with a report in the Daily Herald in which they stated that the previous day had been a test for the striking miners of Lancashire.
That was when the men could return to their jobs on newly revised terms.
The strike – or lockout as the miners preferred to call it – had occurred because they had refused to accept a reduction in their wages and a longer working day.
These had been introduced after the government's removal of a subsidy.
Under the newly revised offer, the men would work an extra hour a day but for 8 months there would be no reduction in their pay.
The Herald wrote: "The miners' reply was emphatic. Of the mineworkers in St. Helens, Lancs., only one man returned to work yesterday. In the Leigh district not one man returned."
During the miners' strike, free coal could be obtained by digging it out from where old mines outcropped at the surface.
But that was a dangerous business and a couple of weeks ago two men had been killed in an outcrop accident at Old Hall Farm at Garswood when the earth suddenly collapsed.
The owners of outcrop sites also objected to people trespassing on their land and so on the 14th, seven men from the Park Road area appeared in St Helens Petty Sessions charged with stealing a ton of coal valued at £2.
The Orrell Estate Company had brought the prosecution and they insisted they were not being vindictive but wanted to protect their property rights and cooperate with the police in maintaining law and order.
They claimed that during the 1921 miners' strike, something like 20,000 tons of coal had been taken from their estate.
Curiously, some of the seven defendants claimed they had been detained while simply out for a walk.
But as they fined the men 5 or 10 shillings each, the magistrates pointed out that 1am when it was raining was a strange time to go for a stroll!
John Martindale from Sandy Lane in Moss Bank had been working at Nuttalls bottleworks in St Helens for 49 years and was currently employed as a night watchman.
He was described as an old man aged 60 and so must have joined the firm when 11.
In a separate case he was fined 5 shillings after stealing 24 pounds of coal from the works.
A constable had seen him at 5:30am and asked why his pockets were bulging.
Mr Martindale was said to have burst into tears as he admitted carrying stolen coal.
It was his first offence and the magistrates were told he was very likely to be sacked, bringing his 49 years of service to an ignominious end.
Railway sidings where wagons containing coal were often temporarily located were popular targets for coal thieves at the dead of night.
And six young men also appeared in court after being found at 1:30am carrying coal belonging to the St Helens Corporation gasworks that they had taken from a railway siding in Phythian Street. They were fined between 5 shillings and £1.
On the 15th at a meeting of the Central Children's Care Committee, it was stated that there were a large number of poorly clad children in the town.
The committee called on the Mayor to make a grant from his distress fund in order to provide footwear to the most needy children in St Helens.
The Mayor replied that his fund was a little overspent. But in view of the extreme urgency, he said he had already donated £5 for materials to seven shoemakers in different parts of the town.
It was explained that those persons made clogs for "these unfortunate little ones" out of old shoes.
The Mayor added that in future he intended to devote his distress fund to the provision of footwear for children and called for public donations of both money and old shoes that could be recycled.
The St Helens Reporter on the 17th described how an extraordinary statement had been made at a miners' meeting at Sutton Manor this week.
A man called Davies, who was the president of the local branch of the Miners Association, had claimed that several men who were "noted pugilists and fighters" were employed at Sutton Manor Colliery.
He claimed that they had been walking the streets, challenging union men to fights and using language of a "nauseating and irritating character".
The Reporter also described how the foundation stone had been laid for the temporary new church of St Teresa in Newtown.
Bishop Dobson, the Auxiliary Bishop of Liverpool, did the honours and told those assembled that he understood that the Catholics of St Helens claimed the proud distinction that it was the most Catholic town in England as far as numbers were concerned.
The mission of St Teresa had begun as a large school chapel that now had almost 600 scholars and the temporary church they were constructing – prior to a permanent place of worship being built – would seat a further 600 churchgoers.
There used to be many shocking accidents involving young people working in factories who, in some fashion, got themselves entangled in machines.
It does seem astonishing that such dangerous machinery was not properly fenced off, so that only properly trained operatives went anywhere near it.
Many boys and girls were killed or lost arms after such accidents and Joseph Knapper of Sutton Road seems fortunate to have escaped with only crushed fingers after his hand had been drawn into such a machine.
The 16-year-old worked for Thomas Bolton and Sons who ran the Sutton Copper Works.
On the 15th in St Helens County Court (pictured above), his father brought a claim for compensation for his son's injury.
But the company said the boy should never have been near the machine, although Thomas insisted that a foreman had told him to undertake some work on it.
The judge supported the employer's version of events and said he thought a prank was the cause of the accident, which the boy had brought upon himself and consequently he dismissed the case.
The dock in the courtroom at Wigan must have been bulging on the 17th when nearly 80 young men from Haydock and St Helens were summoned for causing wilful damage to land in Ashton-in-Makerfield.
Many had cycled to get to the place in Bluebell Wood and some had walked there.
But they were not vandals, as they were another group caught taking coal from old outcrop mines, not far from where the two miners had recently lost their lives.
Some damage was done to trees, as their branches were used as makeshift pit props.
The men were all bound over for 12 months and ordered to pay the costs and the amount of damage claimed.
Giving evidence in a court case on behalf of the police could be a dangerous business in some parts of St Helens.
Margaret Brownbill, Joseph Brownbill, Gertrude Duffy, Jane Duffy and Henry Brownbill appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 17th accused of breaching the peace in Havelock Street, which used to be in the Croppers Hill area.
Mary Orford told the court that her husband was in hospital and that she had been on her doorstep seeing her children off to school when the Brownbills threatened her for giving evidence against their parents.
"We will give you the finest thrashing you ever had in your life", they were alleged to have said.
The Brownbills then dragged Mrs Orford into the street and struck her. The Reporter described the latter as "remarkably voluble" during her testimony, which is a nice way of calling someone loud-mouthed!
In their version the Liverpool Evening Express wrote: "There was a general fight, and several of them had bumps on their heads as big as duck eggs. There were over 200 people all engaged in an uproar."
Sgt Stevenson described the situation as "pandemonium" and all the parties were bound over.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the carnival dance in Rainford Village Hall, Lord John Sanger's Circus comes to town, the two little children from Dentons Green who ran away from home and the Lea Green farmer in a pickle with his pikel.
We begin on the 14th with a report in the Daily Herald in which they stated that the previous day had been a test for the striking miners of Lancashire.
That was when the men could return to their jobs on newly revised terms.
The strike – or lockout as the miners preferred to call it – had occurred because they had refused to accept a reduction in their wages and a longer working day.
These had been introduced after the government's removal of a subsidy.
Under the newly revised offer, the men would work an extra hour a day but for 8 months there would be no reduction in their pay.
The Herald wrote: "The miners' reply was emphatic. Of the mineworkers in St. Helens, Lancs., only one man returned to work yesterday. In the Leigh district not one man returned."
During the miners' strike, free coal could be obtained by digging it out from where old mines outcropped at the surface.
But that was a dangerous business and a couple of weeks ago two men had been killed in an outcrop accident at Old Hall Farm at Garswood when the earth suddenly collapsed.
The owners of outcrop sites also objected to people trespassing on their land and so on the 14th, seven men from the Park Road area appeared in St Helens Petty Sessions charged with stealing a ton of coal valued at £2.
The Orrell Estate Company had brought the prosecution and they insisted they were not being vindictive but wanted to protect their property rights and cooperate with the police in maintaining law and order.
They claimed that during the 1921 miners' strike, something like 20,000 tons of coal had been taken from their estate.
Curiously, some of the seven defendants claimed they had been detained while simply out for a walk.
But as they fined the men 5 or 10 shillings each, the magistrates pointed out that 1am when it was raining was a strange time to go for a stroll!
John Martindale from Sandy Lane in Moss Bank had been working at Nuttalls bottleworks in St Helens for 49 years and was currently employed as a night watchman.
He was described as an old man aged 60 and so must have joined the firm when 11.
In a separate case he was fined 5 shillings after stealing 24 pounds of coal from the works.
A constable had seen him at 5:30am and asked why his pockets were bulging.
Mr Martindale was said to have burst into tears as he admitted carrying stolen coal.
It was his first offence and the magistrates were told he was very likely to be sacked, bringing his 49 years of service to an ignominious end.
Railway sidings where wagons containing coal were often temporarily located were popular targets for coal thieves at the dead of night.
And six young men also appeared in court after being found at 1:30am carrying coal belonging to the St Helens Corporation gasworks that they had taken from a railway siding in Phythian Street. They were fined between 5 shillings and £1.
On the 15th at a meeting of the Central Children's Care Committee, it was stated that there were a large number of poorly clad children in the town.
The committee called on the Mayor to make a grant from his distress fund in order to provide footwear to the most needy children in St Helens.
The Mayor replied that his fund was a little overspent. But in view of the extreme urgency, he said he had already donated £5 for materials to seven shoemakers in different parts of the town.
It was explained that those persons made clogs for "these unfortunate little ones" out of old shoes.
The Mayor added that in future he intended to devote his distress fund to the provision of footwear for children and called for public donations of both money and old shoes that could be recycled.
The St Helens Reporter on the 17th described how an extraordinary statement had been made at a miners' meeting at Sutton Manor this week.
A man called Davies, who was the president of the local branch of the Miners Association, had claimed that several men who were "noted pugilists and fighters" were employed at Sutton Manor Colliery.
He claimed that they had been walking the streets, challenging union men to fights and using language of a "nauseating and irritating character".
The Reporter also described how the foundation stone had been laid for the temporary new church of St Teresa in Newtown.
Bishop Dobson, the Auxiliary Bishop of Liverpool, did the honours and told those assembled that he understood that the Catholics of St Helens claimed the proud distinction that it was the most Catholic town in England as far as numbers were concerned.
The mission of St Teresa had begun as a large school chapel that now had almost 600 scholars and the temporary church they were constructing – prior to a permanent place of worship being built – would seat a further 600 churchgoers.
There used to be many shocking accidents involving young people working in factories who, in some fashion, got themselves entangled in machines.
It does seem astonishing that such dangerous machinery was not properly fenced off, so that only properly trained operatives went anywhere near it.
Many boys and girls were killed or lost arms after such accidents and Joseph Knapper of Sutton Road seems fortunate to have escaped with only crushed fingers after his hand had been drawn into such a machine.
The 16-year-old worked for Thomas Bolton and Sons who ran the Sutton Copper Works.
But the company said the boy should never have been near the machine, although Thomas insisted that a foreman had told him to undertake some work on it.
The judge supported the employer's version of events and said he thought a prank was the cause of the accident, which the boy had brought upon himself and consequently he dismissed the case.
The dock in the courtroom at Wigan must have been bulging on the 17th when nearly 80 young men from Haydock and St Helens were summoned for causing wilful damage to land in Ashton-in-Makerfield.
Many had cycled to get to the place in Bluebell Wood and some had walked there.
But they were not vandals, as they were another group caught taking coal from old outcrop mines, not far from where the two miners had recently lost their lives.
Some damage was done to trees, as their branches were used as makeshift pit props.
The men were all bound over for 12 months and ordered to pay the costs and the amount of damage claimed.
Giving evidence in a court case on behalf of the police could be a dangerous business in some parts of St Helens.
Margaret Brownbill, Joseph Brownbill, Gertrude Duffy, Jane Duffy and Henry Brownbill appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 17th accused of breaching the peace in Havelock Street, which used to be in the Croppers Hill area.
Mary Orford told the court that her husband was in hospital and that she had been on her doorstep seeing her children off to school when the Brownbills threatened her for giving evidence against their parents.
"We will give you the finest thrashing you ever had in your life", they were alleged to have said.
The Brownbills then dragged Mrs Orford into the street and struck her. The Reporter described the latter as "remarkably voluble" during her testimony, which is a nice way of calling someone loud-mouthed!
In their version the Liverpool Evening Express wrote: "There was a general fight, and several of them had bumps on their heads as big as duck eggs. There were over 200 people all engaged in an uproar."
Sgt Stevenson described the situation as "pandemonium" and all the parties were bound over.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the carnival dance in Rainford Village Hall, Lord John Sanger's Circus comes to town, the two little children from Dentons Green who ran away from home and the Lea Green farmer in a pickle with his pikel.