IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (15th - 21st NOVEMBER 1921)
This week's stories include how a strict family upbringing had led to the Dentons Green birth concealment, the Spanish alien and his organ, the motorbike in Church Street that was travelling at a big speed, a Peasley Cross bookie is brought to book and how mistaking poison for peppermint cost a man his life.
Three weeks ago I described the tragic case of Constance Maley of Dentons Green Lane. The 21-year-old student teacher at the Physical Training College at Aigburth had had a secret pregnancy and given birth at home without her family's knowledge. Her mother Margaret had found the remains of the child wrapped in newspapers inside a tin box within her daughter's bedroom. An inquest had decided that the male child had been still-born.
That was fortunate for Constance, as she could have been charged with death by neglect or worse. However, concealment of a birth was still a serious crime and on November 15th the young woman appeared in St Helens Police Court. From what was revealed at the hearing, it seemed that Constance's strict family had to bear part of the blame for what had occurred. The Liverpool Echo wrote:
"At St. Helens, to-day, Constance Mary Maley, aged twenty-one, a student at the Physical Training College, Aigburth, was committed for trial at the Manchester Assizes next week on a charge of concealment of birth. Her mother said that on October 24 she found the body of a newly-born male child in her daughter's bedroom. Her daughter had stayed at home on the Friday and Saturday previously, saying she was ill, but on the Monday she had gone to college as usual. Some time previously she had found two letters written to her daughter by a man living at Huyton, and the father spoke to the daughter about it, and remonstrated with her for having clandestine correspondence with any man.
"The girl is twenty-one, and her father told her that, as she was going to college, she must finish her training for a teacher before she began to court anybody, and she must also let him see the man she was going with. She promised to do this. After the evidence had been given, Mr. Davies [defence solicitor] said that the girl did not tell her mother or anybody because she was afraid of her parents. She was not aware of what it all meant, and as her parents were strict with all the family she said nothing about it to them. Bail was allowed."
At the subsequent Assizes hearing, Mary pleaded guilty to the charge of concealment and the judge bound her over "to come up for judgement if called upon". In other words the offence would be taken into account if she were ever in court again. It must have been a very distressing experience for the young woman, which was enhanced by all the details of her case being reported in newspapers.
The strict regulations controlling the residence of foreigners or "aliens" introduced during the war were largely still in place. Some found the rules confusing and Joseph Lostitch was not the first alien to walk into St Helens police station for advice – but then be arrested!
Lostitch was a Spaniard and, along with his wife, had been touring the country with his donkey and organ. I think the man played the organ – not the donkey! Presently the couple was stopping in a caravan on wasteland off Park Road and they requested permission from the police to tour the streets of St Helens.
However, foreigners needed to notify the police of their address within 48 hours of arrival in the town. And the Lostitchs had been in St Helens with their donkey and organ for nearly three days before going to the police station at the Town Hall. In court on the 15th with the aid of a translator, the couple were fined five shillings each.
The rules also applied to foreigners appearing at the town's theatres. So this week Dainty Lilian – who was known as "the merry little Hollander girl" and performing at the Hippodrome – would have had to merrily register at the police station.
So would The Anserouls, described as the "Belgian kings of double and treble somersaults". Perhaps they somersaulted their way along Corporation Street to sign their names in the police book!
The other turns at the Hippodrome included Pierce and Roslyn ("Those clever entertainers in a whirl of melody with accordion and song"); Togan and Geneva ("Wonderful jazz dancing on the wire"); Bernhart and Young ("Comedy act – fellows of infinite jest") and Louise Earle ("Entertainer at the piano").
On the 16th, Thatto Heath Council School unveiled a memorial dedicated to their old boys who had died in the war. The Reporter said: "The memorial, placed on the wall of the large hall, is a beautiful oak tablet, the central figure of which, surrounded by a wreath, symbolises victory and sacrifice."
The council's Health Committee met on the 16th and discussed a letter that they had received (seemingly from the Government) calling for the humane slaughter of animals. However, the letter's exemption in the case of meat for Jewish consumption caused some offence. The members agreed that humane methods were already employed in St Helens but could not understand how Jews were being treated differently.
Alderman Phythian said that the slaughter of animals to provide meat for Jewish people was the "most inhumane and cruel method in the country". The committee chairman, Ald. Bates, said it seemed hard to permit an exemption simply because the animal was going to be eaten by one particular section of the community. It was decided that the letter should lie on the table. That was the curious expression then often used, meaning no action needed to be taken.
People could be rather casual about medicines. Before coming to St Helens to found his pharmaceutical empire, Thomas Beecham spent a couple of years in Wigan where he kept a small druggist's shop on Wallgate. In 1858 a mother accidentally gave her 6-month-old child an overdose of dangerous laudanum from which the infant died. That was because Beecham's wife upon selling the woman the laudanum had poured it into an old bottle that had previously contained a harmless medicine – and she failed to change the label.
This week a glass warehouseman called Edward Lewis complained to his wife that he felt unwell and so went into the kitchen for a peppermint drink. He confused the bottle for one containing toxal, which the 50-year-old had used for some reason to dress a leg. As the name suggests, toxal is a toxic substance and after drinking some of it he was seized with violent pains. Edward Lewis was taken to the hospital at Whiston but was dead within a week.
The police campaign against young men on motorbikes (such as pictured here in Church Street) continued on the 21st when John Tyrer was accused of riding his machine at a dangerous speed. The much older magistrates in St Helens Police Court did not like the new craze for noisy bikes, which since the war had become much more affordable to single men in work. In September in dealing with a case of speeding in Eccleston Street, the Chairman of the Bench had declared: "These young fellows go like madmen along the street. They must think that everything belongs to them, and that the public are of no account whatever."
There was invariably a big discrepancy between the police estimate of the rider's speed and what the man in the dock claimed. A police officer told the court that the defendant had come round the corner at the top of Bridge Street on his motorbike at a "big speed" and nearly smashed himself up on a milk float in Church Street.
However, John Tyrer insisted that he was not going any more than 15 miles an hour, and the road had been perfectly clear. That claim received short shrift from Alderman Forster on the Bench. He said 15 mph in a main street at a turning corner where the road was greasy and slippery was dangerous even to motorists, much less to other people. Tyrer from Lowton was fined 20 shillings.
Another target of the police were the bookies and their associates on the streets – of which many of the latter were out of work and keen to make easy money. 19-year-old Joseph Cosgrove from Appleton Street appeared in court charged with street betting and circulating football coupons. Constables Reynolds and Ballantyne had arrested him at Peasley Cross two days earlier and he was found to have 32 football betting slips involving 134 bets. Also in his possession, Cosgrove had 18 football coupons. He was fined £10 on the first charge, with the other being dismissed.
And finally this item was in the Echo. As the unemployment crisis worsened so people were taking drastic action to get work: "A real unemployment tragedy was revealed at an inquest held at Sevenoaks on a man named William Hines, aged fifty, of South-street, Greenwich. The evidence showed that Hines had been lately walking long distances in search of employment. On Wednesday he left home in the morning and walked to Sevenoaks, where in the evening he was seen suddenly to stagger and fall, dying before medical aid could be obtained.
"A doctor stated that there was nothing to account for death, but the fact that stiffening set in within a quarter of an hour went to prove that the man must have been thoroughly exhausted, and he attributed death to heart failure through over-fatigue. He had apparently had no food since leaving his home. Returning a verdict of “Death from natural causes,” the coroner said Hines had died game while walking looking for work."
And, finally, finally, if you thought immigration quotas and poor treatment of detained illegal immigrants was new, think again. Recently a century ago, British citizens arriving at Ellis Island in New York harbour had been interned in detention camps because quotas has been exceeded – with some claiming poor treatment. This week the Echo wrote:
"Liverpool steamship companies commenting upon the declaration of the United States Commissioner-General of Immigration that: “Foreign steamship companies were responsible for the hardships on Ellis Island suffered by immigrants who were refused admission to the United States on their arrival because the quotas for their countries had been exhausted,” deny that as far as they, at any rate, are concerned they have infringed the United States new immigration law by taking out to America a number in excess of the quota permitted to them. It is pointed out that the steamship companies, as a mere matter of self-protection, are not likely wilfully to exceed their quotas, as the cost of keeping the surplus immigrants and ultimately returning them to their country of origin falls upon the shipowners."
Next week's stories will include the woman labelled a dirty, filthy, useless person, a grisly discovery in Eccleston, Robb Wilton performs at the Hippodrome and the one-legged ex-miner who the Sutton Heath Colliery Company was taking to the House of Lords.
Three weeks ago I described the tragic case of Constance Maley of Dentons Green Lane. The 21-year-old student teacher at the Physical Training College at Aigburth had had a secret pregnancy and given birth at home without her family's knowledge. Her mother Margaret had found the remains of the child wrapped in newspapers inside a tin box within her daughter's bedroom. An inquest had decided that the male child had been still-born.
That was fortunate for Constance, as she could have been charged with death by neglect or worse. However, concealment of a birth was still a serious crime and on November 15th the young woman appeared in St Helens Police Court. From what was revealed at the hearing, it seemed that Constance's strict family had to bear part of the blame for what had occurred. The Liverpool Echo wrote:
"At St. Helens, to-day, Constance Mary Maley, aged twenty-one, a student at the Physical Training College, Aigburth, was committed for trial at the Manchester Assizes next week on a charge of concealment of birth. Her mother said that on October 24 she found the body of a newly-born male child in her daughter's bedroom. Her daughter had stayed at home on the Friday and Saturday previously, saying she was ill, but on the Monday she had gone to college as usual. Some time previously she had found two letters written to her daughter by a man living at Huyton, and the father spoke to the daughter about it, and remonstrated with her for having clandestine correspondence with any man.
"The girl is twenty-one, and her father told her that, as she was going to college, she must finish her training for a teacher before she began to court anybody, and she must also let him see the man she was going with. She promised to do this. After the evidence had been given, Mr. Davies [defence solicitor] said that the girl did not tell her mother or anybody because she was afraid of her parents. She was not aware of what it all meant, and as her parents were strict with all the family she said nothing about it to them. Bail was allowed."
At the subsequent Assizes hearing, Mary pleaded guilty to the charge of concealment and the judge bound her over "to come up for judgement if called upon". In other words the offence would be taken into account if she were ever in court again. It must have been a very distressing experience for the young woman, which was enhanced by all the details of her case being reported in newspapers.
The strict regulations controlling the residence of foreigners or "aliens" introduced during the war were largely still in place. Some found the rules confusing and Joseph Lostitch was not the first alien to walk into St Helens police station for advice – but then be arrested!
Lostitch was a Spaniard and, along with his wife, had been touring the country with his donkey and organ. I think the man played the organ – not the donkey! Presently the couple was stopping in a caravan on wasteland off Park Road and they requested permission from the police to tour the streets of St Helens.
However, foreigners needed to notify the police of their address within 48 hours of arrival in the town. And the Lostitchs had been in St Helens with their donkey and organ for nearly three days before going to the police station at the Town Hall. In court on the 15th with the aid of a translator, the couple were fined five shillings each.
The rules also applied to foreigners appearing at the town's theatres. So this week Dainty Lilian – who was known as "the merry little Hollander girl" and performing at the Hippodrome – would have had to merrily register at the police station.
So would The Anserouls, described as the "Belgian kings of double and treble somersaults". Perhaps they somersaulted their way along Corporation Street to sign their names in the police book!
The other turns at the Hippodrome included Pierce and Roslyn ("Those clever entertainers in a whirl of melody with accordion and song"); Togan and Geneva ("Wonderful jazz dancing on the wire"); Bernhart and Young ("Comedy act – fellows of infinite jest") and Louise Earle ("Entertainer at the piano").
On the 16th, Thatto Heath Council School unveiled a memorial dedicated to their old boys who had died in the war. The Reporter said: "The memorial, placed on the wall of the large hall, is a beautiful oak tablet, the central figure of which, surrounded by a wreath, symbolises victory and sacrifice."
The council's Health Committee met on the 16th and discussed a letter that they had received (seemingly from the Government) calling for the humane slaughter of animals. However, the letter's exemption in the case of meat for Jewish consumption caused some offence. The members agreed that humane methods were already employed in St Helens but could not understand how Jews were being treated differently.
Alderman Phythian said that the slaughter of animals to provide meat for Jewish people was the "most inhumane and cruel method in the country". The committee chairman, Ald. Bates, said it seemed hard to permit an exemption simply because the animal was going to be eaten by one particular section of the community. It was decided that the letter should lie on the table. That was the curious expression then often used, meaning no action needed to be taken.
People could be rather casual about medicines. Before coming to St Helens to found his pharmaceutical empire, Thomas Beecham spent a couple of years in Wigan where he kept a small druggist's shop on Wallgate. In 1858 a mother accidentally gave her 6-month-old child an overdose of dangerous laudanum from which the infant died. That was because Beecham's wife upon selling the woman the laudanum had poured it into an old bottle that had previously contained a harmless medicine – and she failed to change the label.
This week a glass warehouseman called Edward Lewis complained to his wife that he felt unwell and so went into the kitchen for a peppermint drink. He confused the bottle for one containing toxal, which the 50-year-old had used for some reason to dress a leg. As the name suggests, toxal is a toxic substance and after drinking some of it he was seized with violent pains. Edward Lewis was taken to the hospital at Whiston but was dead within a week.
There was invariably a big discrepancy between the police estimate of the rider's speed and what the man in the dock claimed. A police officer told the court that the defendant had come round the corner at the top of Bridge Street on his motorbike at a "big speed" and nearly smashed himself up on a milk float in Church Street.
However, John Tyrer insisted that he was not going any more than 15 miles an hour, and the road had been perfectly clear. That claim received short shrift from Alderman Forster on the Bench. He said 15 mph in a main street at a turning corner where the road was greasy and slippery was dangerous even to motorists, much less to other people. Tyrer from Lowton was fined 20 shillings.
Another target of the police were the bookies and their associates on the streets – of which many of the latter were out of work and keen to make easy money. 19-year-old Joseph Cosgrove from Appleton Street appeared in court charged with street betting and circulating football coupons. Constables Reynolds and Ballantyne had arrested him at Peasley Cross two days earlier and he was found to have 32 football betting slips involving 134 bets. Also in his possession, Cosgrove had 18 football coupons. He was fined £10 on the first charge, with the other being dismissed.
And finally this item was in the Echo. As the unemployment crisis worsened so people were taking drastic action to get work: "A real unemployment tragedy was revealed at an inquest held at Sevenoaks on a man named William Hines, aged fifty, of South-street, Greenwich. The evidence showed that Hines had been lately walking long distances in search of employment. On Wednesday he left home in the morning and walked to Sevenoaks, where in the evening he was seen suddenly to stagger and fall, dying before medical aid could be obtained.
"A doctor stated that there was nothing to account for death, but the fact that stiffening set in within a quarter of an hour went to prove that the man must have been thoroughly exhausted, and he attributed death to heart failure through over-fatigue. He had apparently had no food since leaving his home. Returning a verdict of “Death from natural causes,” the coroner said Hines had died game while walking looking for work."
And, finally, finally, if you thought immigration quotas and poor treatment of detained illegal immigrants was new, think again. Recently a century ago, British citizens arriving at Ellis Island in New York harbour had been interned in detention camps because quotas has been exceeded – with some claiming poor treatment. This week the Echo wrote:
"Liverpool steamship companies commenting upon the declaration of the United States Commissioner-General of Immigration that: “Foreign steamship companies were responsible for the hardships on Ellis Island suffered by immigrants who were refused admission to the United States on their arrival because the quotas for their countries had been exhausted,” deny that as far as they, at any rate, are concerned they have infringed the United States new immigration law by taking out to America a number in excess of the quota permitted to them. It is pointed out that the steamship companies, as a mere matter of self-protection, are not likely wilfully to exceed their quotas, as the cost of keeping the surplus immigrants and ultimately returning them to their country of origin falls upon the shipowners."
Next week's stories will include the woman labelled a dirty, filthy, useless person, a grisly discovery in Eccleston, Robb Wilton performs at the Hippodrome and the one-legged ex-miner who the Sutton Heath Colliery Company was taking to the House of Lords.
This week's stories include how a strict family upbringing led to the Dentons Green birth concealment, the Spanish alien and his organ, the motorbike in Church Street that was travelling at a big speed, a Peasley Cross bookie is brought to book and how mistaking poison for peppermint cost a man his life.
Three weeks ago I described the tragic case of Constance Maley of Dentons Green Lane.
The 21-year-old student teacher at the Physical Training College at Aigburth had had a secret pregnancy and given birth at home without her family's knowledge.
Her mother Margaret had found the remains of the child wrapped in newspapers inside a tin box within her daughter's bedroom.
An inquest had decided that the male child had been still-born. That was fortunate for Constance, as she could have been charged with death by neglect or worse.
However, concealment of a birth was still a serious crime and on November 15th the young woman appeared in St Helens Police Court.
From what was revealed at the hearing, it seemed that Constance's strict family had to bear part of the blame for what had occurred. The Liverpool Echo wrote:
"At St. Helens, to-day, Constance Mary Maley, aged twenty-one, a student at the Physical Training College, Aigburth, was committed for trial at the Manchester Assizes next week on a charge of concealment of birth.
"Her mother said that on October 24 she found the body of a newly-born male child in her daughter's bedroom.
"Her daughter had stayed at home on the Friday and Saturday previously, saying she was ill, but on the Monday she had gone to college as usual.
"Some time previously she had found two letters written to her daughter by a man living at Huyton, and the father spoke to the daughter about it, and remonstrated with her for having clandestine correspondence with any man.
"The girl is twenty-one, and her father told her that, as she was going to college, she must finish her training for a teacher before she began to court anybody, and she must also let him see the man she was going with. She promised to do this.
"After the evidence had been given, Mr. Davies [defence solicitor] said that the girl did not tell her mother or anybody because she was afraid of her parents.
"She was not aware of what it all meant, and as her parents were strict with all the family she said nothing about it to them. Bail was allowed."
At the subsequent Assizes hearing, Mary pleaded guilty to the charge of concealment and the judge bound her over "to come up for judgement if called upon".
In other words the offence would be taken into account if she were ever in court again.
It must have been a very distressing experience for the young woman, which was enhanced by all the details of her case being reported in newspapers.
The strict regulations controlling the residence of foreigners or "aliens" introduced during the war were largely still in place.
Some found the rules confusing and Joseph Lostitch was not the first alien to walk into St Helens police station for advice – but then be arrested!
Lostitch was a Spaniard and, along with his wife, had been touring the country with his donkey and organ. I think the man played the organ – not the donkey!
Presently the couple was stopping in a caravan on wasteland off Park Road and they requested permission from the police to tour the streets of St Helens.
However, foreigners needed to notify the police of their address within 48 hours of arrival in the town.
And the Lostitchs had been in St Helens with their donkey and organ for nearly three days before going to the police station at the Town Hall.
In court on the 15th with the aid of a translator, the couple were fined five shillings each.
The rules also applied to foreigners appearing at the town's theatres. So this week Dainty Lilian – who was known as "the merry little Hollander girl" and performing at the Hippodrome – would have had to merrily register at the police station.
So would The Anserouls, described as the "Belgian kings of double and treble somersaults". Perhaps they somersaulted their way along Corporation Street to sign their names in the police book!
The other turns at the Hippodrome included Pierce and Roslyn ("Those clever entertainers in a whirl of melody with accordion and song"); Togan and Geneva ("Wonderful jazz dancing on the wire"); Bernhart and Young ("Comedy act – fellows of infinite jest") and Louise Earle ("Entertainer at the piano").
On the 16th, Thatto Heath Council School unveiled a memorial dedicated to their old boys who had died in the war.
The Reporter said: "The memorial, placed on the wall of the large hall, is a beautiful oak tablet, the central figure of which, surrounded by a wreath, symbolises victory and sacrifice."
The council's Health Committee met on the 16th and discussed a letter that they had received (seemingly from the Government) calling for the humane slaughter of animals.
However, the letter's exemption in the case of meat for Jewish consumption caused some offence.
The members agreed that humane methods were already employed in St Helens but could not understand how Jews were being treated differently.
Alderman Phythian said that the slaughter of animals to provide meat for Jewish people was the "most inhumane and cruel method in the country".
The committee chairman, Ald. Bates, said it seemed hard to permit an exemption simply because the animal was going to be eaten by one particular section of the community.
It was decided that the letter should lie on the table. That was the curious expression then often used, meaning no action needed to be taken.
People could be rather casual about medicines. Before coming to St Helens to found his pharmaceutical empire, Thomas Beecham spent a couple of years in Wigan where he kept a small druggist's shop on Wallgate.
In 1858 a mother accidentally gave her 6-month-old child an overdose of dangerous laudanum from which the infant died.
That was because Beecham's wife upon selling the woman the laudanum had poured it into an old bottle that had previously contained a harmless medicine – and she failed to change the label.
This week a glass warehouseman called Edward Lewis complained to his wife that he felt unwell and so went into the kitchen for a peppermint drink.
He confused the bottle for one containing toxal, which the 50-year-old had used for some reason to dress a leg.
As the name suggests, toxal is a toxic substance and after drinking some of it he was seized with violent pains.
Edward Lewis was taken to the hospital at Whiston but was dead within a week.
The police campaign against young men on motorbikes (such as pictured here in Church Street) continued on the 21st when John Tyrer was accused of riding his machine at a dangerous speed.
The much older magistrates in St Helens Police Court did not like the new craze for noisy bikes, which since the war had become much more affordable to single men in work.
In September in dealing with a case of speeding in Eccleston Street, the Chairman of the Bench had declared:
"These young fellows go like madmen along the street. They must think that everything belongs to them, and that the public are of no account whatever."
There was invariably a big discrepancy between the police estimate of the rider's speed and what the man in the dock claimed.
A police officer told the court that the defendant had come round the corner at the top of Bridge Street on his motorbike at a "big speed" and nearly smashed himself up on a milk float in Church Street.
However, John Tyrer insisted that he was not going any more than 15 miles an hour, and the road had been perfectly clear.
That claim received short shrift from Alderman Forster on the Bench. He said 15 mph in a main street at a turning corner where the road was greasy and slippery was dangerous even to motorists, much less to other people.
Tyrer from Lowton was fined 20 shillings.
Another target of the police were the bookies and their associates on the streets – of which many of the latter were out of work and keen to make easy money.
19-year-old Joseph Cosgrove from Appleton Street appeared in court charged with street betting and circulating football coupons.
Constables Reynolds and Ballantyne had arrested him at Peasley Cross two days earlier and he was found to have 32 football betting slips involving 134 bets.
Also in his possession, Cosgrove had 18 football coupons. He was fined £10 on the first charge, with the other being dismissed.
And finally this item was in the Echo. As the unemployment crisis worsened so people were taking drastic action to get work:
"A real unemployment tragedy was revealed at an inquest held at Sevenoaks on a man named William Hines, aged fifty, of South-street, Greenwich.
"The evidence showed that Hines had been lately walking long distances in search of employment.
"On Wednesday he left home in the morning and walked to Sevenoaks, where in the evening he was seen suddenly to stagger and fall, dying before medical aid could be obtained.
"A doctor stated that there was nothing to account for death, but the fact that stiffening set in within a quarter of an hour went to prove that the man must have been thoroughly exhausted, and he attributed death to heart failure through over-fatigue.
"He had apparently had no food since leaving his home. Returning a verdict of “Death from natural causes,” the coroner said Hines had died game while walking looking for work."
And, finally, finally, if you thought immigration quotas and poor treatment of detained illegal immigrants was new, think again.
Recently a century ago, British citizens arriving at Ellis Island in New York harbour had been interned in detention camps because quotas has been exceeded – with some claiming poor treatment. This week the Echo wrote:
"Liverpool steamship companies commenting upon the declaration of the United States Commissioner-General of Immigration that:
"“Foreign steamship companies were responsible for the hardships on Ellis Island suffered by immigrants who were refused admission to the United States on their arrival because the quotas for their countries had been exhausted,” deny that as far as they, at any rate, are concerned they have infringed the United States new immigration law by taking out to America a number in excess of the quota permitted to them.
"It is pointed out that the steamship companies, as a mere matter of self-protection, are not likely wilfully to exceed their quotas, as the cost of keeping the surplus immigrants and ultimately returning them to their country of origin falls upon the shipowners."
Next week's stories will include the woman labelled a dirty, filthy, useless person, a grisly discovery in Eccleston, Robb Wilton performs at the Hippodrome and the one-legged ex-miner who the Sutton Heath Colliery Company was taking to the House of Lords.
Three weeks ago I described the tragic case of Constance Maley of Dentons Green Lane.
The 21-year-old student teacher at the Physical Training College at Aigburth had had a secret pregnancy and given birth at home without her family's knowledge.
Her mother Margaret had found the remains of the child wrapped in newspapers inside a tin box within her daughter's bedroom.
An inquest had decided that the male child had been still-born. That was fortunate for Constance, as she could have been charged with death by neglect or worse.
However, concealment of a birth was still a serious crime and on November 15th the young woman appeared in St Helens Police Court.
From what was revealed at the hearing, it seemed that Constance's strict family had to bear part of the blame for what had occurred. The Liverpool Echo wrote:
"At St. Helens, to-day, Constance Mary Maley, aged twenty-one, a student at the Physical Training College, Aigburth, was committed for trial at the Manchester Assizes next week on a charge of concealment of birth.
"Her mother said that on October 24 she found the body of a newly-born male child in her daughter's bedroom.
"Her daughter had stayed at home on the Friday and Saturday previously, saying she was ill, but on the Monday she had gone to college as usual.
"Some time previously she had found two letters written to her daughter by a man living at Huyton, and the father spoke to the daughter about it, and remonstrated with her for having clandestine correspondence with any man.
"The girl is twenty-one, and her father told her that, as she was going to college, she must finish her training for a teacher before she began to court anybody, and she must also let him see the man she was going with. She promised to do this.
"After the evidence had been given, Mr. Davies [defence solicitor] said that the girl did not tell her mother or anybody because she was afraid of her parents.
"She was not aware of what it all meant, and as her parents were strict with all the family she said nothing about it to them. Bail was allowed."
At the subsequent Assizes hearing, Mary pleaded guilty to the charge of concealment and the judge bound her over "to come up for judgement if called upon".
In other words the offence would be taken into account if she were ever in court again.
It must have been a very distressing experience for the young woman, which was enhanced by all the details of her case being reported in newspapers.
The strict regulations controlling the residence of foreigners or "aliens" introduced during the war were largely still in place.
Some found the rules confusing and Joseph Lostitch was not the first alien to walk into St Helens police station for advice – but then be arrested!
Lostitch was a Spaniard and, along with his wife, had been touring the country with his donkey and organ. I think the man played the organ – not the donkey!
Presently the couple was stopping in a caravan on wasteland off Park Road and they requested permission from the police to tour the streets of St Helens.
However, foreigners needed to notify the police of their address within 48 hours of arrival in the town.
And the Lostitchs had been in St Helens with their donkey and organ for nearly three days before going to the police station at the Town Hall.
In court on the 15th with the aid of a translator, the couple were fined five shillings each.
The rules also applied to foreigners appearing at the town's theatres. So this week Dainty Lilian – who was known as "the merry little Hollander girl" and performing at the Hippodrome – would have had to merrily register at the police station.
So would The Anserouls, described as the "Belgian kings of double and treble somersaults". Perhaps they somersaulted their way along Corporation Street to sign their names in the police book!
The other turns at the Hippodrome included Pierce and Roslyn ("Those clever entertainers in a whirl of melody with accordion and song"); Togan and Geneva ("Wonderful jazz dancing on the wire"); Bernhart and Young ("Comedy act – fellows of infinite jest") and Louise Earle ("Entertainer at the piano").
On the 16th, Thatto Heath Council School unveiled a memorial dedicated to their old boys who had died in the war.
The Reporter said: "The memorial, placed on the wall of the large hall, is a beautiful oak tablet, the central figure of which, surrounded by a wreath, symbolises victory and sacrifice."
The council's Health Committee met on the 16th and discussed a letter that they had received (seemingly from the Government) calling for the humane slaughter of animals.
However, the letter's exemption in the case of meat for Jewish consumption caused some offence.
The members agreed that humane methods were already employed in St Helens but could not understand how Jews were being treated differently.
Alderman Phythian said that the slaughter of animals to provide meat for Jewish people was the "most inhumane and cruel method in the country".
The committee chairman, Ald. Bates, said it seemed hard to permit an exemption simply because the animal was going to be eaten by one particular section of the community.
It was decided that the letter should lie on the table. That was the curious expression then often used, meaning no action needed to be taken.
People could be rather casual about medicines. Before coming to St Helens to found his pharmaceutical empire, Thomas Beecham spent a couple of years in Wigan where he kept a small druggist's shop on Wallgate.
In 1858 a mother accidentally gave her 6-month-old child an overdose of dangerous laudanum from which the infant died.
That was because Beecham's wife upon selling the woman the laudanum had poured it into an old bottle that had previously contained a harmless medicine – and she failed to change the label.
This week a glass warehouseman called Edward Lewis complained to his wife that he felt unwell and so went into the kitchen for a peppermint drink.
He confused the bottle for one containing toxal, which the 50-year-old had used for some reason to dress a leg.
As the name suggests, toxal is a toxic substance and after drinking some of it he was seized with violent pains.
Edward Lewis was taken to the hospital at Whiston but was dead within a week.
The much older magistrates in St Helens Police Court did not like the new craze for noisy bikes, which since the war had become much more affordable to single men in work.
In September in dealing with a case of speeding in Eccleston Street, the Chairman of the Bench had declared:
"These young fellows go like madmen along the street. They must think that everything belongs to them, and that the public are of no account whatever."
There was invariably a big discrepancy between the police estimate of the rider's speed and what the man in the dock claimed.
A police officer told the court that the defendant had come round the corner at the top of Bridge Street on his motorbike at a "big speed" and nearly smashed himself up on a milk float in Church Street.
However, John Tyrer insisted that he was not going any more than 15 miles an hour, and the road had been perfectly clear.
That claim received short shrift from Alderman Forster on the Bench. He said 15 mph in a main street at a turning corner where the road was greasy and slippery was dangerous even to motorists, much less to other people.
Tyrer from Lowton was fined 20 shillings.
Another target of the police were the bookies and their associates on the streets – of which many of the latter were out of work and keen to make easy money.
19-year-old Joseph Cosgrove from Appleton Street appeared in court charged with street betting and circulating football coupons.
Constables Reynolds and Ballantyne had arrested him at Peasley Cross two days earlier and he was found to have 32 football betting slips involving 134 bets.
Also in his possession, Cosgrove had 18 football coupons. He was fined £10 on the first charge, with the other being dismissed.
And finally this item was in the Echo. As the unemployment crisis worsened so people were taking drastic action to get work:
"A real unemployment tragedy was revealed at an inquest held at Sevenoaks on a man named William Hines, aged fifty, of South-street, Greenwich.
"The evidence showed that Hines had been lately walking long distances in search of employment.
"On Wednesday he left home in the morning and walked to Sevenoaks, where in the evening he was seen suddenly to stagger and fall, dying before medical aid could be obtained.
"A doctor stated that there was nothing to account for death, but the fact that stiffening set in within a quarter of an hour went to prove that the man must have been thoroughly exhausted, and he attributed death to heart failure through over-fatigue.
"He had apparently had no food since leaving his home. Returning a verdict of “Death from natural causes,” the coroner said Hines had died game while walking looking for work."
And, finally, finally, if you thought immigration quotas and poor treatment of detained illegal immigrants was new, think again.
Recently a century ago, British citizens arriving at Ellis Island in New York harbour had been interned in detention camps because quotas has been exceeded – with some claiming poor treatment. This week the Echo wrote:
"Liverpool steamship companies commenting upon the declaration of the United States Commissioner-General of Immigration that:
"“Foreign steamship companies were responsible for the hardships on Ellis Island suffered by immigrants who were refused admission to the United States on their arrival because the quotas for their countries had been exhausted,” deny that as far as they, at any rate, are concerned they have infringed the United States new immigration law by taking out to America a number in excess of the quota permitted to them.
"It is pointed out that the steamship companies, as a mere matter of self-protection, are not likely wilfully to exceed their quotas, as the cost of keeping the surplus immigrants and ultimately returning them to their country of origin falls upon the shipowners."
Next week's stories will include the woman labelled a dirty, filthy, useless person, a grisly discovery in Eccleston, Robb Wilton performs at the Hippodrome and the one-legged ex-miner who the Sutton Heath Colliery Company was taking to the House of Lords.