IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 16 - 22 FEBRUARY 1926
This week's many stories include the Whiston workhouse scandal, the maid that was gassed in a Park Road hotel, the foolish Southport Colliery miner who switched tallies, the lorry that crashed into the Theatre Royal, the military bands performing in the parks, the Thatto Heath seduction claim and the canal bargeman that sued the Co-op for knocking him off his mule.
We begin with a scandal at the Whiston Institution, which was revealed at Prescot Police Court on the 16th. William Brennan had been employed as a stoker at what had previously been known as Whiston Workhouse. He had suddenly left his job and taken off with an unnamed female employee who had since had his child. Brennan was a married man with children and had been earning £2 15 shillings a week.
Deserting your family was not illegal but leaving them without any money and dependent upon parish relief certainly was. In total Mrs Brennan had received £13 in relief hand-outs from the Prescot Guardians. These were the folk who ran the workhouse / institution and supervised the relief payments to those in dire need that lived in the community.
And the Guardians had also been the employers of William Brennan. Whether that had any bearing on the stiff sentence that the magistrates imposed on the runaway husband, I cannot say. But they were certainly disgusted with Brennan's behaviour and sentenced him to 3 months in prison with hard labour.
A Ministry of Health inquiry was held in St Helens Town Hall on the 16th in which it was revealed that 118 persons had died of pulmonary tuberculosis in St Helens during 1924.
On the same day William Metcalfe from Whittle Street in Thatto Heath was killed down Lea Green Colliery (pictured above). The 20-year-old died after a bar that had been helping to prop up the roof of an underground tunnel came down on his head while he was resetting it. At William's inquest held later in the week at St Helens Town Hall, it was accepted that what was referred to as a jack prop should have been set up to provide extra support.
It was normal for inquests to take place very quickly after death. The body of the deceased had to be available for inspection at the hearing and so they needed to minimise the smell from the corpse. But holding the inquest into the demise of Catherine Gorman on the very same day that the 17-year-old had died, was – at least by our standards – bordering on the obscene.
The girl had lived with her widowed mother in Broad Oak Road but got a job as a maid at the Grey Horse Hotel in Park Road. Three days before her death in Providence Hospital on the 17th, Catherine had been found unconscious in a gas-filled hotel room. The girl's mother told the coroner that her daughter had been a Roman Catholic and it would have been against her faith to take away her own life.
"She was happy and contented and had had no trouble with her sweetheart with whom she went out on the previous night," Mrs Gorman explained. It was believed that in attempting to turn off a gas fire in her bedroom, Catherine had turned the control too far round and while she slept the room had gradually filled with gas. "I do not see how I can assume for one moment that this girl's death was caused by anything other than misadventure", stated Coroner Samuel Brighouse when returning his verdict.
The St Helens Parks Committee met on the 17th and discussed their allocations of bands that would be playing in the town's parks during the coming summer. It was revealed that as well as local bands, well-known military bands would be performing as the result of a joint initiative with the parks committees of Warrington, Widnes, Wigan and Leigh. Military ensembles that normally charged high rates would now spend a week or so in the district playing concerts in each town and having their fees shared.
There was an unusual case heard in St Helens County Court on the 17th in which a man – who was described in different newspaper reports as a horseman or a bargeman – sued the St Helens Co-op. Michael Devanney claimed that one of their vehicles had knocked him off his mule while he had been taking a horse to the canal at Sankey Bridges. In court it was stated that Mr Devanney had spent thirty years travelling thousands of miles in charge of horses and mules towing boats along canal towing-paths.
Devanney claimed that a Co-op van had overtaken him on the road and dragged him off his mule causing him to land badly on his right shoulder. The man's collarbone was broken and in the court was awarded £36 damages after successfully claiming the driver of the van had been negligent.
On the 18th an accident took place in Corporation Street in St Helens in which the front section of the veranda outside the Theatre Royal was demolished. A heavy motor lorry had been proceeding along the street carrying a large load of bales of raw cotton at the same time as a tram was passing the theatre. In order for the lorry to get past, it drew to the left but the bales swayed over the pavement striking the veranda with terrific force and bringing down the whole of its front section. In total twenty bales rolled off the lorry, which skidded and stopped leaving its front wheels on the pavement – but fortunately no injuries were reported.
On the 18th at Manchester Assizes, a miner called James Lunt of Elephant Lane in Thatto Heath brought an action against James Foulkes accusing the latter of seducing his late daughter. Foulkes was also a miner and a semi-professional footballer who lived in Owen Street. The young man worked at Lea Green Colliery where Lunt's daughter Florence Lunt was employed as a pit brow lass. The couple started going out together and became engaged.
When in July 1924 Florence learned she was pregnant, Foulkes promised to marry her but did not go through with the marriage. Although the child was born healthy, Florence died a week later leaving her parents to bring up the baby. In court Florence's father James Lunt denied that he had prevented the couple from getting married but his wife did state that her husband had refused to grant permission.
James Foulkes admitted the seduction – in other words, getting a young woman under 21 pregnant and not marrying her. But his solicitor submitted that in the circumstances, no more than the barest costs should be awarded and the jury set the damages at £67. Probably another hearing in St Helens would agree a separate maintenance award for the child.
With thousands of men working in the mining industry in St Helens, I suppose it was inevitable that a few would carry out brainless thefts. The simple tally identification system in which miners would use a numbered disc to mark the tubs of coal that they had personally hewed was open to abuse. It was not difficult to switch tallies but miners would soon realise that someone else was getting paid for their efforts and an investigation would begin.
Robert Lee of Juddfield Road in Haydock was one such brainless individual who in January at Southport Colliery in Parr had started appropriating other miners' coal. Complaints were soon made and after Lee had been seen examining two tubs belonging to another miner, his own tallies were found attached to them.
Colliery returns also showed that he was supposedly extracting twice as much coal as the man working next to him. In St Helens Police Court on the 19th, Robert Lee was accused of obtaining money by false pretences through manipulating the tallies on coal tubs. The chairman of the Bench told Lee: "It is a serious offence to rob your fellow workmen in this fashion. You will be fined £5 and £5 costs."
At a recent meeting of the St Helens Health Committee, concern was raised that butchers' shops in the town were not always identifying meat that had been imported, rather than being locally slaughtered. That was against the law and subsequent investigations by the Corporation's meat inspector and medical officer of health led on the 19th to two butchers being prosecuted.
William Burrows of Westfield Street and the St Helens Co-operative Society were both charged in St Helens Police Court with exposing imported meat for sale without it being labelled as such. In court it was stated that the object of the order was to warn customers when meat was imported so they would not be misled into thinking they were buying home-killed meat. Burrows was fined 10 shillings and the Co-op 40 shillings.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include how the prospect of mining subsidence was affecting the council's house building plans, the sibling fight in Clock Face and the dissatisfied punter who reported a Sutton lottery to the police.
We begin with a scandal at the Whiston Institution, which was revealed at Prescot Police Court on the 16th. William Brennan had been employed as a stoker at what had previously been known as Whiston Workhouse. He had suddenly left his job and taken off with an unnamed female employee who had since had his child. Brennan was a married man with children and had been earning £2 15 shillings a week.
Deserting your family was not illegal but leaving them without any money and dependent upon parish relief certainly was. In total Mrs Brennan had received £13 in relief hand-outs from the Prescot Guardians. These were the folk who ran the workhouse / institution and supervised the relief payments to those in dire need that lived in the community.
And the Guardians had also been the employers of William Brennan. Whether that had any bearing on the stiff sentence that the magistrates imposed on the runaway husband, I cannot say. But they were certainly disgusted with Brennan's behaviour and sentenced him to 3 months in prison with hard labour.
A Ministry of Health inquiry was held in St Helens Town Hall on the 16th in which it was revealed that 118 persons had died of pulmonary tuberculosis in St Helens during 1924.
It was normal for inquests to take place very quickly after death. The body of the deceased had to be available for inspection at the hearing and so they needed to minimise the smell from the corpse. But holding the inquest into the demise of Catherine Gorman on the very same day that the 17-year-old had died, was – at least by our standards – bordering on the obscene.
The girl had lived with her widowed mother in Broad Oak Road but got a job as a maid at the Grey Horse Hotel in Park Road. Three days before her death in Providence Hospital on the 17th, Catherine had been found unconscious in a gas-filled hotel room. The girl's mother told the coroner that her daughter had been a Roman Catholic and it would have been against her faith to take away her own life.
"She was happy and contented and had had no trouble with her sweetheart with whom she went out on the previous night," Mrs Gorman explained. It was believed that in attempting to turn off a gas fire in her bedroom, Catherine had turned the control too far round and while she slept the room had gradually filled with gas. "I do not see how I can assume for one moment that this girl's death was caused by anything other than misadventure", stated Coroner Samuel Brighouse when returning his verdict.
The St Helens Parks Committee met on the 17th and discussed their allocations of bands that would be playing in the town's parks during the coming summer. It was revealed that as well as local bands, well-known military bands would be performing as the result of a joint initiative with the parks committees of Warrington, Widnes, Wigan and Leigh. Military ensembles that normally charged high rates would now spend a week or so in the district playing concerts in each town and having their fees shared.
There was an unusual case heard in St Helens County Court on the 17th in which a man – who was described in different newspaper reports as a horseman or a bargeman – sued the St Helens Co-op. Michael Devanney claimed that one of their vehicles had knocked him off his mule while he had been taking a horse to the canal at Sankey Bridges. In court it was stated that Mr Devanney had spent thirty years travelling thousands of miles in charge of horses and mules towing boats along canal towing-paths.
Devanney claimed that a Co-op van had overtaken him on the road and dragged him off his mule causing him to land badly on his right shoulder. The man's collarbone was broken and in the court was awarded £36 damages after successfully claiming the driver of the van had been negligent.
On the 18th an accident took place in Corporation Street in St Helens in which the front section of the veranda outside the Theatre Royal was demolished. A heavy motor lorry had been proceeding along the street carrying a large load of bales of raw cotton at the same time as a tram was passing the theatre. In order for the lorry to get past, it drew to the left but the bales swayed over the pavement striking the veranda with terrific force and bringing down the whole of its front section. In total twenty bales rolled off the lorry, which skidded and stopped leaving its front wheels on the pavement – but fortunately no injuries were reported.
On the 18th at Manchester Assizes, a miner called James Lunt of Elephant Lane in Thatto Heath brought an action against James Foulkes accusing the latter of seducing his late daughter. Foulkes was also a miner and a semi-professional footballer who lived in Owen Street. The young man worked at Lea Green Colliery where Lunt's daughter Florence Lunt was employed as a pit brow lass. The couple started going out together and became engaged.
When in July 1924 Florence learned she was pregnant, Foulkes promised to marry her but did not go through with the marriage. Although the child was born healthy, Florence died a week later leaving her parents to bring up the baby. In court Florence's father James Lunt denied that he had prevented the couple from getting married but his wife did state that her husband had refused to grant permission.
James Foulkes admitted the seduction – in other words, getting a young woman under 21 pregnant and not marrying her. But his solicitor submitted that in the circumstances, no more than the barest costs should be awarded and the jury set the damages at £67. Probably another hearing in St Helens would agree a separate maintenance award for the child.
With thousands of men working in the mining industry in St Helens, I suppose it was inevitable that a few would carry out brainless thefts. The simple tally identification system in which miners would use a numbered disc to mark the tubs of coal that they had personally hewed was open to abuse. It was not difficult to switch tallies but miners would soon realise that someone else was getting paid for their efforts and an investigation would begin.
Robert Lee of Juddfield Road in Haydock was one such brainless individual who in January at Southport Colliery in Parr had started appropriating other miners' coal. Complaints were soon made and after Lee had been seen examining two tubs belonging to another miner, his own tallies were found attached to them.
Colliery returns also showed that he was supposedly extracting twice as much coal as the man working next to him. In St Helens Police Court on the 19th, Robert Lee was accused of obtaining money by false pretences through manipulating the tallies on coal tubs. The chairman of the Bench told Lee: "It is a serious offence to rob your fellow workmen in this fashion. You will be fined £5 and £5 costs."
At a recent meeting of the St Helens Health Committee, concern was raised that butchers' shops in the town were not always identifying meat that had been imported, rather than being locally slaughtered. That was against the law and subsequent investigations by the Corporation's meat inspector and medical officer of health led on the 19th to two butchers being prosecuted.
William Burrows of Westfield Street and the St Helens Co-operative Society were both charged in St Helens Police Court with exposing imported meat for sale without it being labelled as such. In court it was stated that the object of the order was to warn customers when meat was imported so they would not be misled into thinking they were buying home-killed meat. Burrows was fined 10 shillings and the Co-op 40 shillings.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include how the prospect of mining subsidence was affecting the council's house building plans, the sibling fight in Clock Face and the dissatisfied punter who reported a Sutton lottery to the police.
This week's many stories include the Whiston workhouse scandal, the maid that was gassed in a Park Road hotel, the foolish Southport Colliery miner who switched tallies, the lorry that crashed into the Theatre Royal, the military bands performing in the parks, the Thatto Heath seduction claim and the canal bargeman that sued the Co-op for knocking him off his mule.
We begin with a scandal at the Whiston Institution, which was revealed at Prescot Police Court on the 16th.
William Brennan had been employed as a stoker at what had previously been known as Whiston Workhouse.
He had suddenly left his job and taken off with an unnamed female employee who had since had his child.
Brennan was a married man with children and had been earning £2 15 shillings a week.
Deserting your family was not illegal but leaving them without any money and dependent upon parish relief certainly was.
In total Mrs Brennan had received £13 in relief hand-outs from the Prescot Guardians.
These were the folk who ran the workhouse / institution and supervised the relief payments to those in dire need that lived in the community.
And the Guardians had also been the employers of William Brennan.
Whether that had any bearing on the stiff sentence that the magistrates imposed on the runaway husband, I cannot say.
But they were certainly disgusted with Brennan's behaviour and sentenced him to 3 months in prison with hard labour.
A Ministry of Health inquiry was held in St Helens Town Hall on the 16th in which it was revealed that 118 persons had died of pulmonary tuberculosis in St Helens during 1924.
On the same day William Metcalfe from Whittle Street in Thatto Heath was killed down Lea Green Colliery (pictured above).
The 20-year-old died after a bar that had been helping to prop up the roof of an underground tunnel came down on his head while he was resetting it.
At William's inquest held later in the week at St Helens Town Hall, it was accepted that what was referred to as a jack prop should have been set up to provide extra support.
It was normal for inquests to take place very quickly after death. The body of the deceased had to be available for inspection at the hearing and so they needed to minimise the smell from the corpse.
But holding the inquest into the demise of Catherine Gorman on the very same day that the 17-year-old had died, was – at least by our standards – bordering on the obscene.
The girl had lived with her widowed mother in Broad Oak Road but got a job as a maid at the Grey Horse Hotel in Park Road.
Three days before her death in Providence Hospital on the 17th, Catherine had been found unconscious in a gas-filled hotel room.
The girl's mother told the coroner that her daughter had been a Roman Catholic and it would have been against her faith to take away her own life.
"She was happy and contented and had had no trouble with her sweetheart with whom she went out on the previous night," Mrs Gorman explained.
It was believed that in attempting to turn off a gas fire in her bedroom, Catherine had turned the control too far round and while she slept the room had gradually filled with gas.
"I do not see how I can assume for one moment that this girl's death was caused by anything other than misadventure", stated Coroner Samuel Brighouse when returning his verdict.
The St Helens Parks Committee met on the 17th and discussed their allocations of bands that would be playing in the town's parks during the coming summer.
It was revealed that as well as local bands, well-known military bands would be performing as the result of a joint initiative with the parks committees of Warrington, Widnes, Wigan and Leigh.
Military ensembles that normally charged high rates would now spend a week or so in the district playing concerts in each town and having their fees shared.
There was an unusual case heard in St Helens County Court on the 17th in which a man – who was described in different newspaper reports as a horseman or a bargeman – sued the St Helens Co-op.
Michael Devanney claimed that one of their vehicles had knocked him off his mule while he had been taking a horse to the canal at Sankey Bridges.
In court it was stated that Mr Devanney had spent thirty years travelling thousands of miles in charge of horses and mules towing boats along canal towing-paths.
Devanney claimed that a Co-op van had overtaken him on the road and dragged him off his mule causing him to land badly on his right shoulder.
The man's collarbone was broken and in the court was awarded £36 damages after successfully claiming the driver of the van had been negligent.
On the 18th an accident took place in Corporation Street in St Helens in which the front section of the veranda outside the Theatre Royal was demolished.
A heavy motor lorry had been proceeding along the street carrying a large load of bales of raw cotton at the same time as a tram was passing the theatre.
In order for the lorry to get past, it drew to the left but the bales swayed over the pavement striking the veranda with terrific force and bringing down the whole of its front section.
In total twenty bales rolled off the lorry, which skidded and stopped leaving its front wheels on the pavement – but fortunately no injuries were reported.
On the 18th at Manchester Assizes, a miner called James Lunt of Elephant Lane in Thatto Heath brought an action against James Foulkes accusing the latter of seducing his late daughter.
Foulkes was also a miner and a semi-professional footballer who lived in Owen Street.
The young man worked at Lea Green Colliery where Lunt's daughter Florence Lunt was employed as a pit brow lass. The couple started going out together and became engaged.
When in July 1924 Florence learned she was pregnant, Foulkes promised to marry her but did not go through with the marriage.
Although the child was born healthy, Florence died a week later leaving her parents to bring up the baby.
In court Florence's father James Lunt denied that he had prevented the couple from getting married but his wife did state that her husband had refused to grant permission.
James Foulkes admitted the seduction – in other words, getting a young woman under 21 pregnant and not marrying her.
But his solicitor submitted that in the circumstances, no more than the barest costs should be awarded and the jury set the damages at £67.
Probably another hearing in St Helens would agree a separate maintenance award for the child.
With thousands of men working in the mining industry in St Helens, I suppose it was inevitable that a few would carry out brainless thefts.
The simple tally identification system in which miners would use a numbered disc to mark the tubs of coal that they had personally hewed was open to abuse.
It was not difficult to switch tallies but miners would soon realise that someone else was getting paid for their efforts and an investigation would begin.
Robert Lee of Juddfield Road in Haydock was one such brainless individual who in January at Southport Colliery in Parr had started appropriating other miners' coal.
Complaints were soon made and after Lee had been seen examining two tubs belonging to another miner, his own tallies were found attached to them.
Colliery returns also showed that he was supposedly extracting twice as much coal as the man working next to him.
In St Helens Police Court on the 19th, Robert Lee was accused of obtaining money by false pretences through manipulating the tallies on coal tubs.
The chairman of the Bench told Lee: "It is a serious offence to rob your fellow workmen in this fashion. You will be fined £5 and £5 costs."
At a recent meeting of the St Helens Health Committee, concern was raised that butchers' shops in the town were not always identifying meat that had been imported, rather than being locally slaughtered.
That was against the law and subsequent investigations by the Corporation's meat inspector and medical officer of health led on the 19th to two butchers being prosecuted.
William Burrows of Westfield Street and the St Helens Co-operative Society were both charged in St Helens Police Court with exposing imported meat for sale without it being labelled as such.
In court it was stated that the object of the order was to warn customers when meat was imported so they would not be misled into thinking they were buying home-killed meat.
Burrows was fined 10 shillings and the Co-op 40 shillings.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include how the prospect of mining subsidence was affecting the council's house building plans, the sibling fight in Clock Face and the dissatisfied punter who reported a Sutton lottery to the police.
We begin with a scandal at the Whiston Institution, which was revealed at Prescot Police Court on the 16th.
William Brennan had been employed as a stoker at what had previously been known as Whiston Workhouse.
He had suddenly left his job and taken off with an unnamed female employee who had since had his child.
Brennan was a married man with children and had been earning £2 15 shillings a week.
Deserting your family was not illegal but leaving them without any money and dependent upon parish relief certainly was.
In total Mrs Brennan had received £13 in relief hand-outs from the Prescot Guardians.
These were the folk who ran the workhouse / institution and supervised the relief payments to those in dire need that lived in the community.
And the Guardians had also been the employers of William Brennan.
Whether that had any bearing on the stiff sentence that the magistrates imposed on the runaway husband, I cannot say.
But they were certainly disgusted with Brennan's behaviour and sentenced him to 3 months in prison with hard labour.
A Ministry of Health inquiry was held in St Helens Town Hall on the 16th in which it was revealed that 118 persons had died of pulmonary tuberculosis in St Helens during 1924.
The 20-year-old died after a bar that had been helping to prop up the roof of an underground tunnel came down on his head while he was resetting it.
At William's inquest held later in the week at St Helens Town Hall, it was accepted that what was referred to as a jack prop should have been set up to provide extra support.
It was normal for inquests to take place very quickly after death. The body of the deceased had to be available for inspection at the hearing and so they needed to minimise the smell from the corpse.
But holding the inquest into the demise of Catherine Gorman on the very same day that the 17-year-old had died, was – at least by our standards – bordering on the obscene.
The girl had lived with her widowed mother in Broad Oak Road but got a job as a maid at the Grey Horse Hotel in Park Road.
Three days before her death in Providence Hospital on the 17th, Catherine had been found unconscious in a gas-filled hotel room.
The girl's mother told the coroner that her daughter had been a Roman Catholic and it would have been against her faith to take away her own life.
"She was happy and contented and had had no trouble with her sweetheart with whom she went out on the previous night," Mrs Gorman explained.
It was believed that in attempting to turn off a gas fire in her bedroom, Catherine had turned the control too far round and while she slept the room had gradually filled with gas.
"I do not see how I can assume for one moment that this girl's death was caused by anything other than misadventure", stated Coroner Samuel Brighouse when returning his verdict.
The St Helens Parks Committee met on the 17th and discussed their allocations of bands that would be playing in the town's parks during the coming summer.
It was revealed that as well as local bands, well-known military bands would be performing as the result of a joint initiative with the parks committees of Warrington, Widnes, Wigan and Leigh.
Military ensembles that normally charged high rates would now spend a week or so in the district playing concerts in each town and having their fees shared.
There was an unusual case heard in St Helens County Court on the 17th in which a man – who was described in different newspaper reports as a horseman or a bargeman – sued the St Helens Co-op.
Michael Devanney claimed that one of their vehicles had knocked him off his mule while he had been taking a horse to the canal at Sankey Bridges.
In court it was stated that Mr Devanney had spent thirty years travelling thousands of miles in charge of horses and mules towing boats along canal towing-paths.
Devanney claimed that a Co-op van had overtaken him on the road and dragged him off his mule causing him to land badly on his right shoulder.
The man's collarbone was broken and in the court was awarded £36 damages after successfully claiming the driver of the van had been negligent.
On the 18th an accident took place in Corporation Street in St Helens in which the front section of the veranda outside the Theatre Royal was demolished.
A heavy motor lorry had been proceeding along the street carrying a large load of bales of raw cotton at the same time as a tram was passing the theatre.
In order for the lorry to get past, it drew to the left but the bales swayed over the pavement striking the veranda with terrific force and bringing down the whole of its front section.
In total twenty bales rolled off the lorry, which skidded and stopped leaving its front wheels on the pavement – but fortunately no injuries were reported.
On the 18th at Manchester Assizes, a miner called James Lunt of Elephant Lane in Thatto Heath brought an action against James Foulkes accusing the latter of seducing his late daughter.
Foulkes was also a miner and a semi-professional footballer who lived in Owen Street.
The young man worked at Lea Green Colliery where Lunt's daughter Florence Lunt was employed as a pit brow lass. The couple started going out together and became engaged.
When in July 1924 Florence learned she was pregnant, Foulkes promised to marry her but did not go through with the marriage.
Although the child was born healthy, Florence died a week later leaving her parents to bring up the baby.
In court Florence's father James Lunt denied that he had prevented the couple from getting married but his wife did state that her husband had refused to grant permission.
James Foulkes admitted the seduction – in other words, getting a young woman under 21 pregnant and not marrying her.
But his solicitor submitted that in the circumstances, no more than the barest costs should be awarded and the jury set the damages at £67.
Probably another hearing in St Helens would agree a separate maintenance award for the child.
With thousands of men working in the mining industry in St Helens, I suppose it was inevitable that a few would carry out brainless thefts.
The simple tally identification system in which miners would use a numbered disc to mark the tubs of coal that they had personally hewed was open to abuse.
It was not difficult to switch tallies but miners would soon realise that someone else was getting paid for their efforts and an investigation would begin.
Robert Lee of Juddfield Road in Haydock was one such brainless individual who in January at Southport Colliery in Parr had started appropriating other miners' coal.
Complaints were soon made and after Lee had been seen examining two tubs belonging to another miner, his own tallies were found attached to them.
Colliery returns also showed that he was supposedly extracting twice as much coal as the man working next to him.
In St Helens Police Court on the 19th, Robert Lee was accused of obtaining money by false pretences through manipulating the tallies on coal tubs.
The chairman of the Bench told Lee: "It is a serious offence to rob your fellow workmen in this fashion. You will be fined £5 and £5 costs."
At a recent meeting of the St Helens Health Committee, concern was raised that butchers' shops in the town were not always identifying meat that had been imported, rather than being locally slaughtered.
That was against the law and subsequent investigations by the Corporation's meat inspector and medical officer of health led on the 19th to two butchers being prosecuted.
William Burrows of Westfield Street and the St Helens Co-operative Society were both charged in St Helens Police Court with exposing imported meat for sale without it being labelled as such.
In court it was stated that the object of the order was to warn customers when meat was imported so they would not be misled into thinking they were buying home-killed meat.
Burrows was fined 10 shillings and the Co-op 40 shillings.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include how the prospect of mining subsidence was affecting the council's house building plans, the sibling fight in Clock Face and the dissatisfied punter who reported a Sutton lottery to the police.