This week's 19 stories include the man who died at Boundary Road baths, the Sherdley Colliery coal thief, a fire in St Helens market, the quarrelsome neighbours of Newton Road, Rainford Council wins its battle with the railway company and the Parr pit that a miner said had a "gasometer at your nose".

We begin on the 17th when the council's Park and Cemetery Committee met at the Town Hall. The councillors were told that the St Helens Juvenile Organisation was applying for "football spaces" at Parr Recreation Ground, Thatto Heath Park, Sutton Park and Queen's Recreation Ground (Queen's Park as we know it). Teams of lads up to the age of sixteen would play competitive matches on Saturday afternoons. This was the only possible time as Sunday sport was not permitted and many people worked on Saturday mornings. A young man called George Crompton from Albion Street was found dead in the Boundary Road baths (shown above) on the 17th. Few people had bathrooms in their own homes and so cubicles were available at Boundary Road where people could take a private bath. The doctor that examined the 17-year-old's body surmised that he had probably fainted and then drowned.

However at George's inquest it was revealed that he had been blind in one eye after being struck in the face by a piece of glass while working at Pilkingtons. Since then George had developed epilepsy and a weak heart and a post-mortem suggested that he had drowned after suffering a heart attack.

The baths were certainly very popular, both for swimming and bathing. The manager, Robert Lomax, revealed at the inquest that more than 28,000 visits had been made during August. This hadn't been the first death at the complex, which had been built in 1890. An old man had cut his throat in a bath in the late 1890s.

Elizabeth Finney from Manor Road had a lucky break on the 18th. A constable had seen the woman coming from the direction of Sherdley Colliery carrying a sack of coal. She was with a number of other women who were all carrying coal and as soon as they saw the officer they shouted "the police are coming". They then dropped the sacks and fled with the bobby giving chase.

Mrs Finney was the only one of the group that was caught and in court she claimed that she had taken the coal from a tip. The policeman could not swear that the coal had come from Sherdley Colliery and so the Bench gave Mrs Finney the benefit of the doubt. However they issued a warning that coal stealing would be severely dealt with in future.

There was a fire during the evening of the 18th in the open market that caused £200 worth of damage. It affected McKinnon's clothing stall, which was situated on the far side of the market looking into Exchange Street. Happily the Fire Brigade managed to contain the fire and prevent it from spreading to nearby stalls.

There was another of those daft neighbours' disputes played out in court on the 19th in which alternate versions of reality were told to the magistrates. The JPs would patiently listen to both sides slagging each other off and then bound everybody over to keep the peace. All a bit pointless really!

Parr seems to have been a hotbed for such silliness with this week's quarrelsome street being Newton Road. The seed of the dispute was that 18-year-old Frederick Hill had begun "walking out" with 31-year-old war widow Mary Topping and Fred's mother did not approve. Jane Hill argued that Mary was too old for her son, although checking census records she had married a man seventeen years older than herself!

But Jane also told the court that she was dependent on her two sons and wanted them to stay at home for a few more years and keep her. So the age reason appears to have been an excuse. Mrs Hill told the court that Mary and her mother and sister had marched into her home and beat her as hard as they could.

She also claimed to have been struck by a poker and been forced to take refuge from the women in her "coal hole". Of course in her eyes she was the completely innocent party. However Jane Hill failed to mention in her evidence how she had repeatedly gone into the street over a period of five hours and screamed abuse outside the home of Mary Topping. The latter told the court that this had been "unbearable" and she also claimed that Mrs Topping had struck her over the head with her poker.

Lots of witnesses were called giving partisan accounts of what had happened but the case had the usual conclusion. The magistrates bound all four quarrelsome women over to keep the peace in the sum of £2, with each also having to obtain two £1 sureties. Gabriel Moon – the best-named estate agent and auctioneer in the Merseyside district – was advertising an auction of the effects of the late Mrs Walker on the 19th. This was scheduled to take place at the Blue Lion Hotel in Newton-le-Willows. The list of items such middle-class persons owned is often interesting – although it tends to be focussed heavily on furniture. However Gabriel Moon had a diverse collection of items to flog off.

As well as the usual range of chairs, tables, sofas, cooking utensils, crockery and sewing machine, Mrs Walker also had 16 head of fowl, a gramophone with 100 records, an "excellent organ in exceptionally fine condition and tone", a thief-proof safe, 5 old sporting prints of celebrated greyhounds, 2½ tons of coal, feather and flock beds, an Ariel motor cycle with cane sidecar and a wringing machine. She sounds like she had been an interesting old lady!

The 62-year-old Gabriel Moon lived and had offices in Cross Lane, Earlestown with his second wife, who was eighteen years younger than him. Also describing himself as an antique connoisseur, Moon was the man to see if you had property to sell at Newton up until his death in 1927.

The Reporter on the 19th described how Rainford Council had won its battle with the railway company to get workman's tickets available for train journeys from Rainford to St Helens. These were discounted weekly tickets for those making daily journeys to and from work. The London & North Western Railway Company had refused to make them available, claiming that only five workmen travelled daily by train from Rainford Village Station, with one or two others getting on at Rookery Station in Rookery Lane.

The company had now relented but said sufficient people would have to make use of the tickets to make the scheme worthwhile. However the early morning train to St Helens arrived in town a quarter of an hour too late for many workers' start times. So the councillors' next battle was to persuade the company to bring the train time forward by 15 minutes.

The newspaper also announced that Eccleston was to have its own war memorial, which was promised to be one of the best in the country. Alderman Frederick Dixon-Nuttall had invited interested parties to visit his home in Eccleston Park called Ingleholme to view a model of the design. The bottlemaker and ex-mayor of St Helens planned to meet the full £4,000 cost of the memorial himself.

Two more mineworkers were in St Helens Police Court on the 19th charged with sleeping in a mine. James Jackson from Park Street in Haydock and James Pownall from Littlers Court (off Fleet Lane) were haulage hands at Parr No 2 pit. This appears to have been Havannah Colliery – or possibly Ashtons Green.

Although the pair pleaded guilty, they claimed they'd fallen asleep during their supper break because it was a very gassy and warm mine. James Pownall brought his Dad George to court to back up his boy's claim and said anyone would go to sleep if they had a "gasometer at your nose". The magistrates decided to convict but only fine the youths ten shillings each because they had fallen asleep during their break time.

Now the war was over many former munitions factories and temporary military camps were busy flogging off all sorts of unwanted stuff. The Government had its own department called the Disposal Board, which organised the sales and had different sections for different types of army surplus.

In the Leeds Mercury on the 20th the Disposal Board (Huts and Building Materials Section) was advertising the auction of a number of portable buildings that the former Knowsley Park military camp in Burrows Lane had used. There were huts and offices for sale, along with fittings, "sanitary appliances", stoves etc. The auctioneers were W.A. Brooke and Co., whose telephone number was '156 St Helens'.

The 20th was also the deadline for the names of widows and dependants of men killed in the war to be submitted to the Town Hall. These would receive a payment from a special fund set up by the Mayor, Alderman Bates.

After being closed for five weeks for renovation and repairs, the Wesley Methodist Chapel in Corporation Street reopened on Sunday 21st. The redecoration along with other improvements had cost the considerable sum of £1,150 and was part of the church's Peace Year celebrations. The building had been built fifty years earlier and in the 1970s, beset by dry rot, it was demolished and replaced by Wesley House.

And finally on the 22nd Peter Dixon from Tontine Street was fined 2s 6d and ordered to pay 5 shillings expenses for driving his horse and cart over a footpath in Cambridge Road. He told the police that he did it to take a short cut.

Next week's stories will include the market banana robbery, Sanger's Circus and Menagerie perform in Peasley Cross, the Bold farmer who broke the rules on potato wart disease, the "wonderful" rat-trap at the Fleece Hotel and the hapless burglar of a Church Street jewellers.