IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (17th - 23rd OCTOBER 1922)
This week's stories include the Dentons Green desertion case, a mysterious death down Lea Green Colliery, George Formby performs at the Hippodrome, a baby's body is found floating in the canal, the severe housing crisis in St Helens and a war memorial is unveiled in Peasley Cross Conservative Club.
We begin on the 17th when Edward Wooll, the prospective Conservative candidate for St Helens, gave an address at the Town Hall. The packed meeting included sixty local Communists and so there was plenty of potential for trouble – but a similar number of stewards kept the meeting in good order and there were no disturbances. The incumbent MP for St Helens was the popular James Sexton, who was a moderate member of the Labour Party and fervently anti-Communist. It was difficult for Wooll to attack him personally – and so instead he told a Latvian limerick! It went:
"There was a young lady of Riga
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They finished that ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger."
Wooll explained that Sexton was the lady in his limerick and the tiger represented the disruptive forces within the country, i.e. the Communist agitators. His argument was that the reds could swallow up the town's incumbent MP if the Labour Party lost control to its Communist members – the party's "hidden hand", as he put it.
On the 19th the inquest into the mysterious death of Percy Arnold of Crowther Street was held in St Helens Town Hall, after the 24-year-old had died down Lea Green Colliery's King pit. The married man with one child had been laying an electric cable connected to a coal-cutting machine when discovered dead in a spot just two feet high. The suspicion was that Arnold had been electrocuted but he had been working with John Hopkins from Grafton Street who insisted to the coroner that the electricity had been turned off.
The deceased had recently been playing football and appeared to be in good health. However, a post-mortem revealed signs of inflammation of the stomach and Dr Unsworth thought death had probably been caused by sudden heart failure. That, he said, appeared to have been brought about by over-exertion and was contributed to by the stomach being in an inflamed condition. Although Dr Merrick stated that he agreed with Dr Unsworth's findings, the rigidity of the body and fluidity of blood were, he said, factors that could point to electrocution. But if that had occurred, one would have expected burns to be on Arnold's body and there had been none.
The St Helens Reporter on the 20th published a lengthy article on the housing crisis in the town. In 1920 it had been estimated that in order to properly address the severe housing shortage in St Helens, the town would need to build 4,600 more working-class homes within the following three years. Although 900 houses had been built at Windlehurst to create the first council estate in St Helens, the scheme had been problematic and taken several years to complete and little other building work had taken place. And there was no sign of any significant construction beginning in the near future, as the Reporter described:
"The position now is that housing development is at a dead end, and everybody is waiting on private enterprise to step into the gap once more and solve the problem of the authorities and a long suffering public without adequate means of a decent home life. But private enterprise is not yet sure that it can build on profitable lines, and as private builders are not exactly philanthropists, it cannot be expected that they will sink their money in bricks and mortar unless they can see a fair and safe return upon it."
The Reporter accused the government of washing its hands of their responsibility to encourage house building, stating that local authorities did not have sufficient funds to build more homes themselves. Because of the housing shortage, many people in the town were being forced to live in slum properties, as the Reporter explained: "There is a considerable number of houses in the town ripe for demolition. Under ordinary circumstances about four hundred would be condemned to-day if it were not for the appalling housing shortage."
The paper also described how another war memorial had been unveiled in the town. The Peasley Cross Conservative Club had chosen a white marble slab of "chaste design" to pay tribute to its four members that had died in the war which was placed in its billiards room.
The Reporter described another case of the washing of dirty linen in public when Maud McCully of Dentons Green Lane charged her husband Benjamin with desertion. As always the case in St Helens Police Court was effectively an application for maintenance payments – but it did contain a couple of unusual aspects. Despite having two children aged seven and two, Mrs McCully went out to work and earned almost £2 per week. Her separated husband was a crane driver at Pilkingtons and he brought in £3 17s 6d.
Also, unusually, the wife was quite a saver of money and had built up a healthy bank account. Mrs McCully and her counsel accused the husband of being cruel and of striking her more than once – while he charged his spouse of neglecting the home and committing acts of violence herself. The mudslinging included allegations that the wife had struck the husband on the head with the buckle end of a belt and that she was a moneylender.
The man's counsel told the magistrates that the couple's squabbles were all about money, adding: "It was not unreasonable that her husband should expect her to give up her work and remain at home to look after the house and the children." The Reporter devoted a lot of column inches in describing the salacious details of the case. But in the end the husband was ordered to pay 12s 6d a week for the maintenance of his children.
Billiards was a very popular sport in St Helens and the paper also described how a new billiards room had been opened at the YMCA in Duke Street (pictured above). Although open all year round, the YMCA had a winter programme of activities, as the paper described: "The usefulness of the Y.M.C.A. was amply demonstrated by the opening week of the winter season last week. In the lectures and educational classes, religious meetings and recreative societies, the appeal was made to the whole nature of the young manhood of the town." There were 6 billiards tables in the the YMCA's new room and at its opening ceremony, the young men were reminded that the facility had been created for recreation – and not as a "mere money making speculation". So no betting on the billiards, please!
The Reporter also described how another war memorial had been unveiled in the town. The Peasley Cross Conservative Club had chosen a white marble slab of "chaste design" to pay tribute to its four members that had died in the war which was placed in its billiards room. Then on the 21st Frederick Dixon-Nuttall unveiled a war memorial at Grange Park Golf Club. There were eight names on the plaque – including that of Dixon-Nuttall's own son.
On the 23rd an inquest was held on the body of a baby that had been found floating in the St Helens / Sankey Canal, near to Redgate Bridge. The child had been in the water for so long – the time was estimated at between 3 to 6 months – that it was impossible to discern its sex. Dr Reid also told the coroner that he could not say whether the baby had had a "separate existence". In other words, the doctor did not know whether the child had been born alive or was stillborn. That would be an important distinction in any prosecution of the child's mother. But that was totally academic, as it was extremely unlikely that what had probably been a very young single woman would ever be traced.
Gracie Fields (pictured above right) began a week's performances at the Theatre Royal in St Helens from the 23rd. The 24-year-old from Rochdale was appearing in a musical revue called 'Mr. Tower of London', which had been touring the country for four years. At the same time a young George Formby Jnr (as he was billed and pictured above left) started a week of shows at the Hippodrome Theatre in St Helens. "A Chip Off The Old Block" was how he was described in the advert in the Reporter. George's father bore the same stage name and had been a huge music hall star until his death 18 months earlier.
This was, apparently, not the son's first performance in St Helens as in 1949 he told the St Helens Newspaper that he had first appeared in the town in 1921 during his second week in show business when aged about 17. The Liverpool Echo in its review of his performance this week wrote: "George Formby, junior, was warmly welcomed last night, and his quaint songs and sayings moved the audience to great laughter."
The Echo added that another act at the Hippodrome had been one of the "greatest novelties" ever seen in St Helens in which skating contests were held on real ice. The other acts on the bill were The Three Octaves ("Featuring vocalists Agnes, Hebe and ‘It’ in excerpts from grand opera and comedy"); The Shentons ("Tom and Billy – Vaudeville Eccentricities") and Hal Bryan ("The new sporting comedian").
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the new scheme to solve the endemic flooding in Sutton, the Bold Heath search party that pursued a violent tramp and the Pudding Bag thief that blamed short-term working for his stealing.
We begin on the 17th when Edward Wooll, the prospective Conservative candidate for St Helens, gave an address at the Town Hall. The packed meeting included sixty local Communists and so there was plenty of potential for trouble – but a similar number of stewards kept the meeting in good order and there were no disturbances. The incumbent MP for St Helens was the popular James Sexton, who was a moderate member of the Labour Party and fervently anti-Communist. It was difficult for Wooll to attack him personally – and so instead he told a Latvian limerick! It went:
"There was a young lady of Riga
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They finished that ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger."
Wooll explained that Sexton was the lady in his limerick and the tiger represented the disruptive forces within the country, i.e. the Communist agitators. His argument was that the reds could swallow up the town's incumbent MP if the Labour Party lost control to its Communist members – the party's "hidden hand", as he put it.
On the 19th the inquest into the mysterious death of Percy Arnold of Crowther Street was held in St Helens Town Hall, after the 24-year-old had died down Lea Green Colliery's King pit. The married man with one child had been laying an electric cable connected to a coal-cutting machine when discovered dead in a spot just two feet high. The suspicion was that Arnold had been electrocuted but he had been working with John Hopkins from Grafton Street who insisted to the coroner that the electricity had been turned off.
The deceased had recently been playing football and appeared to be in good health. However, a post-mortem revealed signs of inflammation of the stomach and Dr Unsworth thought death had probably been caused by sudden heart failure. That, he said, appeared to have been brought about by over-exertion and was contributed to by the stomach being in an inflamed condition. Although Dr Merrick stated that he agreed with Dr Unsworth's findings, the rigidity of the body and fluidity of blood were, he said, factors that could point to electrocution. But if that had occurred, one would have expected burns to be on Arnold's body and there had been none.
The St Helens Reporter on the 20th published a lengthy article on the housing crisis in the town. In 1920 it had been estimated that in order to properly address the severe housing shortage in St Helens, the town would need to build 4,600 more working-class homes within the following three years. Although 900 houses had been built at Windlehurst to create the first council estate in St Helens, the scheme had been problematic and taken several years to complete and little other building work had taken place. And there was no sign of any significant construction beginning in the near future, as the Reporter described:
"The position now is that housing development is at a dead end, and everybody is waiting on private enterprise to step into the gap once more and solve the problem of the authorities and a long suffering public without adequate means of a decent home life. But private enterprise is not yet sure that it can build on profitable lines, and as private builders are not exactly philanthropists, it cannot be expected that they will sink their money in bricks and mortar unless they can see a fair and safe return upon it."
The Reporter accused the government of washing its hands of their responsibility to encourage house building, stating that local authorities did not have sufficient funds to build more homes themselves. Because of the housing shortage, many people in the town were being forced to live in slum properties, as the Reporter explained: "There is a considerable number of houses in the town ripe for demolition. Under ordinary circumstances about four hundred would be condemned to-day if it were not for the appalling housing shortage."
The paper also described how another war memorial had been unveiled in the town. The Peasley Cross Conservative Club had chosen a white marble slab of "chaste design" to pay tribute to its four members that had died in the war which was placed in its billiards room.
The Reporter described another case of the washing of dirty linen in public when Maud McCully of Dentons Green Lane charged her husband Benjamin with desertion. As always the case in St Helens Police Court was effectively an application for maintenance payments – but it did contain a couple of unusual aspects. Despite having two children aged seven and two, Mrs McCully went out to work and earned almost £2 per week. Her separated husband was a crane driver at Pilkingtons and he brought in £3 17s 6d.
Also, unusually, the wife was quite a saver of money and had built up a healthy bank account. Mrs McCully and her counsel accused the husband of being cruel and of striking her more than once – while he charged his spouse of neglecting the home and committing acts of violence herself. The mudslinging included allegations that the wife had struck the husband on the head with the buckle end of a belt and that she was a moneylender.
The man's counsel told the magistrates that the couple's squabbles were all about money, adding: "It was not unreasonable that her husband should expect her to give up her work and remain at home to look after the house and the children." The Reporter devoted a lot of column inches in describing the salacious details of the case. But in the end the husband was ordered to pay 12s 6d a week for the maintenance of his children.
The Reporter also described how another war memorial had been unveiled in the town. The Peasley Cross Conservative Club had chosen a white marble slab of "chaste design" to pay tribute to its four members that had died in the war which was placed in its billiards room. Then on the 21st Frederick Dixon-Nuttall unveiled a war memorial at Grange Park Golf Club. There were eight names on the plaque – including that of Dixon-Nuttall's own son.
On the 23rd an inquest was held on the body of a baby that had been found floating in the St Helens / Sankey Canal, near to Redgate Bridge. The child had been in the water for so long – the time was estimated at between 3 to 6 months – that it was impossible to discern its sex. Dr Reid also told the coroner that he could not say whether the baby had had a "separate existence". In other words, the doctor did not know whether the child had been born alive or was stillborn. That would be an important distinction in any prosecution of the child's mother. But that was totally academic, as it was extremely unlikely that what had probably been a very young single woman would ever be traced.
This was, apparently, not the son's first performance in St Helens as in 1949 he told the St Helens Newspaper that he had first appeared in the town in 1921 during his second week in show business when aged about 17. The Liverpool Echo in its review of his performance this week wrote: "George Formby, junior, was warmly welcomed last night, and his quaint songs and sayings moved the audience to great laughter."
The Echo added that another act at the Hippodrome had been one of the "greatest novelties" ever seen in St Helens in which skating contests were held on real ice. The other acts on the bill were The Three Octaves ("Featuring vocalists Agnes, Hebe and ‘It’ in excerpts from grand opera and comedy"); The Shentons ("Tom and Billy – Vaudeville Eccentricities") and Hal Bryan ("The new sporting comedian").
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the new scheme to solve the endemic flooding in Sutton, the Bold Heath search party that pursued a violent tramp and the Pudding Bag thief that blamed short-term working for his stealing.
This week's stories include the Dentons Green desertion case, a mysterious death down Lea Green Colliery, George Formby performs at the Hippodrome, a baby's body is found floating in the canal, the severe housing crisis in St Helens and a war memorial is unveiled in Peasley Cross Conservative Club.
We begin on the 17th when Edward Wooll, the prospective Conservative candidate for St Helens, gave an address at the Town Hall.
The packed meeting included sixty local Communists and so there was plenty of potential for trouble – but a similar number of stewards kept the meeting in good order and there were no disturbances.
The incumbent MP for St Helens was the popular James Sexton, who was a moderate member of the Labour Party and fervently anti-Communist. It was difficult for Wooll to attack him personally – and so instead he told a Latvian limerick! It went:
"There was a young lady of Riga
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They finished that ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger."
Wooll explained that Sexton was the lady in his limerick and the tiger represented the disruptive forces within the country, i.e. the Communist agitators.
His argument was that the reds could swallow up the town's incumbent MP if the Labour Party lost control to its Communist members – the party's "hidden hand", as he put it.
On the 19th the inquest into the mysterious death of Percy Arnold of Crowther Street was held in St Helens Town Hall, after the 24-year-old had died down Lea Green Colliery's King pit.
The married man with one child had been laying an electric cable connected to a coal-cutting machine when discovered dead in a spot just two feet high.
The suspicion was that Arnold had been electrocuted but he had been working with John Hopkins from Grafton Street in St Helens who insisted to the coroner that the power supply had been turned off.
The deceased had recently been playing football and appeared to be in good health.
However, a post-mortem revealed signs of inflammation of the stomach and Dr Unsworth thought death had probably been caused by sudden heart failure.
That, he said, appeared to have been brought about by over-exertion and was contributed to by the stomach being in an inflamed condition.
Although Dr Merrick stated that he agreed with Dr Unsworth's findings, the rigidity of the body and fluidity of blood were, he said, factors that could point to electrocution.
But if that had occurred, one would have expected burns to be on Arnold's body and there had been none.
The St Helens Reporter on the 20th published a lengthy article on the housing crisis in the town.
In 1920 it had been estimated that in order to properly address the severe housing shortage in St Helens, the town would need to build 4,600 more working-class homes within the following three years.
Although 900 houses had been built at Windlehurst to create the first council estate in St Helens, the scheme had been problematic and taken several years to complete and little other building work had taken place.
And there was no sign of any significant construction beginning in the near future, as the Reporter described:
"The position now is that housing development is at a dead end, and everybody is waiting on private enterprise to step into the gap once more and solve the problem of the authorities and a long suffering public without adequate means of a decent home life.
"But private enterprise is not yet sure that it can build on profitable lines, and as private builders are not exactly philanthropists, it cannot be expected that they will sink their money in bricks and mortar unless they can see a fair and safe return upon it."
The Reporter accused the government of washing its hands of their responsibility to encourage house building, stating that local authorities did not have sufficient funds to build more homes themselves.
Because of the housing shortage, many people in the town were being forced to live in slum properties, as the Reporter explained:
"There is a considerable number of houses in the town ripe for demolition. Under ordinary circumstances about four hundred would be condemned to-day if it were not for the appalling housing shortage."
The Reporter described another case of the washing of dirty linen in public when Maud McCully of Dentons Green Lane charged her husband Benjamin with desertion.
As always the case in St Helens Police Court was effectively an application for maintenance payments – but it did contain a couple of unusual aspects.
Despite having two children aged seven and two, Mrs McCully went out to work and earned almost £2 per week. Her separated husband was a crane driver at Pilkingtons and he brought in £3 17s 6d.
Also, unusually, the wife was quite a saver of money and had built up a healthy bank account.
Mrs McCully and her counsel accused the husband of being cruel and of striking her more than once – while he charged his spouse of neglecting the home and committing acts of violence herself.
The mudslinging included allegations that the wife had struck the husband on the head with the buckle end of a belt and that she was a moneylender.
The man's counsel told the magistrates that the couple's squabbles were all about money, adding:
"It was not unreasonable that her husband should expect her to give up her work and remain at home to look after the house and the children."
The Reporter devoted a lot of column inches in describing the salacious details of the case. But in the end the husband was ordered to pay 12s 6d a week for the maintenance of his children.
Billiards was a very popular sport in St Helens and the paper also described how a new billiards room had been opened at the YMCA in Duke Street (pictured above).
Although open all year round, the YMCA had a winter programme of activities, as the paper described:
"The usefulness of the Y.M.C.A. was amply demonstrated by the opening week of the winter season last week. In the lectures and educational classes, religious meetings and recreative societies, the appeal was made to the whole nature of the young manhood of the town."
There were six billiards tables in the room and at its opening ceremony, the young men were reminded that the facility had been created for recreation – and not as a "mere money making speculation". So no betting on the billiards, please!
The Reporter also described how another war memorial had been unveiled in the town.
The Peasley Cross Conservative Club had chosen a white marble slab of "chaste design" to pay tribute to its four members that had died in the war which was placed in its billiards room.
Then on the 21st Frederick Dixon-Nuttall unveiled a war memorial at Grange Park Golf Club.
There were eight names on the plaque – including that of Dixon-Nuttall's own son.
On the 23rd an inquest was held on the body of a baby that had been found floating in the St Helens / Sankey Canal, near to Redgate Bridge.
The child had been in the water for so long – the time was estimated at between 3 to 6 months – that it was impossible to discern its sex.
Dr Reid also told the coroner that he could not say whether the baby had had a "separate existence".
In other words, the doctor did not know whether the child had been born alive or was stillborn.
That would be an important distinction in any prosecution of the child's mother. But that was totally academic, as it was extremely unlikely that what had probably been a very young single woman would ever be traced.
Gracie Fields began a week's performances at the Theatre Royal in St Helens from the 23rd.
The 24-year-old from Rochdale was appearing in a musical revue called 'Mr. Tower of London', which had been touring the country for four years.
At the same time a young George Formby Jnr (as he was billed and pictured above) started a week of shows at the Hippodrome Theatre in St Helens. "A Chip Off The Old Block" was how he was described in the advert in the Reporter.
George's father bore the same stage name and had been a huge music hall star until his death 18 months earlier.
This was, apparently, not the son's first performance in St Helens as in 1949 he told the St Helens Newspaper that he had first appeared in the town in 1921 during his second week in show business when aged about 17.
The Liverpool Echo in its review of his performance this week wrote: "George Formby, junior, was warmly welcomed last night, and his quaint songs and sayings moved the audience to great laughter."
The Echo added that another act at the Hippodrome had been one of the "greatest novelties" ever seen in St Helens in which skating contests were held on real ice.
The other acts on the bill were The Three Octaves ("Featuring vocalists Agnes, Hebe and ‘It’ in excerpts from grand opera and comedy"); The Shentons ("Tom and Billy – Vaudeville Eccentricities") and Hal Bryan ("The new sporting comedian").
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the new scheme to solve the endemic flooding in Sutton, the Bold Heath search party that pursued a violent tramp and the Pudding Bag thief that blamed short-term working for his stealing.
We begin on the 17th when Edward Wooll, the prospective Conservative candidate for St Helens, gave an address at the Town Hall.
The packed meeting included sixty local Communists and so there was plenty of potential for trouble – but a similar number of stewards kept the meeting in good order and there were no disturbances.
The incumbent MP for St Helens was the popular James Sexton, who was a moderate member of the Labour Party and fervently anti-Communist. It was difficult for Wooll to attack him personally – and so instead he told a Latvian limerick! It went:
"There was a young lady of Riga
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They finished that ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger."
Wooll explained that Sexton was the lady in his limerick and the tiger represented the disruptive forces within the country, i.e. the Communist agitators.
His argument was that the reds could swallow up the town's incumbent MP if the Labour Party lost control to its Communist members – the party's "hidden hand", as he put it.
On the 19th the inquest into the mysterious death of Percy Arnold of Crowther Street was held in St Helens Town Hall, after the 24-year-old had died down Lea Green Colliery's King pit.
The married man with one child had been laying an electric cable connected to a coal-cutting machine when discovered dead in a spot just two feet high.
The suspicion was that Arnold had been electrocuted but he had been working with John Hopkins from Grafton Street in St Helens who insisted to the coroner that the power supply had been turned off.
The deceased had recently been playing football and appeared to be in good health.
However, a post-mortem revealed signs of inflammation of the stomach and Dr Unsworth thought death had probably been caused by sudden heart failure.
That, he said, appeared to have been brought about by over-exertion and was contributed to by the stomach being in an inflamed condition.
Although Dr Merrick stated that he agreed with Dr Unsworth's findings, the rigidity of the body and fluidity of blood were, he said, factors that could point to electrocution.
But if that had occurred, one would have expected burns to be on Arnold's body and there had been none.
The St Helens Reporter on the 20th published a lengthy article on the housing crisis in the town.
In 1920 it had been estimated that in order to properly address the severe housing shortage in St Helens, the town would need to build 4,600 more working-class homes within the following three years.
Although 900 houses had been built at Windlehurst to create the first council estate in St Helens, the scheme had been problematic and taken several years to complete and little other building work had taken place.
And there was no sign of any significant construction beginning in the near future, as the Reporter described:
"The position now is that housing development is at a dead end, and everybody is waiting on private enterprise to step into the gap once more and solve the problem of the authorities and a long suffering public without adequate means of a decent home life.
"But private enterprise is not yet sure that it can build on profitable lines, and as private builders are not exactly philanthropists, it cannot be expected that they will sink their money in bricks and mortar unless they can see a fair and safe return upon it."
The Reporter accused the government of washing its hands of their responsibility to encourage house building, stating that local authorities did not have sufficient funds to build more homes themselves.
Because of the housing shortage, many people in the town were being forced to live in slum properties, as the Reporter explained:
"There is a considerable number of houses in the town ripe for demolition. Under ordinary circumstances about four hundred would be condemned to-day if it were not for the appalling housing shortage."
The Reporter described another case of the washing of dirty linen in public when Maud McCully of Dentons Green Lane charged her husband Benjamin with desertion.
As always the case in St Helens Police Court was effectively an application for maintenance payments – but it did contain a couple of unusual aspects.
Despite having two children aged seven and two, Mrs McCully went out to work and earned almost £2 per week. Her separated husband was a crane driver at Pilkingtons and he brought in £3 17s 6d.
Also, unusually, the wife was quite a saver of money and had built up a healthy bank account.
Mrs McCully and her counsel accused the husband of being cruel and of striking her more than once – while he charged his spouse of neglecting the home and committing acts of violence herself.
The mudslinging included allegations that the wife had struck the husband on the head with the buckle end of a belt and that she was a moneylender.
The man's counsel told the magistrates that the couple's squabbles were all about money, adding:
"It was not unreasonable that her husband should expect her to give up her work and remain at home to look after the house and the children."
The Reporter devoted a lot of column inches in describing the salacious details of the case. But in the end the husband was ordered to pay 12s 6d a week for the maintenance of his children.
Although open all year round, the YMCA had a winter programme of activities, as the paper described:
"The usefulness of the Y.M.C.A. was amply demonstrated by the opening week of the winter season last week. In the lectures and educational classes, religious meetings and recreative societies, the appeal was made to the whole nature of the young manhood of the town."
There were six billiards tables in the room and at its opening ceremony, the young men were reminded that the facility had been created for recreation – and not as a "mere money making speculation". So no betting on the billiards, please!
The Reporter also described how another war memorial had been unveiled in the town.
The Peasley Cross Conservative Club had chosen a white marble slab of "chaste design" to pay tribute to its four members that had died in the war which was placed in its billiards room.
Then on the 21st Frederick Dixon-Nuttall unveiled a war memorial at Grange Park Golf Club.
There were eight names on the plaque – including that of Dixon-Nuttall's own son.
On the 23rd an inquest was held on the body of a baby that had been found floating in the St Helens / Sankey Canal, near to Redgate Bridge.
The child had been in the water for so long – the time was estimated at between 3 to 6 months – that it was impossible to discern its sex.
Dr Reid also told the coroner that he could not say whether the baby had had a "separate existence".
In other words, the doctor did not know whether the child had been born alive or was stillborn.
That would be an important distinction in any prosecution of the child's mother. But that was totally academic, as it was extremely unlikely that what had probably been a very young single woman would ever be traced.
Gracie Fields began a week's performances at the Theatre Royal in St Helens from the 23rd.
The 24-year-old from Rochdale was appearing in a musical revue called 'Mr. Tower of London', which had been touring the country for four years.
George's father bore the same stage name and had been a huge music hall star until his death 18 months earlier.
This was, apparently, not the son's first performance in St Helens as in 1949 he told the St Helens Newspaper that he had first appeared in the town in 1921 during his second week in show business when aged about 17.
The Liverpool Echo in its review of his performance this week wrote: "George Formby, junior, was warmly welcomed last night, and his quaint songs and sayings moved the audience to great laughter."
The Echo added that another act at the Hippodrome had been one of the "greatest novelties" ever seen in St Helens in which skating contests were held on real ice.
The other acts on the bill were The Three Octaves ("Featuring vocalists Agnes, Hebe and ‘It’ in excerpts from grand opera and comedy"); The Shentons ("Tom and Billy – Vaudeville Eccentricities") and Hal Bryan ("The new sporting comedian").
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the new scheme to solve the endemic flooding in Sutton, the Bold Heath search party that pursued a violent tramp and the Pudding Bag thief that blamed short-term working for his stealing.