IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 18 - 24 MAY 1926
This week's many stories include the man that liked to steal ladders and dodge rail fares, an appraisal of the ongoing miners' strike in St Helens, the injured colliery worker who was told to undertake heavy lifting, the Penlake Lane disturbance and the Ashcroft Street woman who claimed she was threatened night and day by her husband's children.
We begin with an article in the Liverpool Echo on the 19th in which "the little colliery district" of Rainford was praised for its annual Eisteddfod. The paper said the celebration each year was always marked by great enthusiasm.
When John Barton appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 19th, the magistrates were informed that the man had two specialties. The police said he liked to steal ladders and travel on trains without paying his fare and Barton had subsequently accrued 43 convictions. Just whether the man went on trains with his stolen ladders was not revealed in court! Barton's latest conviction was for travelling from Liverpool to St Helens without a ticket for which he was fined 40 shillings or must serve twenty-eight days in prison.
In St Helens County Court (pictured above) on the 19th, Annie Corbett declared: "There are nine of them in the parlour, and they make my life a bugbear". The woman from Ashcroft Street told Judge Dowdall that she had married a widower with nine children and they threatened her "night and day". They had all – or at least some of them – moved into the house that she owned and she was clearly at the end of her tether. And so Mrs Corbett was applying for possession of the room in her house occupied by her troublesome stepson Michael Gill.
On the previous Friday she had taken Michael to the Police Court and he had been bound over for six months. Judge Dowdall said Mrs Corbett was protected against Gill by the Police Court order and although he was three weeks in arrears with his rent, that was not extraordinary considering the recent general strike. As a consequence and with the shortage of homes in St Helens in mind, the judge refused to sign the eviction order.
David Elsey from Watery Lane in Sutton was also unlucky in the County Court. That was after he had sued the Sutton Heath & Lea Green Colliery Company for the restoration of his compensation payments as a result of an accident he had sustained at the mine in 1923 when he was then earning about £5 a week.
Compensation for work-related injuries would usually take the form of weekly payments that were somewhat less than the person's normal wage. When a doctor ruled that the injured employee could return to work, very often their infirmity meant they had to be placed on lighter duties which resulted in them being paid less than before they were hurt. That led to colliery workers with only one arm or eye still dangerously working in a coal mine but undertaking less strenuous and lower paid work than before their accident.
After badly injuring a hand, David Elsey had received the weekly compensation payments until a doctor declared he was fit to return to the mine by undertaking lighter work. However, Elsey told the County Court judge that after a while back at the colliery he had been put on heavy rail lifting, which he was unable to perform as he had partly lost the use of his left hand. And he had a letter from his own doctor to support his case.
But the colliery manager told the court that the rails could easily be lifted with one hand and claimed the Miners Agent had agreed that was so and consequently the judge gave judgment for the colliery company. Although with the miners still on strike, the question of whether Elsey should return to his job was largely an academic one at present.
The Sutton Sheeting Sheds and General Stores were situated in Penlake Lane in Sutton and owned by the LMS Railway. There they made and repaired tarpaulin sheets for railway wagons and street carts and stored many items. On the 21st eight of their employees appeared in St Helens Police Court under a warrant issued by the LMS Railway Company under Emergency Powers Regulations. These were brought in to combat the widespread disruption caused by the General Strike, which authorised the government to maintain essential services and public order.
The men were charged with committing an act calculated to prevent the proper use of Penlake Lane. The two main defendants were James Sheridan from Woodcock Street and George Hill from Grimshaw Street and six others were charged with aiding and abetting them. The prosecution case was that two volunteers called Nicholas Cunliffe and John Stirling had been sent to Sutton from Manchester to collect bedding and pillows from the railway stores.
During the strike volunteers had been recruited to man many essential services, although some later regretted their involvement having believed at the time they were foiling a revolutionary plot. Immediately after the strike a Liverpool newspaper went on the streets of the city asking men about their involvement and were surprised to find most were unwilling to discuss their roles. "What Did You Do In the Great Strike?", was the headline to their article.
The volunteers that turned up at Sutton were told they needed a permit from the union's Council of Action and one striker said to a driver: "You fellows call yourselves volunteers, but we call it blacklegging". Having loaded their lorry, the volunteers found the chain on the gate was padlocked, preventing their vehicle from leaving.
At first there was a crowd of about thirty or forty at the gate but this soon increased to between 500 and 600. After a 3-hour stalemate, the bedding was unloaded from the lorry and returned to the stores and the empty lorry returned to Manchester. However, the magistrates were in a conciliatory mood and dismissed the charges of aiding and abetting against six men.
And Sheridan and Hill – the two young men who admitted placing the chain on the gate of the works – were only bound over, with the Bench saying they would be very lenient as they wanted to support efforts at establishing amicable relations between master and men. However, a blacksmith striker called Frederick Thomas from Robins Lane and Henry Mather of Francis Street were then dealt with for threatening those in charge of the lorry. Thomas was fined 40 shillings and Mather ordered to find sureties of £5 to be of good behaviour in future.
Now that the General Strike or "Great Strike" as some called it was over and the dust was starting to settle, attention was turning to the ongoing miners' strike or lockout. The Echo wrote on the 21st:
"Among the 17,000 colliery workers of St. Helens and district there is a fairly unanimous feeling that the strike must go on until the wage reduction proposals are abandoned. The men are quietly enjoying the “holiday,” working on their allotments, bowling, and in other similar pursuits. The shopkeepers have mostly resorted to the cash sales idea, and very little credit is being given, but money so far is not exceptionally scarce.
"About 7,000 children are fed by school teachers and voluntary workers each day, including Sunday. Applications for relief from the guardians have become very numerous during the past week and the expenditure of the board is likely to result in a rates increase."
The miners' strike would continue for many months more, although a drift back to work would begin in August. The St Helens Reporter was published on the 21st and confirmed that the town was getting back to normal after the General Strike. They said a quarter of railway staff was still not at work but that was mainly because only half of train services were being run to conserve dwindling coal stocks.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the man discharged from court because the sun was shining, the thousands scavenging for free coal, the Peasley Cross wooden hut on four wheels and the light sentence for carrying a gun on the streets of St Helens.
We begin with an article in the Liverpool Echo on the 19th in which "the little colliery district" of Rainford was praised for its annual Eisteddfod. The paper said the celebration each year was always marked by great enthusiasm.
When John Barton appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 19th, the magistrates were informed that the man had two specialties. The police said he liked to steal ladders and travel on trains without paying his fare and Barton had subsequently accrued 43 convictions. Just whether the man went on trains with his stolen ladders was not revealed in court! Barton's latest conviction was for travelling from Liverpool to St Helens without a ticket for which he was fined 40 shillings or must serve twenty-eight days in prison.
On the previous Friday she had taken Michael to the Police Court and he had been bound over for six months. Judge Dowdall said Mrs Corbett was protected against Gill by the Police Court order and although he was three weeks in arrears with his rent, that was not extraordinary considering the recent general strike. As a consequence and with the shortage of homes in St Helens in mind, the judge refused to sign the eviction order.
David Elsey from Watery Lane in Sutton was also unlucky in the County Court. That was after he had sued the Sutton Heath & Lea Green Colliery Company for the restoration of his compensation payments as a result of an accident he had sustained at the mine in 1923 when he was then earning about £5 a week.
Compensation for work-related injuries would usually take the form of weekly payments that were somewhat less than the person's normal wage. When a doctor ruled that the injured employee could return to work, very often their infirmity meant they had to be placed on lighter duties which resulted in them being paid less than before they were hurt. That led to colliery workers with only one arm or eye still dangerously working in a coal mine but undertaking less strenuous and lower paid work than before their accident.
After badly injuring a hand, David Elsey had received the weekly compensation payments until a doctor declared he was fit to return to the mine by undertaking lighter work. However, Elsey told the County Court judge that after a while back at the colliery he had been put on heavy rail lifting, which he was unable to perform as he had partly lost the use of his left hand. And he had a letter from his own doctor to support his case.
But the colliery manager told the court that the rails could easily be lifted with one hand and claimed the Miners Agent had agreed that was so and consequently the judge gave judgment for the colliery company. Although with the miners still on strike, the question of whether Elsey should return to his job was largely an academic one at present.
The Sutton Sheeting Sheds and General Stores were situated in Penlake Lane in Sutton and owned by the LMS Railway. There they made and repaired tarpaulin sheets for railway wagons and street carts and stored many items. On the 21st eight of their employees appeared in St Helens Police Court under a warrant issued by the LMS Railway Company under Emergency Powers Regulations. These were brought in to combat the widespread disruption caused by the General Strike, which authorised the government to maintain essential services and public order.
The men were charged with committing an act calculated to prevent the proper use of Penlake Lane. The two main defendants were James Sheridan from Woodcock Street and George Hill from Grimshaw Street and six others were charged with aiding and abetting them. The prosecution case was that two volunteers called Nicholas Cunliffe and John Stirling had been sent to Sutton from Manchester to collect bedding and pillows from the railway stores.
During the strike volunteers had been recruited to man many essential services, although some later regretted their involvement having believed at the time they were foiling a revolutionary plot. Immediately after the strike a Liverpool newspaper went on the streets of the city asking men about their involvement and were surprised to find most were unwilling to discuss their roles. "What Did You Do In the Great Strike?", was the headline to their article.
The volunteers that turned up at Sutton were told they needed a permit from the union's Council of Action and one striker said to a driver: "You fellows call yourselves volunteers, but we call it blacklegging". Having loaded their lorry, the volunteers found the chain on the gate was padlocked, preventing their vehicle from leaving.
At first there was a crowd of about thirty or forty at the gate but this soon increased to between 500 and 600. After a 3-hour stalemate, the bedding was unloaded from the lorry and returned to the stores and the empty lorry returned to Manchester. However, the magistrates were in a conciliatory mood and dismissed the charges of aiding and abetting against six men.
And Sheridan and Hill – the two young men who admitted placing the chain on the gate of the works – were only bound over, with the Bench saying they would be very lenient as they wanted to support efforts at establishing amicable relations between master and men. However, a blacksmith striker called Frederick Thomas from Robins Lane and Henry Mather of Francis Street were then dealt with for threatening those in charge of the lorry. Thomas was fined 40 shillings and Mather ordered to find sureties of £5 to be of good behaviour in future.
Now that the General Strike or "Great Strike" as some called it was over and the dust was starting to settle, attention was turning to the ongoing miners' strike or lockout. The Echo wrote on the 21st:
"Among the 17,000 colliery workers of St. Helens and district there is a fairly unanimous feeling that the strike must go on until the wage reduction proposals are abandoned. The men are quietly enjoying the “holiday,” working on their allotments, bowling, and in other similar pursuits. The shopkeepers have mostly resorted to the cash sales idea, and very little credit is being given, but money so far is not exceptionally scarce.
"About 7,000 children are fed by school teachers and voluntary workers each day, including Sunday. Applications for relief from the guardians have become very numerous during the past week and the expenditure of the board is likely to result in a rates increase."
The miners' strike would continue for many months more, although a drift back to work would begin in August. The St Helens Reporter was published on the 21st and confirmed that the town was getting back to normal after the General Strike. They said a quarter of railway staff was still not at work but that was mainly because only half of train services were being run to conserve dwindling coal stocks.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the man discharged from court because the sun was shining, the thousands scavenging for free coal, the Peasley Cross wooden hut on four wheels and the light sentence for carrying a gun on the streets of St Helens.
This week's many stories include the man that liked to steal ladders and dodge rail fares, an appraisal of the ongoing miners' strike in St Helens, the injured colliery worker who was told to undertake heavy lifting, the Penlake Lane disturbance and the Ashcroft Street woman who claimed she was threatened night and day by her husband's children.
We begin with an article in the Liverpool Echo on the 19th in which "the little colliery district" of Rainford was praised for its annual Eisteddfod. The paper said the celebration each year was always marked by great enthusiasm.
When John Barton appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 19th, the magistrates were informed that the man had two specialties.
The police said he liked to steal ladders and travel on trains without paying his fare and Barton had subsequently accrued 43 convictions.
Just whether the man went on trains with his stolen ladders was not revealed in court!
Barton's latest conviction was for travelling from Liverpool to St Helens without a ticket for which he was fined 40 shillings or must serve twenty-eight days in prison.
In St Helens County Court (pictured above) on the 19th, Annie Corbett declared: "There are nine of them in the parlour, and they make my life a bugbear".
The woman from Ashcroft Street told Judge Dowdall that she had married a widower with nine children and they threatened her "night and day".
They had all – or at least some of them – moved into the house that she owned and she was clearly at the end of her tether.
And so Mrs Corbett was applying for possession of the room in her house occupied by her troublesome stepson Michael Gill.
On the previous Friday she had taken Michael to the Police Court and he had been bound over for six months.
Judge Dowdall said Mrs Corbett was protected against Gill by the Police Court order and although he was three weeks in arrears with his rent, that was not extraordinary considering the recent general strike.
As a consequence and with the shortage of homes in St Helens in mind, the judge refused to sign the eviction order.
David Elsey from Watery Lane in Sutton was also unlucky in the County Court.
That was after he had sued the Sutton Heath & Lea Green Colliery Company for the restoration of his compensation payments as a result of an accident he had sustained at the mine in 1923 when he was then earning about £5 a week.
Compensation for work-related injuries would usually take the form of weekly payments that were somewhat less than the person's normal wage.
When a doctor ruled that the injured employee could return to work, very often their infirmity meant they had to be placed on lighter duties which resulted in them being paid less than before they were hurt.
That led to colliery workers with only one arm or eye still dangerously working in a coal mine but undertaking less strenuous and lower paid work than before their accident.
After badly injuring a hand, David Elsey had received the weekly compensation payments until a doctor declared he was fit to return to the mine by undertaking lighter work.
However, Elsey told the County Court judge that after a while back at the colliery he had been put on heavy rail lifting, which he was unable to perform as he had partly lost the use of his left hand. And he had a letter from his own doctor to support his case.
But the colliery manager told the court that the rails could easily be lifted with one hand and claimed the Miners Agent had agreed that was so and consequently the judge gave judgment for the colliery company.
Although with the miners still on strike, the question of whether Elsey should return to his job was largely an academic one at present.
The Sutton Sheeting Sheds and General Stores were situated in Penlake Lane in Sutton and owned by the LMS Railway. There they made and repaired tarpaulin sheets for railway wagons and street carts and stored many items.
On the 21st eight of their employees appeared in St Helens Police Court under a warrant issued by the LMS Railway Company under Emergency Powers Regulations.
These were brought in to combat the widespread disruption caused by the General Strike, which authorised the government to maintain essential services and public order.
The men were charged with committing an act calculated to prevent the proper use of Penlake Lane.
The two main defendants were James Sheridan from Woodcock Street and George Hill from Grimshaw Street and six others were charged with aiding and abetting them.
The prosecution case was that two volunteers called Nicholas Cunliffe and John Stirling had been sent to Sutton from Manchester to collect bedding and pillows from the railway stores.
During the strike volunteers had been recruited to man many essential services, although some later regretted their involvement having believed at the time they were foiling a revolutionary plot.
Immediately after the strike a Liverpool newspaper went on the streets of the city asking men about their involvement and were surprised to find most were unwilling to discuss their roles. "What Did You Do In the Great Strike?", was the headline to their article.
The volunteers that turned up at Sutton were told they needed a permit from the union's Council of Action and one striker said to a driver: "You fellows call yourselves volunteers, but we call it blacklegging".
Having loaded their lorry, the volunteers found the chain on the gate was padlocked, preventing their vehicle from leaving.
At first there was a crowd of about thirty or forty at the gate but this soon increased to between 500 and 600.
After a 3-hour stalemate, the bedding was unloaded from the lorry and returned to the stores and the empty lorry returned to Manchester.
However, the magistrates were in a conciliatory mood and dismissed the charges of aiding and abetting against six men.
And Sheridan and Hill – the two young men who admitted placing the chain on the gate of the works – were only bound over, with the Bench saying they would be very lenient as they wanted to support efforts at establishing amicable relations between master and men.
However, a blacksmith striker called Frederick Thomas from Robins Lane and Henry Mather of Francis Street were then dealt with for threatening those in charge of the lorry.
Thomas was fined 40 shillings and Mather ordered to find sureties of £5 to be of good behaviour in future.
Now that the General Strike or "Great Strike" as some called it was over and the dust was starting to settle, attention was turning to the ongoing miners' strike or lockout. The Echo wrote on the 21st:
"Among the 17,000 colliery workers of St. Helens and district there is a fairly unanimous feeling that the strike must go on until the wage reduction proposals are abandoned. The men are quietly enjoying the “holiday,” working on their allotments, bowling, and in other similar pursuits.
"The shopkeepers have mostly resorted to the cash sales idea, and very little credit is being given, but money so far is not exceptionally scarce.
"About 7,000 children are fed by school teachers and voluntary workers each day, including Sunday. Applications for relief from the guardians have become very numerous during the past week and the expenditure of the board is likely to result in a rates increase."
The miners' strike would continue for many months more, although a drift back to work would begin in August.
The St Helens Reporter was published on the 21st and confirmed that the town was getting back to normal after the General Strike.
They said a quarter of railway staff was still not at work but that was mainly because only half of train services were being run to conserve dwindling coal stocks.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the man discharged from court because the sun was shining, the thousands scavenging for free coal, the Peasley Cross wooden hut on four wheels and the light sentence for carrying a gun on the streets of St Helens.
We begin with an article in the Liverpool Echo on the 19th in which "the little colliery district" of Rainford was praised for its annual Eisteddfod. The paper said the celebration each year was always marked by great enthusiasm.
When John Barton appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 19th, the magistrates were informed that the man had two specialties.
The police said he liked to steal ladders and travel on trains without paying his fare and Barton had subsequently accrued 43 convictions.
Just whether the man went on trains with his stolen ladders was not revealed in court!
Barton's latest conviction was for travelling from Liverpool to St Helens without a ticket for which he was fined 40 shillings or must serve twenty-eight days in prison.
The woman from Ashcroft Street told Judge Dowdall that she had married a widower with nine children and they threatened her "night and day".
They had all – or at least some of them – moved into the house that she owned and she was clearly at the end of her tether.
And so Mrs Corbett was applying for possession of the room in her house occupied by her troublesome stepson Michael Gill.
On the previous Friday she had taken Michael to the Police Court and he had been bound over for six months.
Judge Dowdall said Mrs Corbett was protected against Gill by the Police Court order and although he was three weeks in arrears with his rent, that was not extraordinary considering the recent general strike.
As a consequence and with the shortage of homes in St Helens in mind, the judge refused to sign the eviction order.
David Elsey from Watery Lane in Sutton was also unlucky in the County Court.
That was after he had sued the Sutton Heath & Lea Green Colliery Company for the restoration of his compensation payments as a result of an accident he had sustained at the mine in 1923 when he was then earning about £5 a week.
Compensation for work-related injuries would usually take the form of weekly payments that were somewhat less than the person's normal wage.
When a doctor ruled that the injured employee could return to work, very often their infirmity meant they had to be placed on lighter duties which resulted in them being paid less than before they were hurt.
That led to colliery workers with only one arm or eye still dangerously working in a coal mine but undertaking less strenuous and lower paid work than before their accident.
After badly injuring a hand, David Elsey had received the weekly compensation payments until a doctor declared he was fit to return to the mine by undertaking lighter work.
However, Elsey told the County Court judge that after a while back at the colliery he had been put on heavy rail lifting, which he was unable to perform as he had partly lost the use of his left hand. And he had a letter from his own doctor to support his case.
But the colliery manager told the court that the rails could easily be lifted with one hand and claimed the Miners Agent had agreed that was so and consequently the judge gave judgment for the colliery company.
Although with the miners still on strike, the question of whether Elsey should return to his job was largely an academic one at present.
The Sutton Sheeting Sheds and General Stores were situated in Penlake Lane in Sutton and owned by the LMS Railway. There they made and repaired tarpaulin sheets for railway wagons and street carts and stored many items.
On the 21st eight of their employees appeared in St Helens Police Court under a warrant issued by the LMS Railway Company under Emergency Powers Regulations.
These were brought in to combat the widespread disruption caused by the General Strike, which authorised the government to maintain essential services and public order.
The men were charged with committing an act calculated to prevent the proper use of Penlake Lane.
The two main defendants were James Sheridan from Woodcock Street and George Hill from Grimshaw Street and six others were charged with aiding and abetting them.
The prosecution case was that two volunteers called Nicholas Cunliffe and John Stirling had been sent to Sutton from Manchester to collect bedding and pillows from the railway stores.
During the strike volunteers had been recruited to man many essential services, although some later regretted their involvement having believed at the time they were foiling a revolutionary plot.
Immediately after the strike a Liverpool newspaper went on the streets of the city asking men about their involvement and were surprised to find most were unwilling to discuss their roles. "What Did You Do In the Great Strike?", was the headline to their article.
The volunteers that turned up at Sutton were told they needed a permit from the union's Council of Action and one striker said to a driver: "You fellows call yourselves volunteers, but we call it blacklegging".
Having loaded their lorry, the volunteers found the chain on the gate was padlocked, preventing their vehicle from leaving.
At first there was a crowd of about thirty or forty at the gate but this soon increased to between 500 and 600.
After a 3-hour stalemate, the bedding was unloaded from the lorry and returned to the stores and the empty lorry returned to Manchester.
However, the magistrates were in a conciliatory mood and dismissed the charges of aiding and abetting against six men.
And Sheridan and Hill – the two young men who admitted placing the chain on the gate of the works – were only bound over, with the Bench saying they would be very lenient as they wanted to support efforts at establishing amicable relations between master and men.
However, a blacksmith striker called Frederick Thomas from Robins Lane and Henry Mather of Francis Street were then dealt with for threatening those in charge of the lorry.
Thomas was fined 40 shillings and Mather ordered to find sureties of £5 to be of good behaviour in future.
Now that the General Strike or "Great Strike" as some called it was over and the dust was starting to settle, attention was turning to the ongoing miners' strike or lockout. The Echo wrote on the 21st:
"Among the 17,000 colliery workers of St. Helens and district there is a fairly unanimous feeling that the strike must go on until the wage reduction proposals are abandoned. The men are quietly enjoying the “holiday,” working on their allotments, bowling, and in other similar pursuits.
"The shopkeepers have mostly resorted to the cash sales idea, and very little credit is being given, but money so far is not exceptionally scarce.
"About 7,000 children are fed by school teachers and voluntary workers each day, including Sunday. Applications for relief from the guardians have become very numerous during the past week and the expenditure of the board is likely to result in a rates increase."
The miners' strike would continue for many months more, although a drift back to work would begin in August.
The St Helens Reporter was published on the 21st and confirmed that the town was getting back to normal after the General Strike.
They said a quarter of railway staff was still not at work but that was mainly because only half of train services were being run to conserve dwindling coal stocks.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the man discharged from court because the sun was shining, the thousands scavenging for free coal, the Peasley Cross wooden hut on four wheels and the light sentence for carrying a gun on the streets of St Helens.