IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (19 - 25 JUNE 1923)
This week's many stories include the Thatto Heath card playing that led to two families being at war, two suicides take place in St Helens Canal, the wounded ex-soldier's wife assault, the double tragedy on the Windlehurst estate, an update on the building of the new Lowe House church and the Peter Street gambling house.
Parliament had passed a new Firearms Act to deal with the many weapons in circulation that had been brought back from France by soldiers. That was as a result of concern that they might be used in Ireland or in a Bolshevik-style rebellion in Britain. All gun owners now needed a licence from the police, although the penalties for ignoring the law were not very severe. On June 19th William Thomas of Fleet Lane in Parr was charged in St Helens Police Court with being in possession of an automatic pistol and 11 rounds of ball ammunition without certificates. Just how the police had learned of them was not explained in court but often was the result of ex-servicemen showing off their wartime souvenirs.
Chief Inspector Roe said when he had visited the defendant's house with a search warrant, he asked William if he had any firearms or ammunition, to which he replied "No". At that point his wife said to her husband: "Are you sure that there are not any upstairs?", to which he replied "Yes". So the police went upstairs and searched a cupboard where they found the pistol and ammunition. William Thomas told the Bench that he had been given them while serving in the army and he was fined £2 with his pistol and ammunition forfeited.
The new Windlehurst council estate suffered its first tragedy on the 19th when a mother and her 2-year-old child were found drowned in their bath. Nora Lyon had sent her daughter to school and then locked herself in the bathroom with her son Dennis. After water was seen overflowing from the bathroom, a forced entry was made and both mother and son were found dead in the bath fully dressed.
At the inquest the husband said his wife had been a delicate woman. Shortly after their marriage when they lived at Wrexham, Nora had fallen downstairs from time to time and since then had complained of pains in her head. At the birth of her little boy she had been exceptionally ill and had frequently complained of headaches. Samuel Lyon said he thought Nora had gone into the bathroom with the boy in her arms, been taken dizzy and had fallen in and in doing so had inadvertently turned on the water tap and drowned. However, the inquest jury were not convinced and decided to return an open verdict.
There was yet another death in the St Helens Canal on the 21st when James Webster's body was discovered near Bibby's copper works. Unusually, the 54-year-old from Edgar Street in St. Helens had only been in the water a few hours and he was still wearing his cap. The man's sister told the subsequent inquest that her brother had been out of work and been drinking. Just before his death James had said to her: "You will never see me alive again. I am going to drown myself," but as he had been drinking she did not think he meant it.
A dispute between neighbours in Gertrude Street in Thatto Heath was described in St Helens Police Court on the 21st when Annie Thomas summoned Margaret Hall for assault. The trouble was said to have started when the complainant's son Charles Thomas started playing cards at the Halls' house until late at night. He also stopped going to Bible class and chapel on Sundays, preferring to play cards instead.
Charles was twenty-one and one would have thought free to make his own decisions – but his mother Annie thought otherwise. She asked Mrs Hall's husband to put a stop to the visits, which led to Margaret Hall going to her home and attacking her. Annie Thomas was also accused in court of "uttering really serious slanders" about Mrs Hall, which she denied but on the ground that what she'd said was true.
The suggestion was that more than card playing had been available at the home of the Halls and the St Helens Reporter's write-up bore these headlines: "The Tongue Of Scandal – Mother Of Family And Boy Of 21 – Resentful Woman's Bitter Story – Remarkable Source of Thatto Heath Quarrel." The magistrates dismissed the case and also a counter-summons that had been brought.
A fundraising appeal to build a new Lowe House church had opened in January 1914 but had to be suspended during the war. On the 22nd the Reporter provided an update on its progress:
"The spacious new sacristies [vestries] at Lowe House, and the Memorial Chapel are fast nearing completion, while the foundations of the new church are now in, and this will be the next edifice to rise in the wide grounds of Lowe House. The new church, when built, will in its turn replace the present edifice, and promises to be a very handsome addition to the architectural features of St. Helens." Lowe House is so-named because the main benefactor for the original church built in 1793 was a woman called Winefred Eccleston, whose maiden name was Lowe.
Sometimes I find organisations get the date of their founding wrong and there was such a case in this week's Reporter. A letter from Councillor Richard Pilkington, the President of St Helens Hospital (pictured above), was published and he remarked that the institution would be celebrating its jubilee in the autumn. However, newspapers from 1873 show that the then St Helens Cottage Hospital opened on January 15th of that year.
The hospital's main revenue came from its penny-a-week insurance scheme. The letter gave credit for its creation to James Davies, who was still alive and the scheme now boasted 23,000 subscribers. Councillor Pilkington added that during 1922 the hospital had dealt with 2,200 separate cases of which nearly 1,800 were in-patients.
In February I described how joiner John Singleton from Hardshaw Street in St Helens had died after falling off an insecure ladder at the United Alkali Company's plant in Widnes. The 62-year old had fallen after attempting to move the ladder to one side by jerking it whilst standing on top. This week on the 25th the body of his widow Sarah was found in the St Helens Canal near the Globe works. It was reported that she had been very depressed since her husband's death.
A charge of using your house for the purpose of betting was considered more serious than street betting. So on the 25th Charles Forrest went to great lengths to try and prove that his Peter Street home had not been a betting house – but he did admit to taking some bets on the street. The 30-year-old's parents had also been summoned and Charles wanted to clear them.
Supt. Dunn gave evidence of the police having kept the house under observation for some time with about 17 people each day seen entering by the front door. When the police raided the house they found five betting slips with two of them inside Alice Forrest's purse. Although her husband James Forrest had also been summoned, he insisted that the other members of his family had used his home for betting without permission. He claimed that he had often prevented people from coming in with slips and said he had even complained to the Chief Constable about it. Charles Forest was fined £10 and his mother £5.
Although unemployment pay was low it could be controversial with some complaining that claimants wasted their dole money on drink. The Daily Mail was then renowned for making such generalisations. John Carter of Edward Street in St Helens was one such person who collected his unemployment allowance and then went to a club, although as a wounded ex-soldier he, perhaps, had a good reason to take a drink. What he did not have was the right to thump his wife, which was why he was in court.
Sarah Carter said her husband had drawn his out of work pay, spent some of it in a Brook Street club, come home, gave her 14 shillings and then struck her in the eye with a bottle of stout. The 36-year-old should have appeared in court three days before to face the charge of assaulting Sarah and when asked why he had not turned up explained what happened:
"I was here on Friday, waiting in the witness-room, when my wife came to me and said there was six months waiting for me. I had 2 shillings in my pocket and I went and spent it." However, Carter also said he had been carrying a bullet in his left shoulder for eight years which game him a lot of trouble. The Bench said he had better have a quiet spell away from drink and sent him to prison for 7 days.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the professional boxer's serious assault on a 12-year-old boy at Parr Fair, the dispute over the Town Clerk's salary is finally resolved, the ban on car parking on St Helens' streets and the Parr mother's knock-out punch.
Parliament had passed a new Firearms Act to deal with the many weapons in circulation that had been brought back from France by soldiers. That was as a result of concern that they might be used in Ireland or in a Bolshevik-style rebellion in Britain. All gun owners now needed a licence from the police, although the penalties for ignoring the law were not very severe. On June 19th William Thomas of Fleet Lane in Parr was charged in St Helens Police Court with being in possession of an automatic pistol and 11 rounds of ball ammunition without certificates. Just how the police had learned of them was not explained in court but often was the result of ex-servicemen showing off their wartime souvenirs.
Chief Inspector Roe said when he had visited the defendant's house with a search warrant, he asked William if he had any firearms or ammunition, to which he replied "No". At that point his wife said to her husband: "Are you sure that there are not any upstairs?", to which he replied "Yes". So the police went upstairs and searched a cupboard where they found the pistol and ammunition. William Thomas told the Bench that he had been given them while serving in the army and he was fined £2 with his pistol and ammunition forfeited.
The new Windlehurst council estate suffered its first tragedy on the 19th when a mother and her 2-year-old child were found drowned in their bath. Nora Lyon had sent her daughter to school and then locked herself in the bathroom with her son Dennis. After water was seen overflowing from the bathroom, a forced entry was made and both mother and son were found dead in the bath fully dressed.
At the inquest the husband said his wife had been a delicate woman. Shortly after their marriage when they lived at Wrexham, Nora had fallen downstairs from time to time and since then had complained of pains in her head. At the birth of her little boy she had been exceptionally ill and had frequently complained of headaches. Samuel Lyon said he thought Nora had gone into the bathroom with the boy in her arms, been taken dizzy and had fallen in and in doing so had inadvertently turned on the water tap and drowned. However, the inquest jury were not convinced and decided to return an open verdict.
There was yet another death in the St Helens Canal on the 21st when James Webster's body was discovered near Bibby's copper works. Unusually, the 54-year-old from Edgar Street in St. Helens had only been in the water a few hours and he was still wearing his cap. The man's sister told the subsequent inquest that her brother had been out of work and been drinking. Just before his death James had said to her: "You will never see me alive again. I am going to drown myself," but as he had been drinking she did not think he meant it.
A dispute between neighbours in Gertrude Street in Thatto Heath was described in St Helens Police Court on the 21st when Annie Thomas summoned Margaret Hall for assault. The trouble was said to have started when the complainant's son Charles Thomas started playing cards at the Halls' house until late at night. He also stopped going to Bible class and chapel on Sundays, preferring to play cards instead.
Charles was twenty-one and one would have thought free to make his own decisions – but his mother Annie thought otherwise. She asked Mrs Hall's husband to put a stop to the visits, which led to Margaret Hall going to her home and attacking her. Annie Thomas was also accused in court of "uttering really serious slanders" about Mrs Hall, which she denied but on the ground that what she'd said was true.
The suggestion was that more than card playing had been available at the home of the Halls and the St Helens Reporter's write-up bore these headlines: "The Tongue Of Scandal – Mother Of Family And Boy Of 21 – Resentful Woman's Bitter Story – Remarkable Source of Thatto Heath Quarrel." The magistrates dismissed the case and also a counter-summons that had been brought.
A fundraising appeal to build a new Lowe House church had opened in January 1914 but had to be suspended during the war. On the 22nd the Reporter provided an update on its progress:
"The spacious new sacristies [vestries] at Lowe House, and the Memorial Chapel are fast nearing completion, while the foundations of the new church are now in, and this will be the next edifice to rise in the wide grounds of Lowe House. The new church, when built, will in its turn replace the present edifice, and promises to be a very handsome addition to the architectural features of St. Helens." Lowe House is so-named because the main benefactor for the original church built in 1793 was a woman called Winefred Eccleston, whose maiden name was Lowe.
The hospital's main revenue came from its penny-a-week insurance scheme. The letter gave credit for its creation to James Davies, who was still alive and the scheme now boasted 23,000 subscribers. Councillor Pilkington added that during 1922 the hospital had dealt with 2,200 separate cases of which nearly 1,800 were in-patients.
In February I described how joiner John Singleton from Hardshaw Street in St Helens had died after falling off an insecure ladder at the United Alkali Company's plant in Widnes. The 62-year old had fallen after attempting to move the ladder to one side by jerking it whilst standing on top. This week on the 25th the body of his widow Sarah was found in the St Helens Canal near the Globe works. It was reported that she had been very depressed since her husband's death.
A charge of using your house for the purpose of betting was considered more serious than street betting. So on the 25th Charles Forrest went to great lengths to try and prove that his Peter Street home had not been a betting house – but he did admit to taking some bets on the street. The 30-year-old's parents had also been summoned and Charles wanted to clear them.
Supt. Dunn gave evidence of the police having kept the house under observation for some time with about 17 people each day seen entering by the front door. When the police raided the house they found five betting slips with two of them inside Alice Forrest's purse. Although her husband James Forrest had also been summoned, he insisted that the other members of his family had used his home for betting without permission. He claimed that he had often prevented people from coming in with slips and said he had even complained to the Chief Constable about it. Charles Forest was fined £10 and his mother £5.
Although unemployment pay was low it could be controversial with some complaining that claimants wasted their dole money on drink. The Daily Mail was then renowned for making such generalisations. John Carter of Edward Street in St Helens was one such person who collected his unemployment allowance and then went to a club, although as a wounded ex-soldier he, perhaps, had a good reason to take a drink. What he did not have was the right to thump his wife, which was why he was in court.
Sarah Carter said her husband had drawn his out of work pay, spent some of it in a Brook Street club, come home, gave her 14 shillings and then struck her in the eye with a bottle of stout. The 36-year-old should have appeared in court three days before to face the charge of assaulting Sarah and when asked why he had not turned up explained what happened:
"I was here on Friday, waiting in the witness-room, when my wife came to me and said there was six months waiting for me. I had 2 shillings in my pocket and I went and spent it." However, Carter also said he had been carrying a bullet in his left shoulder for eight years which game him a lot of trouble. The Bench said he had better have a quiet spell away from drink and sent him to prison for 7 days.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the professional boxer's serious assault on a 12-year-old boy at Parr Fair, the dispute over the Town Clerk's salary is finally resolved, the ban on car parking on St Helens' streets and the Parr mother's knock-out punch.
This week's many stories include the Thatto Heath card playing that led to two families being at war, two suicides take place in St Helens Canal, the wounded ex-soldier's wife assault, the double tragedy on the Windlehurst estate, an update on the building of the new Lowe House church and the Peter Street gambling house.
Parliament had passed a new Firearms Act to deal with the many weapons in circulation that had been brought back from France by soldiers.
That was as a result of concern that they might be used in Ireland or in a Bolshevik-style rebellion in Britain.
All gun owners now needed a licence from the police, although the penalties for ignoring the law were not very severe.
On June 19th William Thomas of Fleet Lane in Parr was charged in St Helens Police Court with being in possession of an automatic pistol and 11 rounds of ball ammunition without certificates.
Just how the police had learned of them was not explained in court but often was the result of ex-servicemen showing off their wartime souvenirs.
Chief Inspector Roe said when he had visited the defendant's house with a search warrant, he asked him if he had any firearms or ammunition, to which William replied "No".
At that point his wife said to her husband: "Are you sure that there are not any upstairs?", to which he replied "Yes".
So the police went upstairs and searched a cupboard where they found the pistol and ammunition.
William Thomas told the Bench that he had been given them while serving in the army and he was fined £2 with his pistol and ammunition forfeited.
The new Windlehurst council estate suffered its first tragedy on the 19th when a mother and her 2-year-old child were found drowned in their bath.
Nora Lyon had sent her daughter to school and then locked herself in the bathroom with her son Dennis.
After water was seen overflowing from the bathroom, a forced entry was made and both mother and son were found dead in the bath fully dressed.
At the inquest the husband said his wife had been a delicate woman. Shortly after their marriage when they lived at Wrexham, Nora had fallen downstairs from time to time and since then had complained of pains in her head.
At the birth of her little boy she had been exceptionally ill and had frequently complained of headaches.
Samuel Lyon said he thought Nora had gone into the bathroom with the boy in her arms, been taken dizzy and had fallen in and in doing so had inadvertently turned on the water tap and drowned.
However, the inquest jury were not convinced and decided to return an open verdict.
There was yet another death in the St Helens Canal on the 21st when James Webster's body was discovered near Bibby's copper works.
Unusually, the 54-year-old from Edgar Street in St. Helens had only been in the water a few hours and he was still wearing his cap.
The man's sister told the subsequent inquest that her brother had been out of work and been drinking.
Just before his death James had said to her: "You will never see me alive again. I am going to drown myself," but as he had been drinking she did not think he meant it.
A dispute between neighbours in Gertrude Street in Thatto Heath was described in St Helens Police Court on the 21st when Annie Thomas summoned Margaret Hall for assault.
The trouble was said to have started when the complainant's son Charles Thomas started playing cards at the Halls' house until late at night.
He also stopped going to Bible class and chapel on Sundays, preferring to play cards instead.
Charles was twenty-one and one would have thought free to make his own decisions – but his mother Annie thought otherwise.
She asked Mrs Hall's husband to put a stop to the visits, which led to Margaret Hall going to her home and attacking her.
Annie Thomas was also accused in court of "uttering really serious slanders" about Mrs Hall, which she denied but on the ground that what she'd said was true.
The suggestion was that more than card playing had been available at the home of the Halls and the St Helens Reporter's write-up bore these headlines:
"The Tongue Of Scandal – Mother Of Family And Boy Of 21 – Resentful Woman's Bitter Story – Remarkable Source of Thatto Heath Quarrel."
The magistrates dismissed the case and also a counter-summons that had been brought.
A fundraising appeal to build a new Lowe House church had opened in January 1914 but had to be suspended during the war. On the 22nd the Reporter provided an update on its progress:
"The spacious new sacristies [vestries] at Lowe House, and the Memorial Chapel are fast nearing completion, while the foundations of the new church are now in, and this will be the next edifice to rise in the wide grounds of Lowe House.
"The new church, when built, will in its turn replace the present edifice, and promises to be a very handsome addition to the architectural features of St. Helens."
Did you know that Lowe House is so-named because the main benefactor for the original church built in 1793 was a woman called Winefred Eccleston, whose maiden name was Lowe?
Sometimes I find organisations get the date of their founding wrong and there was such a case in this week's Reporter.
A letter from Councillor Richard Pilkington, the President of St Helens Hospital (pictured above), was published and he remarked that the institution would be celebrating its jubilee in the autumn.
However, newspapers from 1873 show that the then St Helens Cottage Hospital opened on January 15th of that year.
The hospital's main revenue came from its penny-a-week insurance scheme. The letter gave credit for its creation to James Davies, who was still alive and the scheme now boasted 23,000 subscribers.
Councillor Pilkington added that during 1922 the hospital had dealt with 2,200 separate cases of which nearly 1,800 were in-patients.
In February I described how joiner John Singleton from Hardshaw Street in St Helens had died after falling off an insecure ladder at the United Alkali Company's plant in Widnes.
The 62-year old had fallen after attempting to move the ladder to one side by jerking it whilst standing on top.
This week on the 25th the body of his widow Sarah was found in the St Helens Canal near the Globe works. It was reported that she had been very depressed since her husband's death.
A charge of using your house for the purpose of betting was considered more serious than street betting.
So on the 25th Charles Forrest went to great lengths to try and prove that his Peter Street home had not been a betting house – but he did admit to taking some bets on the street.
The 30-year-old's parents had also been summoned and Charles wanted to clear them.
Supt. Dunn gave evidence of the police having kept the house under observation for some time with about 17 people each day seen entering by the front door.
When the police raided the house they found five betting slips with two of them inside Alice Forrest's purse.
Although her husband James Forrest had also been summoned, he insisted that the other members of his family had used his home for betting without permission.
He claimed that he had often prevented people from coming in with slips and said he had even complained to the Chief Constable about it. Charles Forest was fined £10 and his mother £5.
Although unemployment pay was low it could be controversial with some complaining that claimants wasted their dole money on drink. The Daily Mail was then renowned for making such generalisations.
John Carter of Edward Street in St Helens was one such person who collected his unemployment allowance and then went to a club, although as a wounded ex-soldier he, perhaps, had a good reason to take a drink.
What he did not have was the right to thump his wife, which was why he was in court.
Sarah Carter said her husband had drawn his out of work pay, spent some of it in a Brook Street club, come home, gave her 14 shillings and then struck her in the eye with a bottle of stout.
The 36-year-old should have appeared in court three days before to face the charge of assaulting Sarah and when asked why he had not turned up explained what happened:
"I was here on Friday, waiting in the witness-room, when my wife came to me and said there was six months waiting for me. I had 2 shillings in my pocket and I went and spent it."
However, Carter also said he had been carrying a bullet in his left shoulder for eight years which game him a lot of trouble.
The Bench said he had better have a quiet spell away from drink and sent him to prison for 7 days.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the professional boxer's serious assault on a 12-year-old boy at Parr Fair, the dispute over the Town Clerk's salary is finally resolved, the ban on car parking on St Helens' streets and the Parr mother's knock-out punch.
Parliament had passed a new Firearms Act to deal with the many weapons in circulation that had been brought back from France by soldiers.
That was as a result of concern that they might be used in Ireland or in a Bolshevik-style rebellion in Britain.
All gun owners now needed a licence from the police, although the penalties for ignoring the law were not very severe.
On June 19th William Thomas of Fleet Lane in Parr was charged in St Helens Police Court with being in possession of an automatic pistol and 11 rounds of ball ammunition without certificates.
Just how the police had learned of them was not explained in court but often was the result of ex-servicemen showing off their wartime souvenirs.
Chief Inspector Roe said when he had visited the defendant's house with a search warrant, he asked him if he had any firearms or ammunition, to which William replied "No".
At that point his wife said to her husband: "Are you sure that there are not any upstairs?", to which he replied "Yes".
So the police went upstairs and searched a cupboard where they found the pistol and ammunition.
William Thomas told the Bench that he had been given them while serving in the army and he was fined £2 with his pistol and ammunition forfeited.
The new Windlehurst council estate suffered its first tragedy on the 19th when a mother and her 2-year-old child were found drowned in their bath.
Nora Lyon had sent her daughter to school and then locked herself in the bathroom with her son Dennis.
After water was seen overflowing from the bathroom, a forced entry was made and both mother and son were found dead in the bath fully dressed.
At the inquest the husband said his wife had been a delicate woman. Shortly after their marriage when they lived at Wrexham, Nora had fallen downstairs from time to time and since then had complained of pains in her head.
At the birth of her little boy she had been exceptionally ill and had frequently complained of headaches.
Samuel Lyon said he thought Nora had gone into the bathroom with the boy in her arms, been taken dizzy and had fallen in and in doing so had inadvertently turned on the water tap and drowned.
However, the inquest jury were not convinced and decided to return an open verdict.
There was yet another death in the St Helens Canal on the 21st when James Webster's body was discovered near Bibby's copper works.
Unusually, the 54-year-old from Edgar Street in St. Helens had only been in the water a few hours and he was still wearing his cap.
The man's sister told the subsequent inquest that her brother had been out of work and been drinking.
Just before his death James had said to her: "You will never see me alive again. I am going to drown myself," but as he had been drinking she did not think he meant it.
A dispute between neighbours in Gertrude Street in Thatto Heath was described in St Helens Police Court on the 21st when Annie Thomas summoned Margaret Hall for assault.
The trouble was said to have started when the complainant's son Charles Thomas started playing cards at the Halls' house until late at night.
He also stopped going to Bible class and chapel on Sundays, preferring to play cards instead.
Charles was twenty-one and one would have thought free to make his own decisions – but his mother Annie thought otherwise.
She asked Mrs Hall's husband to put a stop to the visits, which led to Margaret Hall going to her home and attacking her.
Annie Thomas was also accused in court of "uttering really serious slanders" about Mrs Hall, which she denied but on the ground that what she'd said was true.
The suggestion was that more than card playing had been available at the home of the Halls and the St Helens Reporter's write-up bore these headlines:
"The Tongue Of Scandal – Mother Of Family And Boy Of 21 – Resentful Woman's Bitter Story – Remarkable Source of Thatto Heath Quarrel."
The magistrates dismissed the case and also a counter-summons that had been brought.
A fundraising appeal to build a new Lowe House church had opened in January 1914 but had to be suspended during the war. On the 22nd the Reporter provided an update on its progress:
"The spacious new sacristies [vestries] at Lowe House, and the Memorial Chapel are fast nearing completion, while the foundations of the new church are now in, and this will be the next edifice to rise in the wide grounds of Lowe House.
"The new church, when built, will in its turn replace the present edifice, and promises to be a very handsome addition to the architectural features of St. Helens."
Did you know that Lowe House is so-named because the main benefactor for the original church built in 1793 was a woman called Winefred Eccleston, whose maiden name was Lowe?
A letter from Councillor Richard Pilkington, the President of St Helens Hospital (pictured above), was published and he remarked that the institution would be celebrating its jubilee in the autumn.
However, newspapers from 1873 show that the then St Helens Cottage Hospital opened on January 15th of that year.
The hospital's main revenue came from its penny-a-week insurance scheme. The letter gave credit for its creation to James Davies, who was still alive and the scheme now boasted 23,000 subscribers.
Councillor Pilkington added that during 1922 the hospital had dealt with 2,200 separate cases of which nearly 1,800 were in-patients.
In February I described how joiner John Singleton from Hardshaw Street in St Helens had died after falling off an insecure ladder at the United Alkali Company's plant in Widnes.
The 62-year old had fallen after attempting to move the ladder to one side by jerking it whilst standing on top.
This week on the 25th the body of his widow Sarah was found in the St Helens Canal near the Globe works. It was reported that she had been very depressed since her husband's death.
A charge of using your house for the purpose of betting was considered more serious than street betting.
So on the 25th Charles Forrest went to great lengths to try and prove that his Peter Street home had not been a betting house – but he did admit to taking some bets on the street.
The 30-year-old's parents had also been summoned and Charles wanted to clear them.
Supt. Dunn gave evidence of the police having kept the house under observation for some time with about 17 people each day seen entering by the front door.
When the police raided the house they found five betting slips with two of them inside Alice Forrest's purse.
Although her husband James Forrest had also been summoned, he insisted that the other members of his family had used his home for betting without permission.
He claimed that he had often prevented people from coming in with slips and said he had even complained to the Chief Constable about it. Charles Forest was fined £10 and his mother £5.
Although unemployment pay was low it could be controversial with some complaining that claimants wasted their dole money on drink. The Daily Mail was then renowned for making such generalisations.
John Carter of Edward Street in St Helens was one such person who collected his unemployment allowance and then went to a club, although as a wounded ex-soldier he, perhaps, had a good reason to take a drink.
What he did not have was the right to thump his wife, which was why he was in court.
Sarah Carter said her husband had drawn his out of work pay, spent some of it in a Brook Street club, come home, gave her 14 shillings and then struck her in the eye with a bottle of stout.
The 36-year-old should have appeared in court three days before to face the charge of assaulting Sarah and when asked why he had not turned up explained what happened:
"I was here on Friday, waiting in the witness-room, when my wife came to me and said there was six months waiting for me. I had 2 shillings in my pocket and I went and spent it."
However, Carter also said he had been carrying a bullet in his left shoulder for eight years which game him a lot of trouble.
The Bench said he had better have a quiet spell away from drink and sent him to prison for 7 days.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the professional boxer's serious assault on a 12-year-old boy at Parr Fair, the dispute over the Town Clerk's salary is finally resolved, the ban on car parking on St Helens' streets and the Parr mother's knock-out punch.