IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (20th - 26th JUNE 1922)
This week's many stories include the Duke Street garage prosecuted for parking a car on the street, the charabanc driver in court for driving at 16 mph, the playing of baseball in St Helens, the Sutton councillor tried for perjury, why St Helens folk could live forever and the pony in an appalling condition that took two days to be brought from Ormskirk to St Helens.
We begin with the car parking conundrum. There was another reason why only the better off bought cars in St Helens in the 1920s – apart from the obvious one that the poor did not have the cash to buy and maintain expensive vehicles. The secondary reason was that better-off folk were also likely have somewhere to park their car – a driveway, garage or land attached to their house. That was important as motor car owners in St Helens were not permitted to park their vehicle in the street outside their home.
In fact you could not park your car on any road in the town for any length of time. There was no need for yellow lines to be laid down, as it was illegal to park your car on any street for longer than it took to load or unload goods. That was in case the vehicle caused an obstruction. There were also no car parks, as such. But there was much wasteland and so if you drove into St Helens town centre to go shopping, you should have had no problem in finding a space. But what to do with your vehicle when you were at home must have been a dilemma for some.
And that was also why the 1920s saw an explosion in the use of motorbikes in St Helens. Not only were they affordable on HP for those lucky enough to have a job, but, just like bicycles, motorcycles could be stored in your backyard. Even garages could face prosecution when carrying out a repair if the affected vehicle was parked on the street for longer than a minute or two.
This week car owner Joseph Leyland of College Street and the Windle Motor Company of Duke Street were prosecuted for obstructing the street with a motor. A constable gave evidence that he had seen the vehicle jacked up in Rigby Street while a tyre was being repaired inside the firm's garage. Half-an-hour later the car was still there and so the officer went into the garage and talked to two brothers called Griffin.
They were furious over the constable's intervention and threatened to report him to the Chief Constable, eventually ordering him out of their building. Tact was clearly in short supply at the Windle Motor Company and as a result of the brothers' rudeness to the policeman, prosecution was inevitable. So the magistrates imposed a fine on the firm, although the owner of the car, Joseph Leyland, was cleared.
On the 21st a woman described as a well-known Lancashire champion bowler appeared in front of St Helens magistrates charged with stealing from a draper's shop. Mrs. Fazackerley of City Gardens had taken several blouses and other articles from the store near her home. Upon the police calling at her house, Mrs Fazackerley immediately produced the stolen items from a trunk and said she could not understand what had made her do it. The magistrates bound her over to be of good behaviour, with the chairman remarking that it was a very unfortunate lapse.
It was Councillor Thomas Boscow's perjury trial at Liverpool Assizes on the 21st. As well as having a newsagent's shop in Junction Lane, the 44-year-old Sutton councillor was also secretary of the St Helens branch of the National Union of Foundry Workers. Boscow was accused of having perjured himself in St Helens Police Court two weeks earlier, after denying leading a mob to the house of a strike-breaking iron moulder. The prosecution claimed that after a man called Thomas Beattie had returned to his job at Phoenix Foundry, Boscow had led 150 to 200 angry strikers to his home. For ten minutes the crowd had booed and shouted "blackleg" at the house.
Although Boscow admitted being present, he claimed not to have seen any crowd and had simply attended to discuss trade union business with Mr Beattie. The magistrates in St Helens Police Court had not believed the councillor and had given him a fine. For a defendant convicted of an offence to be subsequently charged with perjury after denying their guilt was quite rare and the judge at the trial hearing was critical of aspects of the prosecution case.
The jury appears to have recognised the unusual nature of the charge and after 20 minutes of deliberation found Boscow not guilty to much applause in the courtroom. The decision by the Chief Constable of St Helens to prosecute the councillor for perjury would lead to a bitter feud between the pair. In the years 1928 and 1929, Thomas Hill Boscow would serve as Mayor of St Helens and Boscow Crescent in Sutton, off Gerards Lane, is named after him.
The Reporter described on the 23rd how nine boys school teams in St Helens were set to compete in a new baseball league, adopting the British version of the American game. The modifications included underarm bowling, which the Reporter felt made the sport safer. "This game is very popular and immensely successful in the Liverpool district," added the paper. The schools signed up for the St Helens Elementary Schools Baseball Association League were Holy Cross, Knowsley Road, Lowe House, Ravenhead, St Mary's, St Thomas, Windle, Windleshaw and Rivington.
The paper also described how girls' schools in St Helens had started playing rounders. Three leagues had been created with competitive matches between schools due to start this week, which was something new for girls. The paper wrote: "These innovations are to be welcomed, particularly with regard to the rounders game for girls, who appear to have been somewhat neglected with regard to competitive sports."
In St Helens Police Court on the 23rd, an NSPCA inspector described how he had seen a horse in a shocking condition at a sale yard in St Helens. Inspector Hallam said the animal could scarcely walk, was weak on all four legs and carried a bad sore. The inspector had the pony examined by a veterinary surgeon and it was destroyed. The horse belonged to John Bilboe, who admitted that it had taken him two days to bring his animal to St Helens from his home in Ormskirk.
The man claimed that he had bought the horse for his children to play with. However, they had got fed up with it and so he had decided to sell it at the weekly St Helens horse sale. Bilboe claimed that his animal had been tethered to the back of his cart during the journey but when Inspector Hallam had seen it, the horse had been harnessed within the vehicle's shafts. The man had been charged with working a pony in an unfit state but the Bench felt that simply being in the shafts of a cart did not sufficiently prove that an animal was being worked. So Bilboe was simply told to pay the 10 shillings costs of the hearing.
On the 24th the championship of Grange Park Golf Club was held in unusual conditions. What was described as "tremendous storms of rain" considerably limited play in the 36-hole annual competition. However, one (and only one) brave, rain-soaked soul persevered and managed to complete the course and by default won the contest.
Since the end of the war, members of the International Bible Students Association had given thousands of lectures worldwide called "Millions Now Living Will Never Die". The premise of the talk was that those still alive in 1925 would live forever. They were not absolutely certain of the year but thought ‘25 quite likely, as that, they claimed, is referred to in the Bible as the year an upheaval would happen.
The lecture had already been given several times in St Helens and one might have thought that sufficient mileage had been derived from what some might call a crackpot notion. But it returned on the 25th and was presented again in Griffin's Picture House in St Helens and the St Helens Reporter devoted another lengthy article to the free event. In 1924 the Ormskirk Street cinema would be renamed the Scala.
With no accurate means of determining how fast a vehicle was travelling, it was inevitable there would be a discrepancy in court between the police's estimate of its speed and that claimed by the driver. At Runcorn on the 26th, Alfred Williams of Fry Street in St Helens pleaded not guilty to having driven a heavy charabanc at a speed dangerous to the public. The police reckoned that on Whit Monday he been driving at between 16 and 18 mph – although Williams reckoned it was more like 8 to 10 mph.
Of course, 18 mph seems pretty modest to us – but the increasing number of large vehicles on the mainly narrow roads was causing safety concerns. And there was no driving test. Anyone could drive a vehicle, big or small. All you had to be was 17 and have paid for a licence at St Helens Town Hall. The magistrates always believed the police's estimate of a vehicle's speed and not the defendant's – and so Alfred Williams was fined £3 and costs.
Next week's stories will include the sacking of married women schoolteachers in St Helens, the Bold Heath animal cruelty case, the bastardy order case in St Helens Police Court and the new wireless depot in Westfield Street.
We begin with the car parking conundrum. There was another reason why only the better off bought cars in St Helens in the 1920s – apart from the obvious one that the poor did not have the cash to buy and maintain expensive vehicles. The secondary reason was that better-off folk were also likely have somewhere to park their car – a driveway, garage or land attached to their house. That was important as motor car owners in St Helens were not permitted to park their vehicle in the street outside their home.
In fact you could not park your car on any road in the town for any length of time. There was no need for yellow lines to be laid down, as it was illegal to park your car on any street for longer than it took to load or unload goods. That was in case the vehicle caused an obstruction. There were also no car parks, as such. But there was much wasteland and so if you drove into St Helens town centre to go shopping, you should have had no problem in finding a space. But what to do with your vehicle when you were at home must have been a dilemma for some.
And that was also why the 1920s saw an explosion in the use of motorbikes in St Helens. Not only were they affordable on HP for those lucky enough to have a job, but, just like bicycles, motorcycles could be stored in your backyard. Even garages could face prosecution when carrying out a repair if the affected vehicle was parked on the street for longer than a minute or two.
This week car owner Joseph Leyland of College Street and the Windle Motor Company of Duke Street were prosecuted for obstructing the street with a motor. A constable gave evidence that he had seen the vehicle jacked up in Rigby Street while a tyre was being repaired inside the firm's garage. Half-an-hour later the car was still there and so the officer went into the garage and talked to two brothers called Griffin.
They were furious over the constable's intervention and threatened to report him to the Chief Constable, eventually ordering him out of their building. Tact was clearly in short supply at the Windle Motor Company and as a result of the brothers' rudeness to the policeman, prosecution was inevitable. So the magistrates imposed a fine on the firm, although the owner of the car, Joseph Leyland, was cleared.
On the 21st a woman described as a well-known Lancashire champion bowler appeared in front of St Helens magistrates charged with stealing from a draper's shop. Mrs. Fazackerley of City Gardens had taken several blouses and other articles from the store near her home. Upon the police calling at her house, Mrs Fazackerley immediately produced the stolen items from a trunk and said she could not understand what had made her do it. The magistrates bound her over to be of good behaviour, with the chairman remarking that it was a very unfortunate lapse.
It was Councillor Thomas Boscow's perjury trial at Liverpool Assizes on the 21st. As well as having a newsagent's shop in Junction Lane, the 44-year-old Sutton councillor was also secretary of the St Helens branch of the National Union of Foundry Workers. Boscow was accused of having perjured himself in St Helens Police Court two weeks earlier, after denying leading a mob to the house of a strike-breaking iron moulder. The prosecution claimed that after a man called Thomas Beattie had returned to his job at Phoenix Foundry, Boscow had led 150 to 200 angry strikers to his home. For ten minutes the crowd had booed and shouted "blackleg" at the house.
Although Boscow admitted being present, he claimed not to have seen any crowd and had simply attended to discuss trade union business with Mr Beattie. The magistrates in St Helens Police Court had not believed the councillor and had given him a fine. For a defendant convicted of an offence to be subsequently charged with perjury after denying their guilt was quite rare and the judge at the trial hearing was critical of aspects of the prosecution case.
The jury appears to have recognised the unusual nature of the charge and after 20 minutes of deliberation found Boscow not guilty to much applause in the courtroom. The decision by the Chief Constable of St Helens to prosecute the councillor for perjury would lead to a bitter feud between the pair. In the years 1928 and 1929, Thomas Hill Boscow would serve as Mayor of St Helens and Boscow Crescent in Sutton, off Gerards Lane, is named after him.
The Reporter described on the 23rd how nine boys school teams in St Helens were set to compete in a new baseball league, adopting the British version of the American game. The modifications included underarm bowling, which the Reporter felt made the sport safer. "This game is very popular and immensely successful in the Liverpool district," added the paper. The schools signed up for the St Helens Elementary Schools Baseball Association League were Holy Cross, Knowsley Road, Lowe House, Ravenhead, St Mary's, St Thomas, Windle, Windleshaw and Rivington.
The paper also described how girls' schools in St Helens had started playing rounders. Three leagues had been created with competitive matches between schools due to start this week, which was something new for girls. The paper wrote: "These innovations are to be welcomed, particularly with regard to the rounders game for girls, who appear to have been somewhat neglected with regard to competitive sports."
In St Helens Police Court on the 23rd, an NSPCA inspector described how he had seen a horse in a shocking condition at a sale yard in St Helens. Inspector Hallam said the animal could scarcely walk, was weak on all four legs and carried a bad sore. The inspector had the pony examined by a veterinary surgeon and it was destroyed. The horse belonged to John Bilboe, who admitted that it had taken him two days to bring his animal to St Helens from his home in Ormskirk.
The man claimed that he had bought the horse for his children to play with. However, they had got fed up with it and so he had decided to sell it at the weekly St Helens horse sale. Bilboe claimed that his animal had been tethered to the back of his cart during the journey but when Inspector Hallam had seen it, the horse had been harnessed within the vehicle's shafts. The man had been charged with working a pony in an unfit state but the Bench felt that simply being in the shafts of a cart did not sufficiently prove that an animal was being worked. So Bilboe was simply told to pay the 10 shillings costs of the hearing.
On the 24th the championship of Grange Park Golf Club was held in unusual conditions. What was described as "tremendous storms of rain" considerably limited play in the 36-hole annual competition. However, one (and only one) brave, rain-soaked soul persevered and managed to complete the course and by default won the contest.
Since the end of the war, members of the International Bible Students Association had given thousands of lectures worldwide called "Millions Now Living Will Never Die". The premise of the talk was that those still alive in 1925 would live forever. They were not absolutely certain of the year but thought ‘25 quite likely, as that, they claimed, is referred to in the Bible as the year an upheaval would happen.
With no accurate means of determining how fast a vehicle was travelling, it was inevitable there would be a discrepancy in court between the police's estimate of its speed and that claimed by the driver. At Runcorn on the 26th, Alfred Williams of Fry Street in St Helens pleaded not guilty to having driven a heavy charabanc at a speed dangerous to the public. The police reckoned that on Whit Monday he been driving at between 16 and 18 mph – although Williams reckoned it was more like 8 to 10 mph.
Of course, 18 mph seems pretty modest to us – but the increasing number of large vehicles on the mainly narrow roads was causing safety concerns. And there was no driving test. Anyone could drive a vehicle, big or small. All you had to be was 17 and have paid for a licence at St Helens Town Hall. The magistrates always believed the police's estimate of a vehicle's speed and not the defendant's – and so Alfred Williams was fined £3 and costs.
Next week's stories will include the sacking of married women schoolteachers in St Helens, the Bold Heath animal cruelty case, the bastardy order case in St Helens Police Court and the new wireless depot in Westfield Street.
This week's many stories include the Duke Street garage prosecuted for parking a car on the street, the charabanc driver in court for driving at 16 mph, the playing of baseball in St Helens, the Sutton councillor tried for perjury, why St Helens folk could live forever and the pony in an appalling condition that took two days to be brought from Ormskirk to St Helens.
We begin with the car parking conundrum. There was another reason why only the better off bought cars in St Helens in the 1920s – apart from the obvious one that the poor did not have the cash to buy and maintain expensive vehicles.
The secondary reason was that better-off folk were also likely have somewhere to park their car – a driveway, garage or land attached to their house.
That was important as motor car owners in St Helens were not permitted to park their vehicle in the street outside their home.
In fact you could not park your car on any road in the town for any length of time.
There was no need for yellow lines to be laid down, as it was illegal to park your car on any street for longer than it took to load or unload goods. That was in case the vehicle caused an obstruction.
There were also no car parks, as such. But there was much wasteland and so if you drove into St Helens town centre to go shopping, you should have had no problem in finding a space.
But what to do with your vehicle when you were at home must have been a dilemma for some.
And that was also why the 1920s saw an explosion in the use of motorbikes in St Helens.
Not only were they affordable on HP for those lucky enough to have a job, but, just like bicycles, motorcycles could be stored in your backyard.
Even garages could face prosecution when carrying out a repair if the affected vehicle was parked on the street for longer than a minute or two.
This week car owner Joseph Leyland of College Street and the Windle Motor Company of Duke Street were prosecuted for obstructing the street with a motor.
A constable gave evidence that he had seen the vehicle jacked up in Rigby Street while a tyre was being repaired inside the firm's garage.
Half-an-hour later the car was still there and so the officer went into the garage and talked to two brothers called Griffin.
They were furious over the constable's intervention and threatened to report him to the Chief Constable, eventually ordering him out of their building.
Tact was clearly in short supply at the Windle Motor Company and as a result of the brothers' rudeness to the policeman, prosecution was inevitable.
So the magistrates imposed a fine on the firm, although the owner of the car, Joseph Leyland, was cleared.
On the 21st a woman described as a well-known Lancashire champion bowler appeared in front of St Helens magistrates charged with stealing from a draper's shop.
Mrs. Fazackerley of City Gardens had taken several blouses and other articles from the store near her home.
Upon the police calling at her house, Mrs Fazackerley immediately produced the stolen items from a trunk and said she could not understand what had made her do it.
The magistrates bound her over to be of good behaviour, with the chairman remarking that it was a very unfortunate lapse.
It was Councillor Thomas Boscow's perjury trial at Liverpool Assizes on the 21st.
As well as having a newsagent's shop in Junction Lane, the 44-year-old Sutton councillor was also secretary of the St Helens branch of the National Union of Foundry Workers.
Boscow was accused of having perjured himself in St Helens Police Court two weeks earlier, after denying leading a mob to the house of a strike-breaking iron moulder.
The prosecution claimed that after a man called Thomas Beattie had returned to his job at Phoenix Foundry, Boscow had led 150 to 200 angry strikers to his home.
For ten minutes the crowd had booed and shouted "blackleg" at the house.
Although Boscow admitted being present, he claimed not to have seen any crowd and had simply attended to discuss trade union business with Mr Beattie.
The magistrates in St Helens Police Court had not believed the councillor and had given him a fine.
For a defendant convicted of an offence to be subsequently charged with perjury after denying their guilt was quite rare and the judge at the trial hearing was critical of aspects of the prosecution case.
The jury appears to have recognised the unusual nature of the charge and after 20 minutes of deliberation found Boscow not guilty to much applause in the courtroom.
The decision by the Chief Constable of St Helens to prosecute the councillor for perjury would lead to a bitter feud between the pair.
In the years 1928 and 1929, Thomas Hill Boscow would serve as Mayor of St Helens and Boscow Crescent in Sutton, off Gerards Lane, is named after him.
The Reporter described on the 23rd how nine boys school teams in St Helens were set to compete in a new baseball league, adopting the British version of the American game.
The modifications included underarm bowling, which the Reporter felt made the sport safer.
"This game is very popular and immensely successful in the Liverpool district," added the paper.
The schools signed up for the St Helens Elementary Schools Baseball Association League were Holy Cross, Knowsley Road, Lowe House, Ravenhead, St Mary's, St Thomas, Windle, Windleshaw and Rivington.
The paper also described how girls' schools in St Helens had started playing rounders.
Three leagues had been created with competitive matches between schools due to start this week, which was something new for girls. The paper wrote:
"These innovations are to be welcomed, particularly with regard to the rounders game for girls, who appear to have been somewhat neglected with regard to competitive sports."
In St Helens Police Court on the 23rd, an NSPCA inspector described how he had seen a horse in a shocking condition at a sale yard in St Helens.
Inspector Hallam said the animal could scarcely walk, was weak on all four legs and carried a bad sore.
The inspector had the pony examined by a veterinary surgeon and it was destroyed.
The horse belonged to John Bilboe, who admitted that it had taken him two days to bring his animal to St Helens from his home in Ormskirk.
The man claimed that he had bought the horse for his children to play with. However, they had got fed up with it and so he had decided to sell it at the weekly St Helens horse sale.
Bilboe claimed that his animal had been tethered to the back of his cart during the journey but when Inspector Hallam had seen it, the horse had been harnessed within the vehicle's shafts.
The man had been charged with working a pony in an unfit state but the Bench felt that simply being in the shafts of a cart did not sufficiently prove that an animal was being worked.
So Bilboe was simply told to pay the 10 shillings costs of the hearing.
On the 24th the championship of Grange Park Golf Club was held in unusual conditions.
What was described as "tremendous storms of rain" considerably limited play in the 36-hole annual competition.
However, one (and only one) brave, rain-soaked soul persevered and managed to complete the course and by default won the contest.
Since the end of the war, members of the International Bible Students Association had given thousands of lectures worldwide called "Millions Now Living Will Never Die".
The premise of the talk was that those still alive in 1925 would live forever.
They were not absolutely certain of the year but thought ‘25 quite likely, as that, they claimed, is referred to in the Bible as the year an upheaval would happen.
The lecture had already been given several times in St Helens and one might have thought that sufficient mileage had been derived from what some might call a crackpot notion.
But it returned on the 25th and was presented again in Griffin's Picture House in St Helens and the St Helens Reporter devoted another lengthy article to the free event.
In 1924 the Ormskirk Street cinema would be renamed the Scala.
With no accurate means of determining how fast a vehicle was travelling, it was inevitable there would be a discrepancy in court between the police's estimate of its speed and that claimed by the driver.
At Runcorn on the 26th, Alfred Williams of Fry Street in St Helens pleaded not guilty to having driven a heavy charabanc at a speed dangerous to the public.
The police reckoned that on Whit Monday he been driving at between 16 and 18 mph – although Williams reckoned it was more like 8 to 10 mph.
Of course, 18 mph seems pretty modest to us – but the increasing number of large vehicles on the mainly narrow roads was causing safety concerns.
And there was no driving test. Anyone could drive a vehicle, big or small. All you had to be was 17 and have paid for a licence at St Helens Town Hall.
The magistrates always believed the police's estimate of a vehicle's speed and not the defendant's – and so Alfred Williams was fined £3 and costs.
Next week's stories will include the sacking of married women schoolteachers in St Helens, the Bold Heath animal cruelty case, the bastardy order case in St Helens Police Court and the new wireless depot in Westfield Street.
We begin with the car parking conundrum. There was another reason why only the better off bought cars in St Helens in the 1920s – apart from the obvious one that the poor did not have the cash to buy and maintain expensive vehicles.
The secondary reason was that better-off folk were also likely have somewhere to park their car – a driveway, garage or land attached to their house.
That was important as motor car owners in St Helens were not permitted to park their vehicle in the street outside their home.
In fact you could not park your car on any road in the town for any length of time.
There was no need for yellow lines to be laid down, as it was illegal to park your car on any street for longer than it took to load or unload goods. That was in case the vehicle caused an obstruction.
There were also no car parks, as such. But there was much wasteland and so if you drove into St Helens town centre to go shopping, you should have had no problem in finding a space.
But what to do with your vehicle when you were at home must have been a dilemma for some.
And that was also why the 1920s saw an explosion in the use of motorbikes in St Helens.
Not only were they affordable on HP for those lucky enough to have a job, but, just like bicycles, motorcycles could be stored in your backyard.
Even garages could face prosecution when carrying out a repair if the affected vehicle was parked on the street for longer than a minute or two.
This week car owner Joseph Leyland of College Street and the Windle Motor Company of Duke Street were prosecuted for obstructing the street with a motor.
A constable gave evidence that he had seen the vehicle jacked up in Rigby Street while a tyre was being repaired inside the firm's garage.
Half-an-hour later the car was still there and so the officer went into the garage and talked to two brothers called Griffin.
They were furious over the constable's intervention and threatened to report him to the Chief Constable, eventually ordering him out of their building.
Tact was clearly in short supply at the Windle Motor Company and as a result of the brothers' rudeness to the policeman, prosecution was inevitable.
So the magistrates imposed a fine on the firm, although the owner of the car, Joseph Leyland, was cleared.
On the 21st a woman described as a well-known Lancashire champion bowler appeared in front of St Helens magistrates charged with stealing from a draper's shop.
Mrs. Fazackerley of City Gardens had taken several blouses and other articles from the store near her home.
Upon the police calling at her house, Mrs Fazackerley immediately produced the stolen items from a trunk and said she could not understand what had made her do it.
The magistrates bound her over to be of good behaviour, with the chairman remarking that it was a very unfortunate lapse.
It was Councillor Thomas Boscow's perjury trial at Liverpool Assizes on the 21st.
As well as having a newsagent's shop in Junction Lane, the 44-year-old Sutton councillor was also secretary of the St Helens branch of the National Union of Foundry Workers.
Boscow was accused of having perjured himself in St Helens Police Court two weeks earlier, after denying leading a mob to the house of a strike-breaking iron moulder.
The prosecution claimed that after a man called Thomas Beattie had returned to his job at Phoenix Foundry, Boscow had led 150 to 200 angry strikers to his home.
For ten minutes the crowd had booed and shouted "blackleg" at the house.
Although Boscow admitted being present, he claimed not to have seen any crowd and had simply attended to discuss trade union business with Mr Beattie.
The magistrates in St Helens Police Court had not believed the councillor and had given him a fine.
For a defendant convicted of an offence to be subsequently charged with perjury after denying their guilt was quite rare and the judge at the trial hearing was critical of aspects of the prosecution case.
The jury appears to have recognised the unusual nature of the charge and after 20 minutes of deliberation found Boscow not guilty to much applause in the courtroom.
The decision by the Chief Constable of St Helens to prosecute the councillor for perjury would lead to a bitter feud between the pair.
In the years 1928 and 1929, Thomas Hill Boscow would serve as Mayor of St Helens and Boscow Crescent in Sutton, off Gerards Lane, is named after him.
The Reporter described on the 23rd how nine boys school teams in St Helens were set to compete in a new baseball league, adopting the British version of the American game.
The modifications included underarm bowling, which the Reporter felt made the sport safer.
"This game is very popular and immensely successful in the Liverpool district," added the paper.
The schools signed up for the St Helens Elementary Schools Baseball Association League were Holy Cross, Knowsley Road, Lowe House, Ravenhead, St Mary's, St Thomas, Windle, Windleshaw and Rivington.
The paper also described how girls' schools in St Helens had started playing rounders.
Three leagues had been created with competitive matches between schools due to start this week, which was something new for girls. The paper wrote:
"These innovations are to be welcomed, particularly with regard to the rounders game for girls, who appear to have been somewhat neglected with regard to competitive sports."
In St Helens Police Court on the 23rd, an NSPCA inspector described how he had seen a horse in a shocking condition at a sale yard in St Helens.
Inspector Hallam said the animal could scarcely walk, was weak on all four legs and carried a bad sore.
The inspector had the pony examined by a veterinary surgeon and it was destroyed.
The horse belonged to John Bilboe, who admitted that it had taken him two days to bring his animal to St Helens from his home in Ormskirk.
The man claimed that he had bought the horse for his children to play with. However, they had got fed up with it and so he had decided to sell it at the weekly St Helens horse sale.
Bilboe claimed that his animal had been tethered to the back of his cart during the journey but when Inspector Hallam had seen it, the horse had been harnessed within the vehicle's shafts.
The man had been charged with working a pony in an unfit state but the Bench felt that simply being in the shafts of a cart did not sufficiently prove that an animal was being worked.
So Bilboe was simply told to pay the 10 shillings costs of the hearing.
On the 24th the championship of Grange Park Golf Club was held in unusual conditions.
What was described as "tremendous storms of rain" considerably limited play in the 36-hole annual competition.
However, one (and only one) brave, rain-soaked soul persevered and managed to complete the course and by default won the contest.
The premise of the talk was that those still alive in 1925 would live forever.
They were not absolutely certain of the year but thought ‘25 quite likely, as that, they claimed, is referred to in the Bible as the year an upheaval would happen.
The lecture had already been given several times in St Helens and one might have thought that sufficient mileage had been derived from what some might call a crackpot notion.
But it returned on the 25th and was presented again in Griffin's Picture House in St Helens and the St Helens Reporter devoted another lengthy article to the free event.
In 1924 the Ormskirk Street cinema would be renamed the Scala.
With no accurate means of determining how fast a vehicle was travelling, it was inevitable there would be a discrepancy in court between the police's estimate of its speed and that claimed by the driver.
At Runcorn on the 26th, Alfred Williams of Fry Street in St Helens pleaded not guilty to having driven a heavy charabanc at a speed dangerous to the public.
The police reckoned that on Whit Monday he been driving at between 16 and 18 mph – although Williams reckoned it was more like 8 to 10 mph.
Of course, 18 mph seems pretty modest to us – but the increasing number of large vehicles on the mainly narrow roads was causing safety concerns.
And there was no driving test. Anyone could drive a vehicle, big or small. All you had to be was 17 and have paid for a licence at St Helens Town Hall.
The magistrates always believed the police's estimate of a vehicle's speed and not the defendant's – and so Alfred Williams was fined £3 and costs.
Next week's stories will include the sacking of married women schoolteachers in St Helens, the Bold Heath animal cruelty case, the bastardy order case in St Helens Police Court and the new wireless depot in Westfield Street.