IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (23rd - 29th MARCH 1920)
This week's stories include the knife attack in a Salisbury Street lodging house, why Haydock had a happy council, the Rainhill house eviction, the man fined for leaving his car outside a café, more on the town's war on rats and the popularity of billiards in St Helens.
We begin on the 23rd in St Helens Police Court when Mary Cook was charged with stealing a dress from a draper's shop in Higher Parr Street. The woman had stolen it a year earlier after Margaret Grace from Ashcroft Street had sent her little girl to the draper's to have the frock altered. In the evening when the child went to collect her dress, the shop staff said they could not find it. Twelve months later the girl was playing in a park when she saw another girl wearing the same frock. She told her father and eventually Mary Cook admitted taking the dress from the shop. A fine of 20 shillings was imposed on the woman.
Haydock Urban District Council's monthly meeting was held on the 25th and the St Helens Reporter summed up the councillors' discussions with the headline "Happy Haydock". That was because house building was underway to address the homes shortage and the council was practically free from debt. The council's chairman, Councillor Lloyd, claimed that Haydock was in the forefront of the county, "probably in the country", when it came to house building.
However Councillor Whitfield was not happy with the lighting in Vista Road. He told the meeting that he had recently checked on the gas lamps around 10pm when local coal miners were changing shifts. Only one lamp in Vista Road was lit and he said it was unpleasant for miners to have to come out of the pit into darkness.
Six months ago in Liverpool, Major Frederick Stapleton-Bretherton and his brothers at Rainhill Hall had won £500 damages from the Daily Post after suing them for libel. The wealthy Rainhill landowner family was furious after the newspaper had suggested that some of the brothers had fought for the Germans during the war. The libel had come about because in 1907 Frederick's sister had married the great-grandson of the Prussian general that had fought with Wellington at Waterloo. It was an example of the complications that inter-marriage between English and German families could cause.
This week Frederick Stapleton-Bretherton took out another summons. This time the hearing was in St Helens County Court and it was his former head gardener that was in the firing line. Thomas Nelson lived in Warrington Road in a house owned by his ex-employer, who had sacked him last November. The man was told to vacate the house within a week but requested permission to remain until January, which was granted.
However Nelson and his family were still living there citing the usual reason of not being able to find anywhere else to live. As I've repeatedly written in these articles, there was a severe housing crisis within the St Helens' district. However some people were extremely fussy when choosing alternative accommodation. The hearing was in front of the outspoken, no-nonsense Judge Shand. He was the man who in 1915 had told a grieving widow that she had "far too exalted notions" when hearing that she'd spent £27 of her compensation money on the funeral of her dead miner husband.
Stapleton-Bretherton's representatives told the hearing that the house in Warrington Road was needed for a chauffeur. However Thomas Nelson’s counsel stated that Major Stapleton-Bretherton was moving to Warwickshire and neither he nor a servant needed the house.
The argument did not impress the judge and when it was stated that the family’s estate comprised a number of houses in Rainhill, the judge said: "How on earth does that matter?", adding, "What is the good occupying my time like this? I believe I have a good deal to do [in court] to-day". Thomas Nelson was given two weeks to get out of the house.
The owners of horses and carts were regularly prosecuted for leaving their animals in the street unattended. This was because the horses could wander off and create a nuisance. Motor cars do not possess the same ability to go off on their own – although the new self-drive vehicles might do soon!
So it seems odd that in Preston Police Court on the 26th Joseph Rich from St Helens was fined twenty shillings for leaving his car unattended outside a café. The man had only left it standing in Fishergate for 22 minutes. What was he supposed to have done, taken the car into the café with him?
A two-day conference of the Royal Sanitary Institute was held at the Town Hall (pictured above in 1925) from the 26th on the prevention and extermination of rats. St Helens Corporation's war on vermin had been ongoing for several months, encouraged by the Government. The Rats and Mice Destruction Act was now law, which gave more powers to local authorities.
One schoolteacher was concerned that exterminating rats would make boys cruel. However another speaker at the meeting said if they stopped killing rats, the rats would kill them. He didn't mean literally by huge super rats! However the cost of damage to crops by vermin and the diseases that they spread was costing the country millions and it would worsen if action stopped being taken.
The superintendent of the St Helens Abattoir told how he had visited a farm where threshing was underway and around 1,000 rats had been killed during the operation. However it had not been before they had done enormous damage to the crops. He also called for improved construction of houses to prevent rat infestation.
With health care and pain management being somewhat basic a century ago, suicide through ill health was quite common. However Richard Smith's death at the young age of 27 was unusual. The miner from Sutton Heath Road died in St Helens Hospital on the 27th from the injuries he'd received after throwing himself out of his bedroom window. Smith's inquest was told that he had endured hip disease for eleven years and occasional abscesses in the groin.
After telling his mother in his bedroom that he was suffering again, she said she would send for the doctor. Her son replied: "He is not going to cut me again. I am not going into the hospital for him". As soon as Richard's mother went downstairs, the young man flung himself out of the window, sustaining serious internal injuries. The inquest jury returned the usual verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.
During the evening of the 27th a whist drive and dance was held at the Town Hall in aid of the Ravenhead Military Band, who performed many numbers at the event.
Grimshaw Street in Sutton (at the rear of the Mill House pub) is named after the family who owned land on the north side of Mill Lane and were benefactors to St Anne's RC Church. Their descendants owned a large lodging house in Salisbury Street. This was infamous as a place where homeless people paid a penny a night to use a rope that was stretched across a room. Overcoats were placed over the line and the customers sagged on them with their arms positioned over the rope, sleeping almost in a sitting position. After WW2 the property was taken over by the Salvation Army and used as a hostel.
On the 29th in St Helens Police Court the magistrates heard of a Saturday night brawl in Grimshaw's lodging house in which a miner at Clock Face Colliery called Patrick Collins had been seriously wounded. The prosecution case was that a dispute had arisen between two men as one of them toasted bread and the other fried bacon.
Collins got involved and Michael Farrell stabbed him in the face. This created a wound four inches in length that extended from his left cheekbone across the ear and into the neck. Farrell's defence was that he was drunk and had been attacked when he went into the house. The labourer was remanded in custody until April 6th where he would be committed to the next Quarter Sessions.
Billiards was a very popular sport in St Helens a century ago with snooker yet to make a big impact. The Discharged Sailors & Soldiers Club at 105 Church Street had its own billiards room as did other clubs in St Helens. The town's police force even had their own billiards team.
On the 29th there was a crowded attendance at the YMCA as a play off for the St Helens and District Temperance Billiard League Shield was held. The Parish Church Club and St Helens Congs had ended their season level on points at the top of the table and so a championship decider of eight games led to the Congs winning the shield.
And finally these were the music hall acts appearing at the Hippodrome Theatre who began a week of twice nightly performances from the 29th:
Harold Moss and Isabel Maachah ("The Norfolk gipsy violinist and danseuse in a musical and dancing fantasy"); Gerald Cyril ("Flying ventriloquist act"); Jenkins Bros. ("The funny men from Scandinavia do their great knockabout and acrobatic eccentricities"); Ethel Castaldini ("The musical comedy favourite in songs from her repertoire"); Bert Groves ("One of the funniest front cloth acts in vaudeville – A comedian who is funny and gets yells") and Selig and Hart ("The “so-different” comedians in song and story").
Next week's stories will include the two one-legged soldiers in trouble with the police, the alcoholic that fell off the wagon in Brynn Street, a "riotous scene" in Peckers Hill Road, a new church for Sutton Manor and women are permitted to join the St Helens Conservative Club.
We begin on the 23rd in St Helens Police Court when Mary Cook was charged with stealing a dress from a draper's shop in Higher Parr Street. The woman had stolen it a year earlier after Margaret Grace from Ashcroft Street had sent her little girl to the draper's to have the frock altered. In the evening when the child went to collect her dress, the shop staff said they could not find it. Twelve months later the girl was playing in a park when she saw another girl wearing the same frock. She told her father and eventually Mary Cook admitted taking the dress from the shop. A fine of 20 shillings was imposed on the woman.
Grange Road in Haydock - the inhabitants were very happy a century ago according to the St Helens Reporter
Grange Road in Haydock - the inhabitants were very happy
Grange Road in Haydock
However Councillor Whitfield was not happy with the lighting in Vista Road. He told the meeting that he had recently checked on the gas lamps around 10pm when local coal miners were changing shifts. Only one lamp in Vista Road was lit and he said it was unpleasant for miners to have to come out of the pit into darkness.
Six months ago in Liverpool, Major Frederick Stapleton-Bretherton and his brothers at Rainhill Hall had won £500 damages from the Daily Post after suing them for libel. The wealthy Rainhill landowner family was furious after the newspaper had suggested that some of the brothers had fought for the Germans during the war. The libel had come about because in 1907 Frederick's sister had married the great-grandson of the Prussian general that had fought with Wellington at Waterloo. It was an example of the complications that inter-marriage between English and German families could cause.
This week Frederick Stapleton-Bretherton took out another summons. This time the hearing was in St Helens County Court and it was his former head gardener that was in the firing line. Thomas Nelson lived in Warrington Road in a house owned by his ex-employer, who had sacked him last November. The man was told to vacate the house within a week but requested permission to remain until January, which was granted.
However Nelson and his family were still living there citing the usual reason of not being able to find anywhere else to live. As I've repeatedly written in these articles, there was a severe housing crisis within the St Helens' district. However some people were extremely fussy when choosing alternative accommodation. The hearing was in front of the outspoken, no-nonsense Judge Shand. He was the man who in 1915 had told a grieving widow that she had "far too exalted notions" when hearing that she'd spent £27 of her compensation money on the funeral of her dead miner husband.
Stapleton-Bretherton's representatives told the hearing that the house in Warrington Road was needed for a chauffeur. However Thomas Nelson’s counsel stated that Major Stapleton-Bretherton was moving to Warwickshire and neither he nor a servant needed the house.
The argument did not impress the judge and when it was stated that the family’s estate comprised a number of houses in Rainhill, the judge said: "How on earth does that matter?", adding, "What is the good occupying my time like this? I believe I have a good deal to do [in court] to-day". Thomas Nelson was given two weeks to get out of the house.
The owners of horses and carts were regularly prosecuted for leaving their animals in the street unattended. This was because the horses could wander off and create a nuisance. Motor cars do not possess the same ability to go off on their own – although the new self-drive vehicles might do soon!
So it seems odd that in Preston Police Court on the 26th Joseph Rich from St Helens was fined twenty shillings for leaving his car unattended outside a café. The man had only left it standing in Fishergate for 22 minutes. What was he supposed to have done, taken the car into the café with him?
One schoolteacher was concerned that exterminating rats would make boys cruel. However another speaker at the meeting said if they stopped killing rats, the rats would kill them. He didn't mean literally by huge super rats! However the cost of damage to crops by vermin and the diseases that they spread was costing the country millions and it would worsen if action stopped being taken.
The superintendent of the St Helens Abattoir told how he had visited a farm where threshing was underway and around 1,000 rats had been killed during the operation. However it had not been before they had done enormous damage to the crops. He also called for improved construction of houses to prevent rat infestation.
With health care and pain management being somewhat basic a century ago, suicide through ill health was quite common. However Richard Smith's death at the young age of 27 was unusual. The miner from Sutton Heath Road died in St Helens Hospital on the 27th from the injuries he'd received after throwing himself out of his bedroom window. Smith's inquest was told that he had endured hip disease for eleven years and occasional abscesses in the groin.
After telling his mother in his bedroom that he was suffering again, she said she would send for the doctor. Her son replied: "He is not going to cut me again. I am not going into the hospital for him". As soon as Richard's mother went downstairs, the young man flung himself out of the window, sustaining serious internal injuries. The inquest jury returned the usual verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.
During the evening of the 27th a whist drive and dance was held at the Town Hall in aid of the Ravenhead Military Band, who performed many numbers at the event.
Grimshaw Street in Sutton (at the rear of the Mill House pub) is named after the family who owned land on the north side of Mill Lane and were benefactors to St Anne's RC Church. Their descendants owned a large lodging house in Salisbury Street. This was infamous as a place where homeless people paid a penny a night to use a rope that was stretched across a room. Overcoats were placed over the line and the customers sagged on them with their arms positioned over the rope, sleeping almost in a sitting position. After WW2 the property was taken over by the Salvation Army and used as a hostel.
On the 29th in St Helens Police Court the magistrates heard of a Saturday night brawl in Grimshaw's lodging house in which a miner at Clock Face Colliery called Patrick Collins had been seriously wounded. The prosecution case was that a dispute had arisen between two men as one of them toasted bread and the other fried bacon.
Collins got involved and Michael Farrell stabbed him in the face. This created a wound four inches in length that extended from his left cheekbone across the ear and into the neck. Farrell's defence was that he was drunk and had been attacked when he went into the house. The labourer was remanded in custody until April 6th where he would be committed to the next Quarter Sessions.
Billiards was a very popular sport in St Helens a century ago with snooker yet to make a big impact. The Discharged Sailors & Soldiers Club at 105 Church Street had its own billiards room as did other clubs in St Helens. The town's police force even had their own billiards team.
On the 29th there was a crowded attendance at the YMCA as a play off for the St Helens and District Temperance Billiard League Shield was held. The Parish Church Club and St Helens Congs had ended their season level on points at the top of the table and so a championship decider of eight games led to the Congs winning the shield.
And finally these were the music hall acts appearing at the Hippodrome Theatre who began a week of twice nightly performances from the 29th:
Harold Moss and Isabel Maachah ("The Norfolk gipsy violinist and danseuse in a musical and dancing fantasy"); Gerald Cyril ("Flying ventriloquist act"); Jenkins Bros. ("The funny men from Scandinavia do their great knockabout and acrobatic eccentricities"); Ethel Castaldini ("The musical comedy favourite in songs from her repertoire"); Bert Groves ("One of the funniest front cloth acts in vaudeville – A comedian who is funny and gets yells") and Selig and Hart ("The “so-different” comedians in song and story").
Next week's stories will include the two one-legged soldiers in trouble with the police, the alcoholic that fell off the wagon in Brynn Street, a "riotous scene" in Peckers Hill Road, a new church for Sutton Manor and women are permitted to join the St Helens Conservative Club.
This week's stories include the knife attack in a Salisbury Street lodging house, why Haydock had a happy council, the Rainhill house eviction, the man fined for leaving his car outside a café, more on the town's war on rats and the popularity of billiards in St Helens.
We begin on the 23rd in St Helens Police Court when Mary Cook was charged with stealing a dress from a draper's shop in Higher Parr Street.
The woman had stolen it a year earlier after Margaret Grace from Ashcroft Street had sent her little girl to the draper's to have the frock altered.
In the evening when the child went to collect her dress, the shop staff said they could not find it.
Twelve months later the girl was playing in a park when she saw another girl wearing the same frock.
She told her father and eventually Mary Cook admitted taking the dress from the shop. A fine of 20 shillings was imposed on the woman.
Haydock Urban District Council's monthly meeting was held on the 25th and the St Helens Reporter summed up the councillors' discussions with the headline "Happy Haydock".
That was because house building was underway to address the homes shortage and the council was practically free from debt.
The council's chairman, Councillor Lloyd, claimed that Haydock was in the forefront of the county, "probably in the country", when it came to house building.
However Councillor Whitfield was not happy with the lighting in Vista Road.
He told the meeting that he had recently checked on the gas lamps around 10pm when local coal miners were changing shifts.
Only one lamp in Vista Road was lit and he said it was unpleasant for miners to have to come out of the pit into darkness.
Six months ago in Liverpool, Major Frederick Stapleton-Bretherton and his brothers at Rainhill Hall had won £500 damages from the Daily Post after suing them for libel.
The wealthy Rainhill landowner family was furious after the newspaper had suggested that some of the brothers had fought for the Germans during the war.
The libel had come about because in 1907 Frederick's sister had married the great-grandson of the Prussian general that had fought with Wellington at Waterloo.
It was an example of the complications that inter-marriage between English and German families could cause.
This week Frederick Stapleton-Bretherton took out another summons. This time the hearing was in St Helens County Court and it was his former head gardener that was in the firing line.
Thomas Nelson lived in Warrington Road in a house owned by his ex-employer, who had sacked him last November.
The man was told to vacate the house within a week but requested permission to remain until January, which was granted.
However Nelson and his family were still living there citing the usual reason of not being able to find anywhere else to live.
As I've repeatedly written in these articles, there was a severe housing crisis within the St Helens' district.
However some people were extremely fussy when choosing alternative accommodation. The hearing was in front of the outspoken, no-nonsense Judge Shand.
He was the man who in 1915 had told a grieving widow that she had "far too exalted notions" when hearing that she'd spent £27 of her compensation money on the funeral of her dead miner husband.
Stapleton-Bretherton's representatives told the hearing that the house in Warrington Road was needed for a chauffeur.
However Thomas Nelson’s counsel stated that Major Stapleton-Bretherton was moving to Warwickshire and neither he nor a servant needed the house.
The argument did not impress the judge and when it was stated that the family’s estate comprised a number of houses in Rainhill, the judge said:
"How on earth does that matter?", adding, "What is the good occupying my time like this? I believe I have a good deal to do [in court] to-day".
Thomas Nelson was given two weeks to get out of the house.
The owners of horses and carts were regularly prosecuted for leaving their animals in the street unattended.
This was because the horses could wander off and create a nuisance.
Motor cars do not possess the same ability to go off on their own – although the new self-drive vehicles might do soon!
So it seems odd that in Preston Police Court on the 26th Joseph Rich from St Helens was fined twenty shillings for leaving his car unattended outside a café.
The man had only left it standing in Fishergate for 22 minutes. What was he supposed to have done, taken the car into the café with him?
A two-day conference of the Royal Sanitary Institute was held at the Town Hall (pictured above in 1925) from the 26th on the prevention and extermination of rats.
St Helens Corporation's war on vermin had been ongoing for several months, encouraged by the Government.
The Rats and Mice Destruction Act was now law, which gave more powers to local authorities.
One schoolteacher was concerned that exterminating rats would make boys cruel.
However another speaker at the meeting said if they stopped killing rats, the rats would kill them. He didn't mean literally by huge super rats!
However the cost of damage to crops by vermin and the diseases that they spread was costing the country millions and it would worsen if action stopped being taken.
The superintendent of the St Helens Abattoir told how he had visited a farm where threshing was underway and around 1,000 rats had been killed during the operation.
However it had not been before they had done enormous damage to the crops. He also called for improved construction of houses to prevent rat infestation.
With health care and pain management being somewhat basic a century ago, suicide through ill health was quite common.
However Richard Smith's death at the young age of 27 was unusual.
The miner from Sutton Heath Road died in St Helens Hospital on the 27th from the injuries he'd received after throwing himself out of his bedroom window.
Smith's inquest was told that he had endured hip disease for eleven years and occasional abscesses in the groin.
After telling his mother in his bedroom that he was suffering again, she said she would send for the doctor.
Her son replied: "He is not going to cut me again. I am not going into the hospital for him".
As soon as Richard's mother went downstairs, the young man flung himself out of the window, sustaining serious internal injuries.
The inquest jury returned the usual verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.
During the evening of the 27th a whist drive and dance was held at the Town Hall in aid of the Ravenhead Military Band, who performed many numbers at the event.
Grimshaw Street in Sutton (at the rear of the Mill House pub) is named after the family who owned land on the north side of Mill Lane and were benefactors to St Anne's RC Church.
Their descendants owned a large lodging house in Salisbury Street. This was infamous as a place where homeless people paid a penny a night to use a rope that was stretched across a room.
Overcoats were placed over the line and the customers sagged on them with their arms positioned over the rope, sleeping almost in a sitting position.
After WW2 the property was taken over by the Salvation Army and used as a hostel.
On the 29th in St Helens Police Court the magistrates heard of a Saturday night brawl in Grimshaw's lodging house in which a miner at Clock Face Colliery called Patrick Collins had been seriously wounded.
The prosecution case was that a dispute had arisen between two men as one of them toasted bread and the other fried bacon.
Collins got involved and Michael Farrell stabbed him in the face. This created a wound four inches in length that extended from his left cheekbone across the ear and into the neck.
Farrell's defence was that he was drunk and had been attacked when he went into the house.
The labourer was remanded in custody until April 6th where he would be committed to the next Quarter Sessions.
Billiards was a very popular sport in St Helens a century ago with snooker yet to make a big impact.
The Discharged Sailors & Soldiers Club at 105 Church Street had its own billiards room as did other clubs in St Helens. The town's police force even had their own billiards team.
On the 29th there was a crowded attendance at the YMCA as a play off for the St Helens and District Temperance Billiard League Shield was held.
The Parish Church Club and St Helens Congs had ended their season level on points at the top of the table and so a championship decider of eight games led to the Congs winning the shield.
And finally these were the music hall acts appearing at the Hippodrome Theatre who began a week of twice nightly performances from the 29th:
Harold Moss and Isabel Maachah ("The Norfolk gipsy violinist and danseuse in a musical and dancing fantasy"); Gerald Cyril ("Flying ventriloquist act") and the Jenkins Bros. ("The funny men from Scandinavia do their great knockabout and acrobatic eccentricities”).
There was also Ethel Castaldini ("The musical comedy favourite in songs from her repertoire"); Bert Groves ("One of the funniest front cloth acts in vaudeville – A comedian who is funny and gets yells") and Selig and Hart ("The “so-different” comedians in song and story").
Next week's stories will include the two one-legged soldiers in trouble with the police, the alcoholic that fell off the wagon in Brynn Street, a "riotous scene" in Peckers Hill Road, a new church for Sutton Manor and women are permitted to join the St Helens Conservative Club.
We begin on the 23rd in St Helens Police Court when Mary Cook was charged with stealing a dress from a draper's shop in Higher Parr Street.
The woman had stolen it a year earlier after Margaret Grace from Ashcroft Street had sent her little girl to the draper's to have the frock altered.
In the evening when the child went to collect her dress, the shop staff said they could not find it.
Twelve months later the girl was playing in a park when she saw another girl wearing the same frock.
She told her father and eventually Mary Cook admitted taking the dress from the shop. A fine of 20 shillings was imposed on the woman.
Grange Road in Haydock - the inhabitants were very happy a century ago according to the St Helens Reporter
Grange Road in Haydock - the inhabitants were very happy
Grange Road in Haydock
That was because house building was underway to address the homes shortage and the council was practically free from debt.
The council's chairman, Councillor Lloyd, claimed that Haydock was in the forefront of the county, "probably in the country", when it came to house building.
However Councillor Whitfield was not happy with the lighting in Vista Road.
He told the meeting that he had recently checked on the gas lamps around 10pm when local coal miners were changing shifts.
Only one lamp in Vista Road was lit and he said it was unpleasant for miners to have to come out of the pit into darkness.
Six months ago in Liverpool, Major Frederick Stapleton-Bretherton and his brothers at Rainhill Hall had won £500 damages from the Daily Post after suing them for libel.
The wealthy Rainhill landowner family was furious after the newspaper had suggested that some of the brothers had fought for the Germans during the war.
The libel had come about because in 1907 Frederick's sister had married the great-grandson of the Prussian general that had fought with Wellington at Waterloo.
It was an example of the complications that inter-marriage between English and German families could cause.
This week Frederick Stapleton-Bretherton took out another summons. This time the hearing was in St Helens County Court and it was his former head gardener that was in the firing line.
Thomas Nelson lived in Warrington Road in a house owned by his ex-employer, who had sacked him last November.
The man was told to vacate the house within a week but requested permission to remain until January, which was granted.
However Nelson and his family were still living there citing the usual reason of not being able to find anywhere else to live.
As I've repeatedly written in these articles, there was a severe housing crisis within the St Helens' district.
However some people were extremely fussy when choosing alternative accommodation. The hearing was in front of the outspoken, no-nonsense Judge Shand.
He was the man who in 1915 had told a grieving widow that she had "far too exalted notions" when hearing that she'd spent £27 of her compensation money on the funeral of her dead miner husband.
Stapleton-Bretherton's representatives told the hearing that the house in Warrington Road was needed for a chauffeur.
However Thomas Nelson’s counsel stated that Major Stapleton-Bretherton was moving to Warwickshire and neither he nor a servant needed the house.
The argument did not impress the judge and when it was stated that the family’s estate comprised a number of houses in Rainhill, the judge said:
"How on earth does that matter?", adding, "What is the good occupying my time like this? I believe I have a good deal to do [in court] to-day".
Thomas Nelson was given two weeks to get out of the house.
The owners of horses and carts were regularly prosecuted for leaving their animals in the street unattended.
This was because the horses could wander off and create a nuisance.
Motor cars do not possess the same ability to go off on their own – although the new self-drive vehicles might do soon!
So it seems odd that in Preston Police Court on the 26th Joseph Rich from St Helens was fined twenty shillings for leaving his car unattended outside a café.
The man had only left it standing in Fishergate for 22 minutes. What was he supposed to have done, taken the car into the café with him?
St Helens Corporation's war on vermin had been ongoing for several months, encouraged by the Government.
The Rats and Mice Destruction Act was now law, which gave more powers to local authorities.
One schoolteacher was concerned that exterminating rats would make boys cruel.
However another speaker at the meeting said if they stopped killing rats, the rats would kill them. He didn't mean literally by huge super rats!
However the cost of damage to crops by vermin and the diseases that they spread was costing the country millions and it would worsen if action stopped being taken.
The superintendent of the St Helens Abattoir told how he had visited a farm where threshing was underway and around 1,000 rats had been killed during the operation.
However it had not been before they had done enormous damage to the crops. He also called for improved construction of houses to prevent rat infestation.
With health care and pain management being somewhat basic a century ago, suicide through ill health was quite common.
However Richard Smith's death at the young age of 27 was unusual.
The miner from Sutton Heath Road died in St Helens Hospital on the 27th from the injuries he'd received after throwing himself out of his bedroom window.
Smith's inquest was told that he had endured hip disease for eleven years and occasional abscesses in the groin.
After telling his mother in his bedroom that he was suffering again, she said she would send for the doctor.
Her son replied: "He is not going to cut me again. I am not going into the hospital for him".
As soon as Richard's mother went downstairs, the young man flung himself out of the window, sustaining serious internal injuries.
The inquest jury returned the usual verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.
During the evening of the 27th a whist drive and dance was held at the Town Hall in aid of the Ravenhead Military Band, who performed many numbers at the event.
Grimshaw Street in Sutton (at the rear of the Mill House pub) is named after the family who owned land on the north side of Mill Lane and were benefactors to St Anne's RC Church.
Their descendants owned a large lodging house in Salisbury Street. This was infamous as a place where homeless people paid a penny a night to use a rope that was stretched across a room.
Overcoats were placed over the line and the customers sagged on them with their arms positioned over the rope, sleeping almost in a sitting position.
After WW2 the property was taken over by the Salvation Army and used as a hostel.
On the 29th in St Helens Police Court the magistrates heard of a Saturday night brawl in Grimshaw's lodging house in which a miner at Clock Face Colliery called Patrick Collins had been seriously wounded.
The prosecution case was that a dispute had arisen between two men as one of them toasted bread and the other fried bacon.
Collins got involved and Michael Farrell stabbed him in the face. This created a wound four inches in length that extended from his left cheekbone across the ear and into the neck.
Farrell's defence was that he was drunk and had been attacked when he went into the house.
The labourer was remanded in custody until April 6th where he would be committed to the next Quarter Sessions.
Billiards was a very popular sport in St Helens a century ago with snooker yet to make a big impact.
The Discharged Sailors & Soldiers Club at 105 Church Street had its own billiards room as did other clubs in St Helens. The town's police force even had their own billiards team.
On the 29th there was a crowded attendance at the YMCA as a play off for the St Helens and District Temperance Billiard League Shield was held.
The Parish Church Club and St Helens Congs had ended their season level on points at the top of the table and so a championship decider of eight games led to the Congs winning the shield.
And finally these were the music hall acts appearing at the Hippodrome Theatre who began a week of twice nightly performances from the 29th:
Harold Moss and Isabel Maachah ("The Norfolk gipsy violinist and danseuse in a musical and dancing fantasy"); Gerald Cyril ("Flying ventriloquist act") and the Jenkins Bros. ("The funny men from Scandinavia do their great knockabout and acrobatic eccentricities”).
There was also Ethel Castaldini ("The musical comedy favourite in songs from her repertoire"); Bert Groves ("One of the funniest front cloth acts in vaudeville – A comedian who is funny and gets yells") and Selig and Hart ("The “so-different” comedians in song and story").
Next week's stories will include the two one-legged soldiers in trouble with the police, the alcoholic that fell off the wagon in Brynn Street, a "riotous scene" in Peckers Hill Road, a new church for Sutton Manor and women are permitted to join the St Helens Conservative Club.