IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (23rd - 29th September 1919)
This week's stories include the market banana robbery, Sanger's Circus and Menagerie perform in Peasley Cross, the Bold farmer who broke the rules on potato wart disease, the "wonderful" rat-trap at the Fleece Hotel, the hapless burglar of a Church Street jewellers and a mob threatens the police over a pitch and toss raid in Gerards Bridge.
It would be four more years before 'Yes! We Have No Bananas' would become a major hit. However fruiterer John Case must have had similar words on his lips this week, as he was the victim of a banana robbery, as the St Helens Reporter called it. A group of crafty boys had found a way of putting their hands through a gap and pulling out bananas from Case's market stall. They helped themselves to a couple of dozen and damaged a similar number.
Although the lads had fled once PC Shepherd had approached, a little girl gave him the names of two of the young thieves. So in St Helens Police Court on the 23rd Robert Brown from New Cross Street and Peter Kilgallon from Mount Street were the unlucky ones forced to face the music. The two eleven-year-olds were bound over for twelve months with their parents ordered to pay damages.
Rural folk were not always the best at keeping themselves up to date with new regulations. During the war there had been many prosecutions of St Helens' farmers for breaking the rules, with ignorance of them invariably given as their excuse. Although most of those regulations had now been rescinded, Lancashire had recently become plagued by potato wart disease that is also rather charmingly known as black scab disease! So on August 7th the Board of Agriculture had declared most of the county to be an infected area and only spuds that were immune to the disease could be planted.
On September 24th Ralph Almond found himself in court charged with planting a non-immune variety of potato in an affected area. Almond worked Sidney Farm in Union Lane in Bold and had told a visiting inspector from the Board of Agriculture that he had been a farmer since before the man had been born. However checking census records Ralph Almond was only 39, so the inspector must have been very young.
The farmers appeared to have a language of their own concerning spuds. The Reporter wrote: "Defendant said he bought “Allies,” which were an immune variety, but there had been so many blind and deaf that he had to purchase other potatoes." These were the non-immune variety, the purchase of which cost Almond a £4 fine and 15 shillings witness expenses.
Frederick Foster of no fixed abode appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 25th charged with being a "reputed thief and frequenting Church-street with intent to commit a felony". The man doesn't appear to have been a very good thief. The police were able to keep Foster under observation for an hour before collaring him at half-past midnight outside Craddock's Jewellers with a table knife in his hand.
Upon being asked what he was doing, the 35-year-old from Liverpool replied: "I am trying to get in; it looked an easy job." Part of the window frame had been chipped away which Foster owned up doing. Then he invited the police to remand him in custody saying he had a long list of convictions to his name. I'll bet the police wished that all the criminals that they caught were so obliging! The Chairman of the Bench told Foster that he had a shocking record for such a young man and he was sent to prison for three months with hard labour.
The 26th must have been an exciting day for the boys and girls of St Helens, as that was when Sanger's Circus and Menagerie came to town! There were two performances at 2:30pm and 8pm with the event held on wasteland in Peasley Cross near the hospital. Sanger's advertising promised: "The latest novelties, sensational thrills & marvels of this wonderful world." There were African snake charmers, "almost human" sea lions and a group of Indians led by Lone Face described as "the only savage troupe of riders in Europe".
One of the lesser-known facts about WW1 was the use of elephants in agriculture and industry to replace horses that had been requisitioned by the military. Sanger's elephants spent four years engaged in war work in England (as pictured above) and in their show there was a special display of the beasts ploughing, reaping and sowing.
When gamblers were brought to court for playing pitch and toss, it was quite common for them to deny everything. This was because the prosecution invariably relied solely upon police identification and so the defendants would argue mistaken identity and sometimes, as in the following case, they could be successful.
In St Helens Police Court on the 26th glasshand Henry McCormick and labourer William Harrison (both from Victoria Street, near Cowley Street) and labourer James Heavey from Hill Street were charged with gaming with coins. On the previous Sunday afternoon PC Reynolds in plain clothes, along with PC Wilcox, had kept watch on an entry off Hill Street in Gerards Bridge and observed the three men with many others playing pitch and toss. After 15 minutes the police rushed the group but they were deliberately obstructed by some other men standing in the street. McCormick was the only one caught and he was taken into his home as he said he felt unwell.
James Heavey, William Harrison and some others then rushed into the house and Heavey said: "Let us give him [PC Reynolds] a good hiding; let us dump him. I don't care if it [the fine] costs £2 or £20. We have bashed the police before and we can do it again." Harrison then chipped in saying: "When we get them into the street we will give them a good hiding." Henry McCormick then asked the two men to leave his home.
Outside a crowd of several hundred had gathered and when the police left the house threats were made against them and they were showered with bricks and stones. In court Henry McCormick admitted his guilt but William Harrison claimed to have been 30 to 40 yards away from the gambling group with a baby on his knee. However two of his neighbours – Jane and Kate Pickavance – gave evidence against Harrison and the two other men, with one of them denying that the man had a child. That would not have made the mother and daughter very popular in Hill Street and suggests there was already some acrimony between the Pickavances and their neighbours.
Heavey similarly denied that he had been gambling, saying he had no money for such a thing. Despite the identification evidence of the police and a neighbour, the charge against William Harrison was dismissed but the other two men were both fined ten shillings. The magistrates might not have been so generous if they had known about the threats Harrison had made. However these were only revealed in a separate case when Harrison, Heavey and three others were charged with breach of the peace and bound over.
Although there were quite a few strikes during war, most workers and unions exercised pay restraint in the national interest. That went with the declaration of peace and in many editions of the St Helens Reporter there were accounts of one trade union or another demanding more money. This week it was the joiners of St Helens who were after an extra tanner on their daily rate. That was currently 1s 6d an hour and they wanted parity with the Liverpool joiners. As most people worked a 48-hour week (some 56), two bob an hour meant they would earn almost £5 per week, which was very good money. Two hundred moulders in St Helens had also gone on strike this week as part of a national dispute, as had the railway workers.
There was more in the Reporter about St Helens Corporation's war on rats, which had overrun parts of the town – including Liverpool Road, Station Road and Parr. A Manchester firm called French and Son had developed a "wonderful" rat-trap and they would be giving demonstrations in the yard of the Fleece Hotel in Church Street. The paper wrote: "The trap spells instant death to the rodent enticed within its bars, for it catches and drowns in one operation."
There was another tragic scalding incident on the 27th concerning Albert Dixon from Phythian Street. The two-year-old was playing with a rocking chair and accidentally pulled it over. The chair caught the handle of a large pan of boiling water, which was upset over the child. Albert was taken to Providence Hospital but died on the following day.
The music hall acts at the Hippodrome from the 29th included Horace Barnes ("The most talked of turn in the world. The impromptu rhymster."); Alice Hayes ("The Yorkshire nightingale"); Peakman & Zella ("In a sensational novelty act introducing juggling, equilibrism and vocalism"); Tom E. Dean ("Comedian"); and Trefelyn David and Irene Marriott ("Welsh operatic duettists").
And finally Albert McLean from Keswick Road in St Helens was fined £5 at Southport on the 29th for driving a motor car in a dangerous manner. PC Hall estimated the speed of his vehicle at 40 mph, which McLean blamed on his lady friend who was accompanying him in the car and had touched his throttle!
Next week's stories will include the creation of West End in Blackbrook, the effect in St Helens of the national rail strike, deaths in Lea Green and Clock Face collieries, St Helens' picture house prices are increased and architectural gem Sutton Grange is declared unfit for human habitation.
It would be four more years before 'Yes! We Have No Bananas' would become a major hit. However fruiterer John Case must have had similar words on his lips this week, as he was the victim of a banana robbery, as the St Helens Reporter called it. A group of crafty boys had found a way of putting their hands through a gap and pulling out bananas from Case's market stall. They helped themselves to a couple of dozen and damaged a similar number.
Although the lads had fled once PC Shepherd had approached, a little girl gave him the names of two of the young thieves. So in St Helens Police Court on the 23rd Robert Brown from New Cross Street and Peter Kilgallon from Mount Street were the unlucky ones forced to face the music. The two eleven-year-olds were bound over for twelve months with their parents ordered to pay damages.
Rural folk were not always the best at keeping themselves up to date with new regulations. During the war there had been many prosecutions of St Helens' farmers for breaking the rules, with ignorance of them invariably given as their excuse. Although most of those regulations had now been rescinded, Lancashire had recently become plagued by potato wart disease that is also rather charmingly known as black scab disease! So on August 7th the Board of Agriculture had declared most of the county to be an infected area and only spuds that were immune to the disease could be planted.
On September 24th Ralph Almond found himself in court charged with planting a non-immune variety of potato in an affected area. Almond worked Sidney Farm in Union Lane in Bold and had told a visiting inspector from the Board of Agriculture that he had been a farmer since before the man had been born. However checking census records Ralph Almond was only 39, so the inspector must have been very young.
The farmers appeared to have a language of their own concerning spuds. The Reporter wrote: "Defendant said he bought “Allies,” which were an immune variety, but there had been so many blind and deaf that he had to purchase other potatoes." These were the non-immune variety, the purchase of which cost Almond a £4 fine and 15 shillings witness expenses.
Frederick Foster of no fixed abode appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 25th charged with being a "reputed thief and frequenting Church-street with intent to commit a felony". The man doesn't appear to have been a very good thief. The police were able to keep Foster under observation for an hour before collaring him at half-past midnight outside Craddock's Jewellers with a table knife in his hand.
Upon being asked what he was doing, the 35-year-old from Liverpool replied: "I am trying to get in; it looked an easy job." Part of the window frame had been chipped away which Foster owned up doing. Then he invited the police to remand him in custody saying he had a long list of convictions to his name. I'll bet the police wished that all the criminals that they caught were so obliging! The Chairman of the Bench told Foster that he had a shocking record for such a young man and he was sent to prison for three months with hard labour.
The 26th must have been an exciting day for the boys and girls of St Helens, as that was when Sanger's Circus and Menagerie came to town! There were two performances at 2:30pm and 8pm with the event held on wasteland in Peasley Cross near the hospital. Sanger's advertising promised: "The latest novelties, sensational thrills & marvels of this wonderful world." There were African snake charmers, "almost human" sea lions and a group of Indians led by Lone Face described as "the only savage troupe of riders in Europe".
When gamblers were brought to court for playing pitch and toss, it was quite common for them to deny everything. This was because the prosecution invariably relied solely upon police identification and so the defendants would argue mistaken identity and sometimes, as in the following case, they could be successful.
In St Helens Police Court on the 26th glasshand Henry McCormick and labourer William Harrison (both from Victoria Street, near Cowley Street) and labourer James Heavey from Hill Street were charged with gaming with coins. On the previous Sunday afternoon PC Reynolds in plain clothes, along with PC Wilcox, had kept watch on an entry off Hill Street in Gerards Bridge and observed the three men with many others playing pitch and toss. After 15 minutes the police rushed the group but they were deliberately obstructed by some other men standing in the street. McCormick was the only one caught and he was taken into his home as he said he felt unwell.
James Heavey, William Harrison and some others then rushed into the house and Heavey said: "Let us give him [PC Reynolds] a good hiding; let us dump him. I don't care if it [the fine] costs £2 or £20. We have bashed the police before and we can do it again." Harrison then chipped in saying: "When we get them into the street we will give them a good hiding." Henry McCormick then asked the two men to leave his home.
Outside a crowd of several hundred had gathered and when the police left the house threats were made against them and they were showered with bricks and stones. In court Henry McCormick admitted his guilt but William Harrison claimed to have been 30 to 40 yards away from the gambling group with a baby on his knee. However two of his neighbours – Jane and Kate Pickavance – gave evidence against Harrison and the two other men, with one of them denying that the man had a child. That would not have made the mother and daughter very popular in Hill Street and suggests there was already some acrimony between the Pickavances and their neighbours.
Heavey similarly denied that he had been gambling, saying he had no money for such a thing. Despite the identification evidence of the police and a neighbour, the charge against William Harrison was dismissed but the other two men were both fined ten shillings. The magistrates might not have been so generous if they had known about the threats Harrison had made. However these were only revealed in a separate case when Harrison, Heavey and three others were charged with breach of the peace and bound over.
Although there were quite a few strikes during war, most workers and unions exercised pay restraint in the national interest. That went with the declaration of peace and in many editions of the St Helens Reporter there were accounts of one trade union or another demanding more money. This week it was the joiners of St Helens who were after an extra tanner on their daily rate. That was currently 1s 6d an hour and they wanted parity with the Liverpool joiners. As most people worked a 48-hour week (some 56), two bob an hour meant they would earn almost £5 per week, which was very good money. Two hundred moulders in St Helens had also gone on strike this week as part of a national dispute, as had the railway workers.
There was another tragic scalding incident on the 27th concerning Albert Dixon from Phythian Street. The two-year-old was playing with a rocking chair and accidentally pulled it over. The chair caught the handle of a large pan of boiling water, which was upset over the child. Albert was taken to Providence Hospital but died on the following day.
The music hall acts at the Hippodrome from the 29th included Horace Barnes ("The most talked of turn in the world. The impromptu rhymster."); Alice Hayes ("The Yorkshire nightingale"); Peakman & Zella ("In a sensational novelty act introducing juggling, equilibrism and vocalism"); Tom E. Dean ("Comedian"); and Trefelyn David and Irene Marriott ("Welsh operatic duettists").
And finally Albert McLean from Keswick Road in St Helens was fined £5 at Southport on the 29th for driving a motor car in a dangerous manner. PC Hall estimated the speed of his vehicle at 40 mph, which McLean blamed on his lady friend who was accompanying him in the car and had touched his throttle!
Next week's stories will include the creation of West End in Blackbrook, the effect in St Helens of the national rail strike, deaths in Lea Green and Clock Face collieries, St Helens' picture house prices are increased and architectural gem Sutton Grange is declared unfit for human habitation.