IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (23 - 29 OCTOBER 1923)
This week's many stories include the man charged with uttering a counterfeit bank note, the planned demolition and rebuilding of the Sefton Arms, the tragedy of a Stanhope Street repossession case, the repeat offender practically born in Whiston Workhouse and the magistrates' offer to treat a thief leniently if he agreed to go down the pit.
We begin on the 24th when more house repossession cases were heard in St Helens County Court in East Street. A particularly sad case involved a railway shunter called Fred Naylor who was living in Clock Face Road – but had managed to buy a house in Stanhope Street. That was because his wife was afraid of the traffic on the main road and so the couple wanted to live in a safer area.
Fred's work often meant that he didn't finish shunting engines until midnight when there were no trains running. That left him having to walk four miles back to his rented home in Clock Face and so living in Stanhope Street would also be more convenient for him.
However, Fred had bought the house with a sitting tenant. He was James Heward who was a yard foreman at the Corporation's gas works. An offer to swap houses had been rejected by Mr Heward who told the court that he needed to live within a reasonable distance of the gasworks, as he might be called in at any time during the day or night.
But while discussions had been taking place over the swap, Fred Naylor’s little boy had been killed by a motor vehicle on Clock Face Road. Wartime rent controls that restricted house repossessions had been recently lifted and so the judge agreed to sign the possession order. "Change That Came Too Late" was the headline to the Reporter's article on the case.
In July 1923 a traffic census in St Helens had revealed that the junction near the Sefton Arms – often called Sefton Place – was the most congested and dangerous part of St Helens. Between 9am and 9pm on the day the census was taken, 4,143 vehicles of all kinds – from bicycles to heavy lorries – had passed that point. The Cotham Street corner near the pub was also the terminus for the trams, which the St Helens Reporter said was to the "undisputed danger of everyone who has occasion to cross the road".
On the 25th the St Helens Licensing Magistrates considered plans by Greenall Whitley to rebuild the Sefton Arms and set the hotel back in such a way that far more road space would be created. The Liverpool Echo wrote in their report: "The large volume of heavy motor traffic which passes through St. Helens to Wigan, Bolton and other places passes the Sefton Arms corner, under difficulties, owing to the narrow and inconvenient streets, and the improvement when carried out will greatly reduce the danger and add to the general convenience."
Bank notes were routinely known as Treasury notes in the 1920s. On the 25th William Nash, a grocer's assistant from St Helens, appeared in Prescot Police Court charged with uttering a forged ten-shilling Treasury note. Supt. Garvey said when charged with committing the offence Nash had replied: "Yes, what would you have done with it?"
Nash had passed the counterfeit note off at the Plough Inn in Prescot and, in reply to a question from the Bench, said he had obtained it from the Savoy Hotel in Liverpool. Supt. Garvey added that the man had previously named other places where he said he'd been given the money. However, he thought it more likely that when last in prison Nash had been tipped off as to where to obtain dodgy notes. "He is a man who lived a very funny life", added the superintendent. Another similar note had been recovered in St Helens and Nash was remanded in custody for eight days for the police to make further inquiries.
William McCabe of Langtree Street in St Helens also appeared in Prescot Police Court this week charged with being drunk and disorderly at Whiston – and a story of a wasted life was told. The man had been in and out of prison and of Whiston Institution, as the workhouse was now known. PC Phillips told the court that about 4 pm on the previous afternoon, PC Birch and himself had been called to Warrington Road in Whiston where they found McCabe drunk and using bad language.
He had only just been discharged from the institution and had had a disagreement with one of their officials over a letter. Supt. Garvey said McCabe had been "practically born" in the institution and he had been going in and out ever since. There was also a long record of offending against him, which had begun in March 1911 and he had been convicted almost every year since. All McCabe's convictions had been in St Helens, the superintendent added, for offences such as drunkenness, breach of the peace etc.
"He is a great trouble to everyone, and the language he uses is very bad," commented Supt. Garvey. The Chairman of the Bench told McCabe that the number of times he had been convicted showed he had no intention of reforming and so he would be committed to prison for a further 28 days. To that McCabe said: "I object to that, and I will appeal at the Assizes." That remark elicited laughter in the courtroom, which caused the defendant to start shouting. But the police quickly removed McCabe from the dock and took him down to the cells.
Another young defendant with a long record was Richard Jennings of Sandfield Crescent. He was only 18 and already had eight convictions to his name. When Jennings appeared in St Helens Police Court charged with stealing coal from a wagon, Superintendent Dunn told the Bench that the youth had not worked for a long time and was "practically making a living by stealing coal." Richard Jennings' father admitted that for the last six years he had not needed to buy any coal for his house.
Many cases of coal stealing were through desperate need but this one appeared to have been different. However, the Chairman of the Bench did a deal with Jennings. He said if he agreed to go down the pit, the court would let him off upon payment of 10 shillings. The young man said he would accept the offer. Just whether he would regret his decision only time would tell, as it was so dangerous to work down a coal mine.
Only this week Thomas Cheetham from Jackson Street in St Helens had been fatally injured down Ashtons Green Colliery in Parr (pictured above), after being struck down by a stone that had dropped on him from the pit roof. Many miners worked with family members and Thomas's son Edward was with his father when the accident occurred.
He explained to the subsequent inquest that a roof prop had been knocked out and his dad had been resetting it when a big stone fell down on him. The stone was estimated as weighing 15 cwt and had broken in two through the impact of the fall. And in a separate accident Thomas Lee died this week at Southport Colliery in Parr. He had been a haulage hand and was killed by a coal tub breaking loose from the mine's haulage system.
The November council elections were only a week or so away and in the Reporter on the 26th the Conservatives ran a large, hostile advertisement against the Labour party, which was making big inroads locally. The Tories main complaint was that Labour spent too much taxpayers' money – a theme that, of course, still prevails today.
"A vote against Labour is a vote against extravagance and a vote against high rates", said the ad. Claims were also made that Labour was a class party that wanted to abolish private enterprise and that every council issue was considered by the party purely as to how it would benefit their friends.
And finally, there seemed to be a never-ending series of events of one sort of another in St Helens promoting the virtues of some cause, with religion and temperance being favourite ones. This week the Reporter wrote:
"The Church Army Crusade in St. Helens began in a wave of enthusiasm on Saturday night, and it swelled to a mighty billow on Sunday, when the series of meetings, the rousing processions, and the crowded congregations rendered the first Sabbath of the week's crusade memorable."
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include an assault on two Sutton women with an iron bar, the local council elections, the man who threw a brick at a yapping dog in Parr and the Langtree Street brute that struck his wife with a poker.
We begin on the 24th when more house repossession cases were heard in St Helens County Court in East Street. A particularly sad case involved a railway shunter called Fred Naylor who was living in Clock Face Road – but had managed to buy a house in Stanhope Street. That was because his wife was afraid of the traffic on the main road and so the couple wanted to live in a safer area.
Fred's work often meant that he didn't finish shunting engines until midnight when there were no trains running. That left him having to walk four miles back to his rented home in Clock Face and so living in Stanhope Street would also be more convenient for him.
However, Fred had bought the house with a sitting tenant. He was James Heward who was a yard foreman at the Corporation's gas works. An offer to swap houses had been rejected by Mr Heward who told the court that he needed to live within a reasonable distance of the gasworks, as he might be called in at any time during the day or night.
But while discussions had been taking place over the swap, Fred Naylor’s little boy had been killed by a motor vehicle on Clock Face Road. Wartime rent controls that restricted house repossessions had been recently lifted and so the judge agreed to sign the possession order. "Change That Came Too Late" was the headline to the Reporter's article on the case.
On the 25th the St Helens Licensing Magistrates considered plans by Greenall Whitley to rebuild the Sefton Arms and set the hotel back in such a way that far more road space would be created. The Liverpool Echo wrote in their report: "The large volume of heavy motor traffic which passes through St. Helens to Wigan, Bolton and other places passes the Sefton Arms corner, under difficulties, owing to the narrow and inconvenient streets, and the improvement when carried out will greatly reduce the danger and add to the general convenience."
Bank notes were routinely known as Treasury notes in the 1920s. On the 25th William Nash, a grocer's assistant from St Helens, appeared in Prescot Police Court charged with uttering a forged ten-shilling Treasury note. Supt. Garvey said when charged with committing the offence Nash had replied: "Yes, what would you have done with it?"
Nash had passed the counterfeit note off at the Plough Inn in Prescot and, in reply to a question from the Bench, said he had obtained it from the Savoy Hotel in Liverpool. Supt. Garvey added that the man had previously named other places where he said he'd been given the money. However, he thought it more likely that when last in prison Nash had been tipped off as to where to obtain dodgy notes. "He is a man who lived a very funny life", added the superintendent. Another similar note had been recovered in St Helens and Nash was remanded in custody for eight days for the police to make further inquiries.
William McCabe of Langtree Street in St Helens also appeared in Prescot Police Court this week charged with being drunk and disorderly at Whiston – and a story of a wasted life was told. The man had been in and out of prison and of Whiston Institution, as the workhouse was now known. PC Phillips told the court that about 4 pm on the previous afternoon, PC Birch and himself had been called to Warrington Road in Whiston where they found McCabe drunk and using bad language.
He had only just been discharged from the institution and had had a disagreement with one of their officials over a letter. Supt. Garvey said McCabe had been "practically born" in the institution and he had been going in and out ever since. There was also a long record of offending against him, which had begun in March 1911 and he had been convicted almost every year since. All McCabe's convictions had been in St Helens, the superintendent added, for offences such as drunkenness, breach of the peace etc.
"He is a great trouble to everyone, and the language he uses is very bad," commented Supt. Garvey. The Chairman of the Bench told McCabe that the number of times he had been convicted showed he had no intention of reforming and so he would be committed to prison for a further 28 days. To that McCabe said: "I object to that, and I will appeal at the Assizes." That remark elicited laughter in the courtroom, which caused the defendant to start shouting. But the police quickly removed McCabe from the dock and took him down to the cells.
Another young defendant with a long record was Richard Jennings of Sandfield Crescent. He was only 18 and already had eight convictions to his name. When Jennings appeared in St Helens Police Court charged with stealing coal from a wagon, Superintendent Dunn told the Bench that the youth had not worked for a long time and was "practically making a living by stealing coal." Richard Jennings' father admitted that for the last six years he had not needed to buy any coal for his house.
Many cases of coal stealing were through desperate need but this one appeared to have been different. However, the Chairman of the Bench did a deal with Jennings. He said if he agreed to go down the pit, the court would let him off upon payment of 10 shillings. The young man said he would accept the offer. Just whether he would regret his decision only time would tell, as it was so dangerous to work down a coal mine.
He explained to the subsequent inquest that a roof prop had been knocked out and his dad had been resetting it when a big stone fell down on him. The stone was estimated as weighing 15 cwt and had broken in two through the impact of the fall. And in a separate accident Thomas Lee died this week at Southport Colliery in Parr. He had been a haulage hand and was killed by a coal tub breaking loose from the mine's haulage system.
The November council elections were only a week or so away and in the Reporter on the 26th the Conservatives ran a large, hostile advertisement against the Labour party, which was making big inroads locally. The Tories main complaint was that Labour spent too much taxpayers' money – a theme that, of course, still prevails today.
"A vote against Labour is a vote against extravagance and a vote against high rates", said the ad. Claims were also made that Labour was a class party that wanted to abolish private enterprise and that every council issue was considered by the party purely as to how it would benefit their friends.
And finally, there seemed to be a never-ending series of events of one sort of another in St Helens promoting the virtues of some cause, with religion and temperance being favourite ones. This week the Reporter wrote:
"The Church Army Crusade in St. Helens began in a wave of enthusiasm on Saturday night, and it swelled to a mighty billow on Sunday, when the series of meetings, the rousing processions, and the crowded congregations rendered the first Sabbath of the week's crusade memorable."
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include an assault on two Sutton women with an iron bar, the local council elections, the man who threw a brick at a yapping dog in Parr and the Langtree Street brute that struck his wife with a poker.
This week's many stories include the man charged with uttering a counterfeit bank note, the planned demolition and rebuilding of the Sefton Arms, the tragedy of a Stanhope Street repossession case, the repeat offender practically born in Whiston Workhouse and the magistrates' offer to treat a thief leniently if he agreed to go down the pit.
We begin on the 24th when more house repossession cases were heard in St Helens County Court in East Street.
A particularly sad case involved a railway shunter called Fred Naylor who was living in Clock Face Road – but had managed to buy a house in Stanhope Street.
That was because his wife was afraid of the traffic on the main road and so the couple wanted to live in a safer area.
Fred's work often meant that he didn't finish shunting engines until midnight when there were no trains running.
That left him having to walk four miles back to his rented home in Clock Face and so living in Stanhope Street would also be more convenient for him.
However, Fred had bought the house with a sitting tenant. He was James Heward who was a yard foreman at the Corporation's gas works.
An offer to swap houses had been rejected by Mr Heward who told the court that he needed to live within a reasonable distance of the gasworks, as he might be called in at any time during the day or night.
But while discussions had been taking place over the swap, Fred Naylor’s little boy had been killed by a motor vehicle on Clock Face Road.
Wartime rent controls that restricted house repossessions had been recently lifted and so the judge agreed to sign the possession order.
"Change That Came Too Late" was the headline to the Reporter's article on the case.
In July 1923 a traffic census in St Helens had revealed that the junction near the Sefton Arms – often called Sefton Place – was the most congested and dangerous part of St Helens.
Between 9am and 9pm on the day the census was taken, 4,143 vehicles of all kinds – from bicycles to heavy lorries – had passed that point.
The Cotham Street corner near the pub was also the terminus for the trams, which the St Helens Reporter said was to the "undisputed danger of everyone who has occasion to cross the road".
On the 25th the St Helens Licensing Magistrates considered plans by Greenall Whitley to rebuild the Sefton Arms and set the hotel back in such a way that far more road space would be created. The Liverpool Echo wrote in their report:
"The large volume of heavy motor traffic which passes through St. Helens to Wigan, Bolton and other places passes the Sefton Arms corner, under difficulties, owing to the narrow and inconvenient streets, and the improvement when carried out will greatly reduce the danger and add to the general convenience."
Bank notes were routinely known as Treasury notes in the 1920s. On the 25th William Nash, a grocer's assistant from St Helens, appeared in Prescot Police Court charged with uttering a forged ten-shilling Treasury note.
Supt. Garvey said when charged with committing the offence Nash had replied: "Yes, what would you have done with it?"
Nash had passed the counterfeit note off at the Plough Inn in Prescot and, in reply to a question from the Bench, said he had obtained it from the Savoy Hotel in Liverpool.
Supt. Garvey added that the man had previously named other places where he said he'd been given the money.
However, he thought it more likely that when last in prison Nash had been tipped off as to where to obtain dodgy notes.
"He is a man who lived a very funny life", added the superintendent. Another similar note had been recovered in St Helens and Nash was remanded in custody for 8 days for further inquiries to be made.
William McCabe of Langtree Street in St Helens also appeared in Prescot Police Court this week charged with being drunk and disorderly at Whiston – and a story of a wasted life was told.
The man had been in and out of prison and of Whiston Institution, as the workhouse was now known.
PC Phillips told the court that about 4 pm on the previous afternoon, PC Birch and himself had been called to Warrington Road in Whiston where they found McCabe drunk and using bad language.
He had only just been discharged from the institution and had had a disagreement with one of their officials over a letter.
Supt. Garvey said McCabe had been "practically born" in the institution and he had been going in and out ever since.
There was also a long record of offending against him, which had begun in March 1911 and he had been convicted almost every year since.
All McCabe's convictions had been in St Helens, the superintendent added, for offences such as drunkenness, breach of the peace etc.
"He is a great trouble to everyone, and the language he uses is very bad," commented Supt. Garvey.
The Chairman of the Bench told McCabe that the number of times he had been convicted showed he had no intention of reforming and so he would be committed to prison for a further 28 days.
To that McCabe said: "I object to that, and I will appeal at the Assizes."
That remark elicited laughter in the courtroom, which caused the defendant to start shouting. But the police quickly removed McCabe from the dock and took him down to the cells.
Another young defendant with a long record was Richard Jennings of Sandfield Crescent. He was only 18 and already had eight convictions to his name.
When Jennings appeared in St Helens Police Court charged with stealing coal from a wagon, Superintendent Dunn told the Bench that the youth had not worked for a long time and was "practically making a living by stealing coal."
Richard Jennings' father admitted that for the last six years he had not needed to buy any coal for his house.
Many cases of coal stealing were through desperate need but this one appeared to have been different.
However, the Chairman of the Bench did a deal with Jennings. He said if he agreed to go down the pit, the court would let him off upon payment of 10 shillings. The young man said he would accept the offer.
Just whether he would regret his decision only time would tell, as it was so dangerous to work down a coal mine.
Only this week Thomas Cheetham from Jackson Street in St Helens had been fatally injured down Ashtons Green Colliery in Parr (pictured above), after being struck down by a stone that had dropped on him from the pit roof.
Many miners worked with family members and Thomas's son Edward was with his father when the accident occurred.
He explained to the subsequent inquest that a roof prop had been knocked out and his dad had been resetting it when a big stone fell down on him.
The stone was estimated as weighing 15 cwt and had broken in two through the impact of the fall.
And in a separate accident Thomas Lee died this week at Southport Colliery in Parr. He had been a haulage hand and was killed by a coal tub breaking loose from the mine's haulage system.
The November council elections were only a week or so away and in the Reporter on the 26th the Conservatives ran a large, hostile advertisement against the Labour party, which was making big inroads locally.
The Tories main complaint was that Labour spent too much taxpayers' money – a theme that, of course, still prevails today.
"A vote against Labour is a vote against extravagance and a vote against high rates", said the ad.
Claims were also made that Labour was a class party that wanted to abolish private enterprise and that every council issue was considered by the party purely as to how it would benefit their friends.
And finally, there seemed to be a never-ending series of events of one sort of another in St Helens promoting the virtues of some cause, with religion and temperance being favourite ones. This week the Reporter wrote:
"The Church Army Crusade in St. Helens began in a wave of enthusiasm on Saturday night, and it swelled to a mighty billow on Sunday, when the series of meetings, the rousing processions, and the crowded congregations rendered the first Sabbath of the week's crusade memorable."
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include an assault on two Sutton women with an iron bar, the local council elections, the man who threw a brick at a yapping dog in Parr and the Langtree Street brute that struck his wife with a poker.
We begin on the 24th when more house repossession cases were heard in St Helens County Court in East Street.
A particularly sad case involved a railway shunter called Fred Naylor who was living in Clock Face Road – but had managed to buy a house in Stanhope Street.
That was because his wife was afraid of the traffic on the main road and so the couple wanted to live in a safer area.
Fred's work often meant that he didn't finish shunting engines until midnight when there were no trains running.
That left him having to walk four miles back to his rented home in Clock Face and so living in Stanhope Street would also be more convenient for him.
However, Fred had bought the house with a sitting tenant. He was James Heward who was a yard foreman at the Corporation's gas works.
An offer to swap houses had been rejected by Mr Heward who told the court that he needed to live within a reasonable distance of the gasworks, as he might be called in at any time during the day or night.
But while discussions had been taking place over the swap, Fred Naylor’s little boy had been killed by a motor vehicle on Clock Face Road.
Wartime rent controls that restricted house repossessions had been recently lifted and so the judge agreed to sign the possession order.
"Change That Came Too Late" was the headline to the Reporter's article on the case.
Between 9am and 9pm on the day the census was taken, 4,143 vehicles of all kinds – from bicycles to heavy lorries – had passed that point.
The Cotham Street corner near the pub was also the terminus for the trams, which the St Helens Reporter said was to the "undisputed danger of everyone who has occasion to cross the road".
On the 25th the St Helens Licensing Magistrates considered plans by Greenall Whitley to rebuild the Sefton Arms and set the hotel back in such a way that far more road space would be created. The Liverpool Echo wrote in their report:
"The large volume of heavy motor traffic which passes through St. Helens to Wigan, Bolton and other places passes the Sefton Arms corner, under difficulties, owing to the narrow and inconvenient streets, and the improvement when carried out will greatly reduce the danger and add to the general convenience."
Bank notes were routinely known as Treasury notes in the 1920s. On the 25th William Nash, a grocer's assistant from St Helens, appeared in Prescot Police Court charged with uttering a forged ten-shilling Treasury note.
Supt. Garvey said when charged with committing the offence Nash had replied: "Yes, what would you have done with it?"
Nash had passed the counterfeit note off at the Plough Inn in Prescot and, in reply to a question from the Bench, said he had obtained it from the Savoy Hotel in Liverpool.
Supt. Garvey added that the man had previously named other places where he said he'd been given the money.
However, he thought it more likely that when last in prison Nash had been tipped off as to where to obtain dodgy notes.
"He is a man who lived a very funny life", added the superintendent. Another similar note had been recovered in St Helens and Nash was remanded in custody for 8 days for further inquiries to be made.
William McCabe of Langtree Street in St Helens also appeared in Prescot Police Court this week charged with being drunk and disorderly at Whiston – and a story of a wasted life was told.
The man had been in and out of prison and of Whiston Institution, as the workhouse was now known.
PC Phillips told the court that about 4 pm on the previous afternoon, PC Birch and himself had been called to Warrington Road in Whiston where they found McCabe drunk and using bad language.
He had only just been discharged from the institution and had had a disagreement with one of their officials over a letter.
Supt. Garvey said McCabe had been "practically born" in the institution and he had been going in and out ever since.
There was also a long record of offending against him, which had begun in March 1911 and he had been convicted almost every year since.
All McCabe's convictions had been in St Helens, the superintendent added, for offences such as drunkenness, breach of the peace etc.
"He is a great trouble to everyone, and the language he uses is very bad," commented Supt. Garvey.
The Chairman of the Bench told McCabe that the number of times he had been convicted showed he had no intention of reforming and so he would be committed to prison for a further 28 days.
To that McCabe said: "I object to that, and I will appeal at the Assizes."
That remark elicited laughter in the courtroom, which caused the defendant to start shouting. But the police quickly removed McCabe from the dock and took him down to the cells.
Another young defendant with a long record was Richard Jennings of Sandfield Crescent. He was only 18 and already had eight convictions to his name.
When Jennings appeared in St Helens Police Court charged with stealing coal from a wagon, Superintendent Dunn told the Bench that the youth had not worked for a long time and was "practically making a living by stealing coal."
Richard Jennings' father admitted that for the last six years he had not needed to buy any coal for his house.
Many cases of coal stealing were through desperate need but this one appeared to have been different.
However, the Chairman of the Bench did a deal with Jennings. He said if he agreed to go down the pit, the court would let him off upon payment of 10 shillings. The young man said he would accept the offer.
Just whether he would regret his decision only time would tell, as it was so dangerous to work down a coal mine.
Many miners worked with family members and Thomas's son Edward was with his father when the accident occurred.
He explained to the subsequent inquest that a roof prop had been knocked out and his dad had been resetting it when a big stone fell down on him.
The stone was estimated as weighing 15 cwt and had broken in two through the impact of the fall.
And in a separate accident Thomas Lee died this week at Southport Colliery in Parr. He had been a haulage hand and was killed by a coal tub breaking loose from the mine's haulage system.
The November council elections were only a week or so away and in the Reporter on the 26th the Conservatives ran a large, hostile advertisement against the Labour party, which was making big inroads locally.
The Tories main complaint was that Labour spent too much taxpayers' money – a theme that, of course, still prevails today.
"A vote against Labour is a vote against extravagance and a vote against high rates", said the ad.
Claims were also made that Labour was a class party that wanted to abolish private enterprise and that every council issue was considered by the party purely as to how it would benefit their friends.
And finally, there seemed to be a never-ending series of events of one sort of another in St Helens promoting the virtues of some cause, with religion and temperance being favourite ones. This week the Reporter wrote:
"The Church Army Crusade in St. Helens began in a wave of enthusiasm on Saturday night, and it swelled to a mighty billow on Sunday, when the series of meetings, the rousing processions, and the crowded congregations rendered the first Sabbath of the week's crusade memorable."
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include an assault on two Sutton women with an iron bar, the local council elections, the man who threw a brick at a yapping dog in Parr and the Langtree Street brute that struck his wife with a poker.