IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (25th - 31st March 1919)
This week's stories include the Reporter's warning against communism, a little girl's money making scheme at the Co-op comes unstuck, the "unbearable" state of Church Street, the old men in the cabin at Queens Park, plans for a super-cinema for Bridge Street, the men caught short in an Ormskirk Street entry and how summertime in St Helens began with heavy snow.
We begin on the 25th when the leader column in the St Helens Reporter's Tuesday edition warned against the growing threat from anarchists and communists in the town, writing: "Misguided extremists are shrieking that there is only one way in which to secure benefit, and that is by destroying existing things and creating an abomination of desolation."
The Russian revolution had emboldened some in Britain and worried the authorities, concerned that people might rise up – or as the Reporter put it – "take the short cut to an earthly paradise [as] devised by the Bolshevists".
The war had led to the rationing of food and fuel, although some restrictions – such as tea rationing – had recently been removed. Coal stocks were still low despite the early release of many miners from the army. Consequently many people in St Helens had not been receiving their allocated amounts, leading to some thefts.
On the 26th the St Helens Fuel Control Committee met and was told that household coal stocks were starting to improve. It was hoped that the people of the town would soon be able to receive their full rations.
A girl called Margaret Noonan from Park Road appeared in court on the 27th charged with stealing sixpence from a branch of the Co-op. Isabella Helsby told the magistrates that she'd bought some items from the Higher Parr Street store and then handed a pound note and her Co-op book to an assistant.
The woman then went into another room and upon returning asked the cashier for her book and sixpence change. However little Margaret had already taken them, telling the cashier she'd pass them both onto Mrs Helsby.
Instead of doing this the 10-year-old gave the book and half of the money to a boy that she knew, keeping the remaining threepence for herself. On the following day Margaret went back into the Co-op, probably thinking she could repeat the trick and make more easy coppers!
However it wasn't to be as the cashier spotted her and the police were called. The girl was put on probation for two years and her father was ordered to pay the court costs. Margaret probably had a sore bottom too!
Another lad working for Pilkingtons and living at their Ravenhead boys' hostel found himself in court on the 27th. There were around 150 youngsters employed at the glass firm, many of them orphans and a number had troubled backgrounds. They'd come to St Helens from all over the country and inevitably some would get into bother.
Pilks had taken on Albert Williams, despite him having previously been sent to an industrial school. These had been created to deal with juvenile delinquency and to teach youngsters a trade.
John Patchett had seen the 16-year-old entering a cabin with another boy and then the pair hurriedly left. After checking his jacket inside the cabin he found some tobacco and a penknife were missing.
These were discovered on Albert, who when questioned by the police simply said: "I don't like my work". Pilkingtons to their credit hadn't given up on the boy and said they would give him another chance. He was fined ten shillings.
The Friday edition of the St Helens Reporter on the 28th stated that a syndicate had submitted a proposal to the Town Council to create a "super-cinema". It would be sited on a plot of land between Exchange Street and the Bridge Street Picturedrome in Bridge Street.
However the paper wondered whether the Corporation would allow Bridge Street (pictured above) to be dominated by places of entertainment to the practical exclusion of traditional business premises. The Reporter suggested that the council should take their time in deciding upon the application as a "good many blunders have been made in connection with Bridge-street, which are historic."
The paper also published an article on the new Labour Exchange, which had just opened within Wolverhampton House (pictured above), at the far end of Church Street by the Royal Raven. At the old Labour Exchange, at the other end of Church Street, space had been so limited that claimants would regularly queue into the street – a "daily eyesore" as the Reporter put it.
Unemployment in St Helens had grown considerably over the last few months. The closing down of the many munitions factories had led to large numbers of individuals losing their jobs. In addition soldiers and sailors returning from the war were either adding to the numbers of the unemployed or being given their old jobs back – leading to others who had been doing the job in their place having to be released.
As a result the number of staff employed at the Labour Exchange had increased from eight at the time of the armistice signing to thirty-five. The Reporter said they were working late every night to keep pace with the volume of business.
A letter written by George Moore on behalf of the "old men in the cabin" was also published in the paper. The cabin was a wooden hut in the Queen's Recreation Ground – or Queens Park, as we know it today – where the retired men of the district would meet up. It could be quite cold during the winter and a chap called Frank Callon had been collecting funds to keep the men warm. The letter read:
"We, the old men in the cabin, wish to thank you and all subscribers for the gas these winter months. It has been very good of you all to think about your fellow men. It shows brotherly love and humanity, and that is what is wanted the world over."
In a court case on the 28th a police constable gave a damning assessment of the state of Church Street. PC McHale said: "Church-street at the present time has become unbearable, and respectable people cannot walk down as there are thousands of people standing on the footpath on a Sunday night."
The officer had been in plain clothes and seen Thomas Foster from Crowther Street (near Boundary Road), William Atherton from Friar Street (near Victoria Park) and another man from Atherton Street in Dentons Green blocking the pavement.
PC McHale claimed that a large number of people had been forced to leave the pavement to walk round them. All three were fined ten shillings with the Chairman of the Bench remarking that this kind of thing must be stopped.
There was some sympathy shown for the defendants in three other cases in the Police Court. They had each been caught urinating in the town centre, with two of the men relieving themselves in an entry near Middlehurst's confectioner's in Ormskirk Street.
Not that the word urinate was actually used in the St Helens Reporter, as that might offend delicate folk! Instead the catch-all term "committing a nuisance" described their behaviour. But we know what they'd been doing as the Chairman of the Bench complained of the lack of a public convenience in the town centre. Despite this, two of the men were fined 7/6 and the other 5 shillings.
In another case a young man called Joseph Carragher was charged with committing a breach of the peace and assaulting Maud Burns. A police sergeant gave evidence that he had seen the 20-year-old from Vernon Street standing in the centre of four or five girls in Bridge Street. The officer said he was shouting, waving his arms about and in a very excited state "behaving more like a madman than anything else".
Maud Burns said she had finished her work at Nuttall's bottle works and had been going home with three others when they met Carragher in Canal Street. He proceeded to follow them to Bridge Street, where he struck her in the eye.
Maud added that one of her friends called Maggie Almond "used to go" with Carragher and he accused his ex of going with someone else. Maud said she got hit in the face because the man thought he was being laughed at. The colliery worker was fined ten shillings for the assault and bound over for six months for the breach of the peace.
The people of St Helens put their clocks forward an hour before they went to bed on the 29th. When they woke on the following morning it was officially summertime, although it can't have felt like it, as the Reporter wrote:
"Snow, driven by a piercingly cold wind, frequently forced people who were out of doors to take cover with the best possible speed they could command. The month is keeping up to the end its record for unusually severe weather. The snowfall on Saturday night was one of the heaviest since the beginning of winter.
"The “Christmas-card” effects were among the most wonderful people had ever seen, but, thinking of putting on the clock an hour to synchronise with summer time, they failed to appreciate the beauty of the scene."
Next week's stories will include the St Helens child molester on Runcorn Hill, the three men "intercepting" young women in Church Street, a concert in aid of destitute children, the port drinker causing trouble in North Road, John Davies from Peasley Cross receives his VC and there's a big increase in the number of unemployed in the town.
We begin on the 25th when the leader column in the St Helens Reporter's Tuesday edition warned against the growing threat from anarchists and communists in the town, writing: "Misguided extremists are shrieking that there is only one way in which to secure benefit, and that is by destroying existing things and creating an abomination of desolation."
The Russian revolution had emboldened some in Britain and worried the authorities, concerned that people might rise up – or as the Reporter put it – "take the short cut to an earthly paradise [as] devised by the Bolshevists".
The war had led to the rationing of food and fuel, although some restrictions – such as tea rationing – had recently been removed. Coal stocks were still low despite the early release of many miners from the army. Consequently many people in St Helens had not been receiving their allocated amounts, leading to some thefts.
On the 26th the St Helens Fuel Control Committee met and was told that household coal stocks were starting to improve. It was hoped that the people of the town would soon be able to receive their full rations.
A girl called Margaret Noonan from Park Road appeared in court on the 27th charged with stealing sixpence from a branch of the Co-op. Isabella Helsby told the magistrates that she'd bought some items from the Higher Parr Street store and then handed a pound note and her Co-op book to an assistant.
The woman then went into another room and upon returning asked the cashier for her book and sixpence change. However little Margaret had already taken them, telling the cashier she'd pass them both onto Mrs Helsby.
Instead of doing this the 10-year-old gave the book and half of the money to a boy that she knew, keeping the remaining threepence for herself. On the following day Margaret went back into the Co-op, probably thinking she could repeat the trick and make more easy coppers!
However it wasn't to be as the cashier spotted her and the police were called. The girl was put on probation for two years and her father was ordered to pay the court costs. Margaret probably had a sore bottom too!
Another lad working for Pilkingtons and living at their Ravenhead boys' hostel found himself in court on the 27th. There were around 150 youngsters employed at the glass firm, many of them orphans and a number had troubled backgrounds. They'd come to St Helens from all over the country and inevitably some would get into bother.
Pilks had taken on Albert Williams, despite him having previously been sent to an industrial school. These had been created to deal with juvenile delinquency and to teach youngsters a trade.
John Patchett had seen the 16-year-old entering a cabin with another boy and then the pair hurriedly left. After checking his jacket inside the cabin he found some tobacco and a penknife were missing.
These were discovered on Albert, who when questioned by the police simply said: "I don't like my work". Pilkingtons to their credit hadn't given up on the boy and said they would give him another chance. He was fined ten shillings.
However the paper wondered whether the Corporation would allow Bridge Street (pictured above) to be dominated by places of entertainment to the practical exclusion of traditional business premises. The Reporter suggested that the council should take their time in deciding upon the application as a "good many blunders have been made in connection with Bridge-street, which are historic."
Unemployment in St Helens had grown considerably over the last few months. The closing down of the many munitions factories had led to large numbers of individuals losing their jobs. In addition soldiers and sailors returning from the war were either adding to the numbers of the unemployed or being given their old jobs back – leading to others who had been doing the job in their place having to be released.
As a result the number of staff employed at the Labour Exchange had increased from eight at the time of the armistice signing to thirty-five. The Reporter said they were working late every night to keep pace with the volume of business.
A letter written by George Moore on behalf of the "old men in the cabin" was also published in the paper. The cabin was a wooden hut in the Queen's Recreation Ground – or Queens Park, as we know it today – where the retired men of the district would meet up. It could be quite cold during the winter and a chap called Frank Callon had been collecting funds to keep the men warm. The letter read:
"We, the old men in the cabin, wish to thank you and all subscribers for the gas these winter months. It has been very good of you all to think about your fellow men. It shows brotherly love and humanity, and that is what is wanted the world over."
In a court case on the 28th a police constable gave a damning assessment of the state of Church Street. PC McHale said: "Church-street at the present time has become unbearable, and respectable people cannot walk down as there are thousands of people standing on the footpath on a Sunday night."
The officer had been in plain clothes and seen Thomas Foster from Crowther Street (near Boundary Road), William Atherton from Friar Street (near Victoria Park) and another man from Atherton Street in Dentons Green blocking the pavement.
PC McHale claimed that a large number of people had been forced to leave the pavement to walk round them. All three were fined ten shillings with the Chairman of the Bench remarking that this kind of thing must be stopped.
There was some sympathy shown for the defendants in three other cases in the Police Court. They had each been caught urinating in the town centre, with two of the men relieving themselves in an entry near Middlehurst's confectioner's in Ormskirk Street.
Not that the word urinate was actually used in the St Helens Reporter, as that might offend delicate folk! Instead the catch-all term "committing a nuisance" described their behaviour. But we know what they'd been doing as the Chairman of the Bench complained of the lack of a public convenience in the town centre. Despite this, two of the men were fined 7/6 and the other 5 shillings.
In another case a young man called Joseph Carragher was charged with committing a breach of the peace and assaulting Maud Burns. A police sergeant gave evidence that he had seen the 20-year-old from Vernon Street standing in the centre of four or five girls in Bridge Street. The officer said he was shouting, waving his arms about and in a very excited state "behaving more like a madman than anything else".
Maud Burns said she had finished her work at Nuttall's bottle works and had been going home with three others when they met Carragher in Canal Street. He proceeded to follow them to Bridge Street, where he struck her in the eye.
Maud added that one of her friends called Maggie Almond "used to go" with Carragher and he accused his ex of going with someone else. Maud said she got hit in the face because the man thought he was being laughed at. The colliery worker was fined ten shillings for the assault and bound over for six months for the breach of the peace.
The people of St Helens put their clocks forward an hour before they went to bed on the 29th. When they woke on the following morning it was officially summertime, although it can't have felt like it, as the Reporter wrote:
"Snow, driven by a piercingly cold wind, frequently forced people who were out of doors to take cover with the best possible speed they could command. The month is keeping up to the end its record for unusually severe weather. The snowfall on Saturday night was one of the heaviest since the beginning of winter.
"The “Christmas-card” effects were among the most wonderful people had ever seen, but, thinking of putting on the clock an hour to synchronise with summer time, they failed to appreciate the beauty of the scene."
Next week's stories will include the St Helens child molester on Runcorn Hill, the three men "intercepting" young women in Church Street, a concert in aid of destitute children, the port drinker causing trouble in North Road, John Davies from Peasley Cross receives his VC and there's a big increase in the number of unemployed in the town.