IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (26th JULY - 1st AUG. 1921)
This week's stories include a swing-boat fatality in Victoria Park, the St Helens MP's claim that a clerical sex scandal had been a conspiracy, there are more deaths on the road and down coal mines and the St Helens woman's demand for the restitution of her conjugal rights.
Beecham's were continuing their campaign to persuade people to take their pills more often through a range of different adverts. On the 27th in the Suffolk and Essex Free Press in an article entitled "How Are You?", the St Helens firm wrote:
"Many people have a very poor idea of what it is to be really well. They are quite content so long as they can manage to get about and do their daily work and keep out of the doctor's hands. Health, however, is much more than this. It means energy, vigour, good spirits. It means fitness in every sense of the word.
"It means a system that is perfectly nourished and free from ailments, a system in which all the organs perform their functions naturally and thoroughly. If your health is not altogether satisfactory, you will find wonderful help in Beecham's Pills. They have an excellent, purifying, stimulating and tonic effect and do much to promote good health and physical efficiency. Sold everywhere in boxes, labelled 1s-3d and 3s-0d."
Coal tubs were transported around coalmines using a system of rope haulage. From time to time a heavy tub or box would disengage itself from the haulage and turn into a runaway. Even empty tubs were highly dangerous and many boys and young men died after being struck down. On the 28th Peter Langley of Newton Road in Parr was killed at "The Vanny" – the local name for Havannah Colliery – after a runaway tub had mowed down the 20-year-old.
Swing-boats at St Helens' fairs saw off quite a few folk too. The amusement – in which riders propelled themselves by pulling on ropes that passed through an overhead pulley – was a common sight on fairgrounds until the 1930s. The St Helens Newspaper once criticised swingboats' popularity with young people, writing: "While the suspended boat sways up and down, the most shameful conduct goes on."
Although the Newspaper complained that swingboats were "destructive to morals", they probably did far more damage to people's heads – either through falling out of the ride or being struck down by a swinging boat. It was the latter that did for Phyllis Penkith. The 9-year-old from Crispin Street, off Borough Road, died on the 28th shortly after being struck on the head by a swing-boat at Victoria Park.
The toll of accidents on the roads caused by the increasing use of motor vehicles continued to mount. And concern wasn't just limited to England. The Echo reported that all blacks had been banned from driving motor vehicles in Johannesburg after a drink driving case in which a black driver had killed a white woman. The lack of safety belts meant that front-seat occupants of vehicles were at a high risk of death from head-on crashes.
During the evening of the 28th a St Helens taxi driver crashed his vehicle into a tramway standard in Manchester after taking a party to visit the Royal Lancashire Show at Oldham. Edward Jackson from Lingholme Road was killed and four of his five passengers from Newburgh and Burscough were injured. The Guardian wrote that Jackson's demise "appeared to be instantaneous from terrible injuries to the head". Safety belts had been invented for taxis some years earlier – but it would be a very long time before they would be routinely used in cabs and other vehicles.
The Guardian also predicted a busy August Bank Holiday, which until 1964 was on the first Monday of the month. Special excursion trains had only recently been restored on the railways after their wartime suspension. Despite the fall-out from the miners strike leaving many people in St Helens with little spare cash, a large number of special trains from Shaw Street to Southport and Blackpool were still expected.
This week James Sexton, the St Helens MP, became embroiled in a clerical sex scandal that had been gripping the nation throughout the year. Rev. John Wakeford (pictured above) had been the Archdeacon of Stow until a Church of England consistory court found him guilty of adultery. A string of witnesses had given evidence that the 61-year-old clergyman had spent a night with a young woman in a Peterborough hotel.
Wakeford strenuously denied the charge, although the evidence against him was pretty strong. The police had even checked him out as there had been reports of a man wearing a dog collar passing dud cheques. However if I had been a vicar wanting to commit immorality (as it was called) in a hotel room, I would have removed my dog collar and not used my real name! There were other inconsistencies such as the man involved wearing pyjamas (with his name on), something that Wakeford's wife insisted he never wore.
How James Sexton came to be involved was that he had known the man for thirty years. Despite being brought up in poverty in Tontine Street in St Helens – the town he now represented in Parliament – Sexton had spent many years in Liverpool where John Wakeford had been a vicar. The Peterborough hotel was called The Bull and James Sexton believed the story was also a load of old rubbish – or even worse, a set up job by Wakeford's enemies: "I am convinced," said Sexton, "that he is the victim of some of those he has been up against; and in spite of the verdict, I personally acquit him of the charge preferred against him."
Those words were read out to an audience of supporters in London on the 28th, as described by the Sheffield Daily Telegraph: "Extraordinary scenes were witnessed at Queen's Hall, London, last night, when ex-Archdeacon Wakeford had an opportunity of telling his own story to a London audience. Thousands of ticket-holders had taken their seats by seven o'clock, and half an hour before the meeting the doors were closed and hundreds were unable to gain admittance.
"From floor to ceiling the great hall was thronged with men and women of all classes and almost every religious persuasion, including representatives of many Nonconformist bodies. When the ex-Archdeacon, attired in clerical garb, entered the hall the great gathering rose to its feet and cheered him as he walked on to the platform." Wakeford had even made a short film to help tell his side of the story, although without sound such a production lost a lot of punch. However the Liverpool Echo said the making of such a film was "certainly a sign of the emotional times in which we live."
It was announced this week that St Helens Ladies would be playing their rivals Dick Kerr's of Preston in a series of three football matches in the Isle of Man next month. The St Helens lasses had already raised £20,000 for charity – almost £1 million in today's money – but were just months away from the FA's ban on women playing the game on the grounds of their members.
On the 29th Ada Williamson of Argyll Street in St Helens was awarded the curiously named "decree for the restitution of conjugal rights" against her husband Charles who was living in Australia. This was the first stage of a type of divorce proceeding when a couple were living apart without good reason. Before 1884 if Charles had not obeyed the decree and returned home to restore his wife’s conjugal rights, he would have been subject to six months in prison. Now a refusal to comply only served to establish desertion and could help to speed up a divorce. It was not until 1970 that such orders were abolished, although by then they were rarely used.
On August 1st a motorbike driving along Warrington Road in Bold Heath skidded and crashed at high speed at Bold Bridge. The driver was jeweller Abram Libbert who was taken to Whiston Institution (as the hospital was then known) but died within hours from a fractured skull. Although motorbikes were becoming highly popular, motorcycle helmets were rarely used.
The Oxford Picturedrome in Duke Street was screening 'Tarzan of the Apes' from the 1st. Their newspaper ad claimed they had "the largest and most up-to-date cinema orchestra in the district". The bill at the Hippodrome music hall from the 1st featured Allington Charsley ("Opera stars"); Bert Maddison ("The burlesque comedian"); Opol and Dixie ("Humsti-bumsti act – grotesque gymnastics – the most laughable act in the world"); Archie O’Neill ("The surprise comedian"); Graham and Cullen ("The k’nuts of the army and navy – great funmakers") and a Bioscope film show ("Showing news in animation").
And finally the non-St Helens item in the Echo that attracted my interest most this week was this story reflecting on life in Liverpool in 1821 when the city was just a small town: "One day recently I put the following question to a Liverpool merchant: “Were it possible for one of Liverpool's leading citizens of 100 years ago to revisit his old haunts, what would strike him as most strange? Rapid transit, he replied. When we consider that the mode of locomotion less than 100 years ago was just as it had been for 2,000 years, we get some idea of the marvellous advance made during the past century.
"When Queen Victoria summoned Sir Robert Peel from Rome to London to form her first Parliament, in 1836, he travelled the same route, in the same manner, as did Constantine the Great 1,600 years before, when called from York to don imperial purple as Emperor of the then world-wide Roman Empire. So the varied means of rapid transit would probably be the most amazing thing to a Liverpool Rip Van Winkle, awaking just now from his 100 years' sleep.
"If we try to reconstruct a day in the life of a businessman in the early days of last century, we shall find scores of other things which would be equally disconcerting to him. First, blot from the map all the vast network of railways with their fine terminal stations and palatial hotels; then in place of the centres of industry – with their teeming populations in congested areas of streets upon streets of uniformly unlovely houses – put fields of green and gold, copse and woodland, with grass-bordered roads, and the embowered bridle paths, connecting city with town and village, and we have the England our problematical visitant knew and lived in."
Next week's stories will include an alien in trouble, the Bold Street woman who used a knife on an unwanted visitor, the man expostulating with a car driver in Shaw Street and whether men thrown out of work at Clock Face Colliery could claim the dole.
Beecham's were continuing their campaign to persuade people to take their pills more often through a range of different adverts. On the 27th in the Suffolk and Essex Free Press in an article entitled "How Are You?", the St Helens firm wrote:
"Many people have a very poor idea of what it is to be really well. They are quite content so long as they can manage to get about and do their daily work and keep out of the doctor's hands. Health, however, is much more than this. It means energy, vigour, good spirits. It means fitness in every sense of the word.
"It means a system that is perfectly nourished and free from ailments, a system in which all the organs perform their functions naturally and thoroughly. If your health is not altogether satisfactory, you will find wonderful help in Beecham's Pills. They have an excellent, purifying, stimulating and tonic effect and do much to promote good health and physical efficiency. Sold everywhere in boxes, labelled 1s-3d and 3s-0d."
Coal tubs were transported around coalmines using a system of rope haulage. From time to time a heavy tub or box would disengage itself from the haulage and turn into a runaway. Even empty tubs were highly dangerous and many boys and young men died after being struck down. On the 28th Peter Langley of Newton Road in Parr was killed at "The Vanny" – the local name for Havannah Colliery – after a runaway tub had mowed down the 20-year-old.
Swing-boats at St Helens' fairs saw off quite a few folk too. The amusement – in which riders propelled themselves by pulling on ropes that passed through an overhead pulley – was a common sight on fairgrounds until the 1930s. The St Helens Newspaper once criticised swingboats' popularity with young people, writing: "While the suspended boat sways up and down, the most shameful conduct goes on."
Although the Newspaper complained that swingboats were "destructive to morals", they probably did far more damage to people's heads – either through falling out of the ride or being struck down by a swinging boat. It was the latter that did for Phyllis Penkith. The 9-year-old from Crispin Street, off Borough Road, died on the 28th shortly after being struck on the head by a swing-boat at Victoria Park.
The toll of accidents on the roads caused by the increasing use of motor vehicles continued to mount. And concern wasn't just limited to England. The Echo reported that all blacks had been banned from driving motor vehicles in Johannesburg after a drink driving case in which a black driver had killed a white woman. The lack of safety belts meant that front-seat occupants of vehicles were at a high risk of death from head-on crashes.
During the evening of the 28th a St Helens taxi driver crashed his vehicle into a tramway standard in Manchester after taking a party to visit the Royal Lancashire Show at Oldham. Edward Jackson from Lingholme Road was killed and four of his five passengers from Newburgh and Burscough were injured. The Guardian wrote that Jackson's demise "appeared to be instantaneous from terrible injuries to the head". Safety belts had been invented for taxis some years earlier – but it would be a very long time before they would be routinely used in cabs and other vehicles.
The Guardian also predicted a busy August Bank Holiday, which until 1964 was on the first Monday of the month. Special excursion trains had only recently been restored on the railways after their wartime suspension. Despite the fall-out from the miners strike leaving many people in St Helens with little spare cash, a large number of special trains from Shaw Street to Southport and Blackpool were still expected.
Wakeford strenuously denied the charge, although the evidence against him was pretty strong. The police had even checked him out as there had been reports of a man wearing a dog collar passing dud cheques. However if I had been a vicar wanting to commit immorality (as it was called) in a hotel room, I would have removed my dog collar and not used my real name! There were other inconsistencies such as the man involved wearing pyjamas (with his name on), something that Wakeford's wife insisted he never wore.
How James Sexton came to be involved was that he had known the man for thirty years. Despite being brought up in poverty in Tontine Street in St Helens – the town he now represented in Parliament – Sexton had spent many years in Liverpool where John Wakeford had been a vicar. The Peterborough hotel was called The Bull and James Sexton believed the story was also a load of old rubbish – or even worse, a set up job by Wakeford's enemies: "I am convinced," said Sexton, "that he is the victim of some of those he has been up against; and in spite of the verdict, I personally acquit him of the charge preferred against him."
Those words were read out to an audience of supporters in London on the 28th, as described by the Sheffield Daily Telegraph: "Extraordinary scenes were witnessed at Queen's Hall, London, last night, when ex-Archdeacon Wakeford had an opportunity of telling his own story to a London audience. Thousands of ticket-holders had taken their seats by seven o'clock, and half an hour before the meeting the doors were closed and hundreds were unable to gain admittance.
"From floor to ceiling the great hall was thronged with men and women of all classes and almost every religious persuasion, including representatives of many Nonconformist bodies. When the ex-Archdeacon, attired in clerical garb, entered the hall the great gathering rose to its feet and cheered him as he walked on to the platform." Wakeford had even made a short film to help tell his side of the story, although without sound such a production lost a lot of punch. However the Liverpool Echo said the making of such a film was "certainly a sign of the emotional times in which we live."
It was announced this week that St Helens Ladies would be playing their rivals Dick Kerr's of Preston in a series of three football matches in the Isle of Man next month. The St Helens lasses had already raised £20,000 for charity – almost £1 million in today's money – but were just months away from the FA's ban on women playing the game on the grounds of their members.
On the 29th Ada Williamson of Argyll Street in St Helens was awarded the curiously named "decree for the restitution of conjugal rights" against her husband Charles who was living in Australia. This was the first stage of a type of divorce proceeding when a couple were living apart without good reason. Before 1884 if Charles had not obeyed the decree and returned home to restore his wife’s conjugal rights, he would have been subject to six months in prison. Now a refusal to comply only served to establish desertion and could help to speed up a divorce. It was not until 1970 that such orders were abolished, although by then they were rarely used.
On August 1st a motorbike driving along Warrington Road in Bold Heath skidded and crashed at high speed at Bold Bridge. The driver was jeweller Abram Libbert who was taken to Whiston Institution (as the hospital was then known) but died within hours from a fractured skull. Although motorbikes were becoming highly popular, motorcycle helmets were rarely used.
The Oxford Picturedrome in Duke Street was screening 'Tarzan of the Apes' from the 1st. Their newspaper ad claimed they had "the largest and most up-to-date cinema orchestra in the district". The bill at the Hippodrome music hall from the 1st featured Allington Charsley ("Opera stars"); Bert Maddison ("The burlesque comedian"); Opol and Dixie ("Humsti-bumsti act – grotesque gymnastics – the most laughable act in the world"); Archie O’Neill ("The surprise comedian"); Graham and Cullen ("The k’nuts of the army and navy – great funmakers") and a Bioscope film show ("Showing news in animation").
And finally the non-St Helens item in the Echo that attracted my interest most this week was this story reflecting on life in Liverpool in 1821 when the city was just a small town: "One day recently I put the following question to a Liverpool merchant: “Were it possible for one of Liverpool's leading citizens of 100 years ago to revisit his old haunts, what would strike him as most strange? Rapid transit, he replied. When we consider that the mode of locomotion less than 100 years ago was just as it had been for 2,000 years, we get some idea of the marvellous advance made during the past century.
"When Queen Victoria summoned Sir Robert Peel from Rome to London to form her first Parliament, in 1836, he travelled the same route, in the same manner, as did Constantine the Great 1,600 years before, when called from York to don imperial purple as Emperor of the then world-wide Roman Empire. So the varied means of rapid transit would probably be the most amazing thing to a Liverpool Rip Van Winkle, awaking just now from his 100 years' sleep.
"If we try to reconstruct a day in the life of a businessman in the early days of last century, we shall find scores of other things which would be equally disconcerting to him. First, blot from the map all the vast network of railways with their fine terminal stations and palatial hotels; then in place of the centres of industry – with their teeming populations in congested areas of streets upon streets of uniformly unlovely houses – put fields of green and gold, copse and woodland, with grass-bordered roads, and the embowered bridle paths, connecting city with town and village, and we have the England our problematical visitant knew and lived in."
Next week's stories will include an alien in trouble, the Bold Street woman who used a knife on an unwanted visitor, the man expostulating with a car driver in Shaw Street and whether men thrown out of work at Clock Face Colliery could claim the dole.
This week's stories include a swing-boat fatality in Victoria Park, the St Helens MP's claim that a clerical sex scandal had been a conspiracy, there are more deaths on the road and down coal mines and the St Helens woman's demand for the restitution of her conjugal rights.
Beecham's were continuing their campaign to persuade people to take their pills more often through a range of different adverts.
On the 27th in the Suffolk and Essex Free Press in an article entitled "How Are You?", the St Helens firm wrote:
"Many people have a very poor idea of what it is to be really well. They are quite content so long as they can manage to get about and do their daily work and keep out of the doctor's hands.
"Health, however, is much more than this. It means energy, vigour, good spirits. It means fitness in every sense of the word.
"It means a system that is perfectly nourished and free from ailments, a system in which all the organs perform their functions naturally and thoroughly.
"If your health is not altogether satisfactory, you will find wonderful help in Beecham's Pills.
"They have an excellent, purifying, stimulating and tonic effect and do much to promote good health and physical efficiency. Sold everywhere in boxes, labelled 1s-3d and 3s-0d."
Coal tubs were transported around coalmines using a system of rope haulage. From time to time a heavy tub or box would disengage itself from the haulage and turn into a runaway.
Even empty tubs were highly dangerous and many boys and young men died after being struck down.
On the 28th Peter Langley of Newton Road in Parr was killed at "The Vanny" – the local name for Havannah Colliery – after a runaway tub had mowed down the 20-year-old.
Swing-boats at St Helens' fairs saw off quite a few folk too. The amusement – in which riders propelled themselves by pulling on ropes that passed through an overhead pulley – was a common sight on fairgrounds until the 1930s.
The St Helens Newspaper once criticised swingboats' popularity with young people, writing: "While the suspended boat sways up and down, the most shameful conduct goes on."
Although the Newspaper complained that swingboats were "destructive to morals", they probably did far more damage to people's heads – either through falling out of the ride or being struck down by a swinging boat.
It was the latter that did for Phyllis Penkith. The 9-year-old from Crispin Street, off Borough Road, died on the 28th shortly after being struck on the head by a swing-boat at Victoria Park.
The toll of accidents on the roads caused by the increasing use of motor vehicles continued to mount.
And concern wasn't just limited to England. The Echo reported that all blacks had been banned from driving motor vehicles in Johannesburg after a drink driving case in which a black driver had killed a white woman.
The lack of safety belts meant that front-seat occupants of vehicles were at a high risk of death from head-on crashes.
During the evening of the 28th a St Helens taxi driver crashed his vehicle into a tramway standard in Manchester after taking a party to visit the Royal Lancashire Show at Oldham.
Edward Jackson from Lingholme Road was killed and four of his five passengers from Newburgh and Burscough were injured.
The Guardian wrote that Jackson's demise "appeared to be instantaneous from terrible injuries to the head".
Safety belts had been invented for taxis some years earlier – but it would be a very long time before they would be routinely used in cabs and other vehicles.
The Guardian also predicted a busy August Bank Holiday, which until 1964 was on the first Monday of the month.
Special excursion trains had only recently been restored on the railways after their wartime suspension.
Despite the fall-out from the miners strike leaving many people in St Helens with little spare cash, a large number of special trains from Shaw Street to Southport and Blackpool were still expected.
This week James Sexton, the St Helens MP, became embroiled in a clerical sex scandal that had been gripping the nation throughout the year.
Rev. John Wakeford (pictured above) had been the Archdeacon of Stow until a Church of England consistory court found him guilty of adultery.
A string of witnesses had given evidence that the 61-year-old clergyman had spent a night with a young woman in a Peterborough hotel.
Wakeford strenuously denied the charge, although the evidence against him was pretty strong.
The police had even checked him out as there had been reports of a man wearing a dog collar passing dud cheques.
However if I had been a vicar wanting to commit immorality (as it was called) in a hotel room, I would have removed my dog collar and not used my real name!
There were other inconsistencies such as the man involved wearing pyjamas (with his name on), something that Wakeford's wife insisted he never wore.
How James Sexton came to be involved was that he had known the man for thirty years.
Despite being brought up in poverty in Tontine Street in St Helens – the town he now represented in Parliament – Sexton had spent many years in Liverpool where John Wakeford had been a vicar.
The Peterborough hotel was called The Bull and James Sexton believed the story was also a load of old rubbish – or even worse, a set up job by Wakeford's enemies:
"I am convinced," said Sexton, "that he is the victim of some of those he has been up against; and in spite of the verdict, I personally acquit him of the charge preferred against him."
Those words were read out to an audience of supporters in London on the 28th, as described by the Sheffield Daily Telegraph:
"Extraordinary scenes were witnessed at Queen's Hall, London, last night, when ex-Archdeacon Wakeford had an opportunity of telling his own story to a London audience.
"Thousands of ticket-holders had taken their seats by seven o'clock, and half an hour before the meeting the doors were closed and hundreds were unable to gain admittance.
"From floor to ceiling the great hall was thronged with men and women of all classes and almost every religious persuasion, including representatives of many Nonconformist bodies.
"When the ex-Archdeacon, attired in clerical garb, entered the hall the great gathering rose to its feet and cheered him as he walked on to the platform."
Wakeford had even made a short film to help tell his side of the story, although without sound such a production lost a lot of punch.
However the Liverpool Echo said the making of such a film was "certainly a sign of the emotional times in which we live."
It was announced this week that St Helens Ladies would be playing their rivals Dick Kerr's of Preston in a series of three football matches in the Isle of Man next month.
The St Helens lasses had already raised £20,000 for charity – almost £1 million in today's money – but were just months away from the FA's ban on women playing the game on the grounds of their members.
On the 29th Ada Williamson of Argyll Street in St Helens was awarded the curiously named "decree for the restitution of conjugal rights" against her husband Charles who was living in Australia.
This was the first stage of a type of divorce proceeding when a couple were living apart without good reason.
Before 1884 if Charles had not obeyed the decree and returned home to restore his wife’s conjugal rights, he would have been subject to six months in prison.
Now a refusal to comply only served to establish desertion and could help to speed up a divorce.
It was not until 1970 that such orders were abolished, although by then they were rarely used.
On August 1st a motorbike driving along Warrington Road in Bold Heath skidded and crashed at high speed at Bold Bridge.
The driver was jeweller Abram Libbert who was taken to Whiston Institution (as the hospital was then known) but died within hours from a fractured skull.
Although motorbikes were becoming highly popular, motorcycle helmets were rarely used.
The Oxford Picturedrome in Duke Street was screening 'Tarzan of the Apes' from the 1st. Their newspaper ad claimed they had "the largest and most up-to-date cinema orchestra in the district".
The bill at the Hippodrome music hall from the 1st featured Allington Charsley ("Opera stars"); Bert Maddison ("The burlesque comedian"); Opol and Dixie ("Humsti-bumsti act – grotesque gymnastics – the most laughable act in the world"); Archie O’Neill ("The surprise comedian"); Graham and Cullen ("The k’nuts of the army and navy – great funmakers") and a Bioscope film show ("Showing news in animation").
And finally the non-St Helens item in the Echo that attracted my interest most this week was this story reflecting on life in Liverpool in 1821 when the city was just a small town:
"One day recently I put the following question to a Liverpool merchant: “Were it possible for one of Liverpool's leading citizens of 100 years ago to revisit his old haunts, what would strike him as most strange?
"Rapid transit, he replied. When we consider that the mode of locomotion less than 100 years ago was just as it had been for 2,000 years, we get some idea of the marvellous advance made during the past century.
"When Queen Victoria summoned Sir Robert Peel from Rome to London to form her first Parliament, in 1836, he travelled the same route, in the same manner, as did Constantine the Great 1,600 years before, when called from York to don imperial purple as Emperor of the then world-wide Roman Empire.
"So the varied means of rapid transit would probably be the most amazing thing to a Liverpool Rip Van Winkle, awaking just now from his 100 years' sleep.
"If we try to reconstruct a day in the life of a businessman in the early days of last century, we shall find scores of other things which would be equally disconcerting to him.
"First, blot from the map all the vast network of railways with their fine terminal stations and palatial hotels; then in place of the centres of industry – with their teeming populations in congested areas of streets upon streets of uniformly unlovely houses – put fields of green and gold, copse and woodland, with grass-bordered roads, and the embowered bridle paths, connecting city with town and village, and we have the England our problematical visitant knew and lived in."
Next week's stories will include an alien in trouble, the Bold Street woman who used a knife on an unwanted visitor, the man expostulating with a car driver in Shaw Street and whether men thrown out of work at Clock Face Colliery could claim the dole.
Beecham's were continuing their campaign to persuade people to take their pills more often through a range of different adverts.
On the 27th in the Suffolk and Essex Free Press in an article entitled "How Are You?", the St Helens firm wrote:
"Many people have a very poor idea of what it is to be really well. They are quite content so long as they can manage to get about and do their daily work and keep out of the doctor's hands.
"Health, however, is much more than this. It means energy, vigour, good spirits. It means fitness in every sense of the word.
"It means a system that is perfectly nourished and free from ailments, a system in which all the organs perform their functions naturally and thoroughly.
"If your health is not altogether satisfactory, you will find wonderful help in Beecham's Pills.
"They have an excellent, purifying, stimulating and tonic effect and do much to promote good health and physical efficiency. Sold everywhere in boxes, labelled 1s-3d and 3s-0d."
Coal tubs were transported around coalmines using a system of rope haulage. From time to time a heavy tub or box would disengage itself from the haulage and turn into a runaway.
Even empty tubs were highly dangerous and many boys and young men died after being struck down.
On the 28th Peter Langley of Newton Road in Parr was killed at "The Vanny" – the local name for Havannah Colliery – after a runaway tub had mowed down the 20-year-old.
Swing-boats at St Helens' fairs saw off quite a few folk too. The amusement – in which riders propelled themselves by pulling on ropes that passed through an overhead pulley – was a common sight on fairgrounds until the 1930s.
The St Helens Newspaper once criticised swingboats' popularity with young people, writing: "While the suspended boat sways up and down, the most shameful conduct goes on."
Although the Newspaper complained that swingboats were "destructive to morals", they probably did far more damage to people's heads – either through falling out of the ride or being struck down by a swinging boat.
It was the latter that did for Phyllis Penkith. The 9-year-old from Crispin Street, off Borough Road, died on the 28th shortly after being struck on the head by a swing-boat at Victoria Park.
The toll of accidents on the roads caused by the increasing use of motor vehicles continued to mount.
And concern wasn't just limited to England. The Echo reported that all blacks had been banned from driving motor vehicles in Johannesburg after a drink driving case in which a black driver had killed a white woman.
The lack of safety belts meant that front-seat occupants of vehicles were at a high risk of death from head-on crashes.
During the evening of the 28th a St Helens taxi driver crashed his vehicle into a tramway standard in Manchester after taking a party to visit the Royal Lancashire Show at Oldham.
Edward Jackson from Lingholme Road was killed and four of his five passengers from Newburgh and Burscough were injured.
The Guardian wrote that Jackson's demise "appeared to be instantaneous from terrible injuries to the head".
Safety belts had been invented for taxis some years earlier – but it would be a very long time before they would be routinely used in cabs and other vehicles.
The Guardian also predicted a busy August Bank Holiday, which until 1964 was on the first Monday of the month.
Special excursion trains had only recently been restored on the railways after their wartime suspension.
Despite the fall-out from the miners strike leaving many people in St Helens with little spare cash, a large number of special trains from Shaw Street to Southport and Blackpool were still expected.
This week James Sexton, the St Helens MP, became embroiled in a clerical sex scandal that had been gripping the nation throughout the year.
A string of witnesses had given evidence that the 61-year-old clergyman had spent a night with a young woman in a Peterborough hotel.
Wakeford strenuously denied the charge, although the evidence against him was pretty strong.
The police had even checked him out as there had been reports of a man wearing a dog collar passing dud cheques.
However if I had been a vicar wanting to commit immorality (as it was called) in a hotel room, I would have removed my dog collar and not used my real name!
There were other inconsistencies such as the man involved wearing pyjamas (with his name on), something that Wakeford's wife insisted he never wore.
How James Sexton came to be involved was that he had known the man for thirty years.
Despite being brought up in poverty in Tontine Street in St Helens – the town he now represented in Parliament – Sexton had spent many years in Liverpool where John Wakeford had been a vicar.
The Peterborough hotel was called The Bull and James Sexton believed the story was also a load of old rubbish – or even worse, a set up job by Wakeford's enemies:
"I am convinced," said Sexton, "that he is the victim of some of those he has been up against; and in spite of the verdict, I personally acquit him of the charge preferred against him."
Those words were read out to an audience of supporters in London on the 28th, as described by the Sheffield Daily Telegraph:
"Extraordinary scenes were witnessed at Queen's Hall, London, last night, when ex-Archdeacon Wakeford had an opportunity of telling his own story to a London audience.
"Thousands of ticket-holders had taken their seats by seven o'clock, and half an hour before the meeting the doors were closed and hundreds were unable to gain admittance.
"From floor to ceiling the great hall was thronged with men and women of all classes and almost every religious persuasion, including representatives of many Nonconformist bodies.
"When the ex-Archdeacon, attired in clerical garb, entered the hall the great gathering rose to its feet and cheered him as he walked on to the platform."
Wakeford had even made a short film to help tell his side of the story, although without sound such a production lost a lot of punch.
However the Liverpool Echo said the making of such a film was "certainly a sign of the emotional times in which we live."
It was announced this week that St Helens Ladies would be playing their rivals Dick Kerr's of Preston in a series of three football matches in the Isle of Man next month.
The St Helens lasses had already raised £20,000 for charity – almost £1 million in today's money – but were just months away from the FA's ban on women playing the game on the grounds of their members.
On the 29th Ada Williamson of Argyll Street in St Helens was awarded the curiously named "decree for the restitution of conjugal rights" against her husband Charles who was living in Australia.
This was the first stage of a type of divorce proceeding when a couple were living apart without good reason.
Before 1884 if Charles had not obeyed the decree and returned home to restore his wife’s conjugal rights, he would have been subject to six months in prison.
Now a refusal to comply only served to establish desertion and could help to speed up a divorce.
It was not until 1970 that such orders were abolished, although by then they were rarely used.
On August 1st a motorbike driving along Warrington Road in Bold Heath skidded and crashed at high speed at Bold Bridge.
The driver was jeweller Abram Libbert who was taken to Whiston Institution (as the hospital was then known) but died within hours from a fractured skull.
Although motorbikes were becoming highly popular, motorcycle helmets were rarely used.
The Oxford Picturedrome in Duke Street was screening 'Tarzan of the Apes' from the 1st. Their newspaper ad claimed they had "the largest and most up-to-date cinema orchestra in the district".
The bill at the Hippodrome music hall from the 1st featured Allington Charsley ("Opera stars"); Bert Maddison ("The burlesque comedian"); Opol and Dixie ("Humsti-bumsti act – grotesque gymnastics – the most laughable act in the world"); Archie O’Neill ("The surprise comedian"); Graham and Cullen ("The k’nuts of the army and navy – great funmakers") and a Bioscope film show ("Showing news in animation").
And finally the non-St Helens item in the Echo that attracted my interest most this week was this story reflecting on life in Liverpool in 1821 when the city was just a small town:
"One day recently I put the following question to a Liverpool merchant: “Were it possible for one of Liverpool's leading citizens of 100 years ago to revisit his old haunts, what would strike him as most strange?
"Rapid transit, he replied. When we consider that the mode of locomotion less than 100 years ago was just as it had been for 2,000 years, we get some idea of the marvellous advance made during the past century.
"When Queen Victoria summoned Sir Robert Peel from Rome to London to form her first Parliament, in 1836, he travelled the same route, in the same manner, as did Constantine the Great 1,600 years before, when called from York to don imperial purple as Emperor of the then world-wide Roman Empire.
"So the varied means of rapid transit would probably be the most amazing thing to a Liverpool Rip Van Winkle, awaking just now from his 100 years' sleep.
"If we try to reconstruct a day in the life of a businessman in the early days of last century, we shall find scores of other things which would be equally disconcerting to him.
"First, blot from the map all the vast network of railways with their fine terminal stations and palatial hotels; then in place of the centres of industry – with their teeming populations in congested areas of streets upon streets of uniformly unlovely houses – put fields of green and gold, copse and woodland, with grass-bordered roads, and the embowered bridle paths, connecting city with town and village, and we have the England our problematical visitant knew and lived in."
Next week's stories will include an alien in trouble, the Bold Street woman who used a knife on an unwanted visitor, the man expostulating with a car driver in Shaw Street and whether men thrown out of work at Clock Face Colliery could claim the dole.