IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (26th August - 1st Sept. 1919)
This week's stories include late night violence in Crook Street, the Thatto Heath miner who shot his dog because his wife aggravated him, an extraordinary Haydock childbirth case, night poaching and peace celebrations in Rainford and the disabled ex-soldier from Borough Road accused of pension fraud.
We begin on the 26th when another example of the unpopularity of the boys in blue was described in St Helens Police Court. John Bannister was charged with a breach of the peace and assaulting the police and his brother Thomas from Union Street (off College Street) was charged with obstruction.
PC Turner told the court that at 11:40pm on the previous night he had heard shouting and threatening language coming from Crook Street near Liverpool Road. He found John Bannister in front of a crowd saying he would "fight any ________ in the town", with the St Helens Reporter censuring his expletive. The constable spoke to the man and Bannister motioned to strike him, so the officer grabbed him by the wrist and placed his hand behind his back.
However Thomas Bannister then intervened and struggled with PC Turner, allowing his brother John to strike the constable three times, breaking one of his teeth. The officer blew his police whistle for assistance and after another constable had arrived, the pair went after the two brothers, who had gone into John Bannister's home at 18 Crook Street. However a crowd of 100 people had formed and they did what they could to obstruct the policemen but the Bannisters were eventually arrested.
John Bannister appealed for leniency from the Bench saying he had not been back from France very long after spending four years in the army. However the street hawker had five previous convictions and his brother had been in court six times. So John was fined £5 for the assault and bound over to keep the peace and Thomas Bannister was fined £2 for his obstruction.
On the 29th the magistrates in St Helens Police Court heard how a man from Thatto Heath had shot his dog and given it a slow death because his wife aggravated him. PC Cartledge gave evidence that at 10:40am on the 11th he had heard a gunshot coming from the direction of Rose Cottages, situated between Sutton Heath Road and Leicester Street.
Daniel Dingsdale and his wife Sarah and their four children occupied one of the two cottages. Upon approaching their home the officer met Mrs Dingsdale who said her husband had shot his dog in the garden. The man had disappeared by the time of the officer's arrival but Sarah found the gun and handed it to PC Cartledge saying she was frightened he might use it against her.
The whippet was still alive but bleeding profusely with two wounds to its breast and both its front legs broken. There was no hope of saving the animal and so it was destroyed. Later Daniel Dingsdale – a 47-year-old miner – was seen by the police and said: "My wife aggravated me to it. She never wanted me to have it. It is all through her. I had a drop of beer, and the wife worried me and I thought I would get rid of it."
Inspector Barrack told the hearing that it was about as cruel a case as he had heard of. The Bench agreed and fined Dingsdale £5, saying it had been a "very cruel thing to put this poor dog to a lingering death."
Also in court was Joseph Hanna from Wavertree who was charged with attempting to board a train in motion. The man commuted daily between Liverpool and St Helens and was seen to run up the subway at St Helens Station as the 5:05pm train was leaving. Hanna tried to open the door of a compartment but fell off the footboard and rolled onto the platform narrowly escaping serious injury.
The man told a railway detective that he had been running late that night and wanted to get home early. The company told the Bench that such cases were becoming common and people did not realise the "great danger of it". Joseph Hanna was fined 20 shillings.
There was an extraordinary inquest held on the 29th at the Rams Head Hotel in Haydock concerning a newly-born child belonging to Gertrude Stevens. The 21-year-old from Penny Lane had given birth to a baby boy around noon on the previous Sunday, hiding his body in a recess in her bedroom. During the morning she had told her mother that she felt unwell with pains in her back and so was given some medicine to take. Gertrude slept in the same bed as her older sister who had spent most of Sunday in the bedroom but said she had not been aware of the pregnancy or the birth.
Dr Jackson was also blissfully ignorant of Gertrude's condition. He told the hearing that he had treated the young woman for some time but had not realised that her complaint was pregnancy. Whether Gertrude herself knew was not stated in the report but she admitted that the father was a soldier stationed in the convalescent camp at Ashton.
Dr Jackson told the inquest that it had not been a stillbirth and if the mother had been properly attended to and the child taken care of, the baby would have lived – which might be seen as an indictment of himself. The coroner ruled that the baby had died from inattention at birth but the evidence did not warrant a charge of manslaughter.
The St Helens Reporter on the 29th wrote that Sydney Brown from Cowley Hill Lane – who was serving with the army of the Rhine as a dispatch rider – had competed in a military review in Cologne. The 21-year-old had won first prize for dispatch riders while riding his Triumph motorbike that he had previous ridden in France during the war.
Syd's father was Fred Brown, a well-known building contractor, who for the last few weeks had been working with the Ministry of Labour to open a training centre for disabled ex-soldiers. They would be taught aspects of the building trade at Brown's North Road works, which he had placed at the disposal of the ministry rent-free.
Belated peace celebrations were held in Rainford on the 29th and 30th, with the first day being a tea and concert in the Village Hall (pictured above) for 200 to 300 old folk. Each man was presented with two ounces of tobacco and each woman was given ¼ lb. of tea. The second day was a children's treat with 1,100 youngsters from six schools parading from the Recreation Ground to the bottom of Church Road and then towards the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Ormskirk Road.
Upon making the return journey, the walkers went to their respective schools or the Village Hall for tea. The children were then taken to the grounds of Muncaster Hall where they played various sports, enjoyed Punch and Judy, a ventriloquist and a conjurer. At 9 o’clock a fireworks display brought the proceedings to a close.
John Parkinson from Glover Street was fined ten shillings in St Helens Police Court on the 30th for stealing some pieces of wood and a sheet of glass. He was the fireman at the Oxford Picturedrome and had taken the items from the cinema to repair some boards and a window at his home. The Duke Street cinema had been opened seven years earlier and would later be known as the Plaza and Cindy's nightclub.
In the County Police Court on the 1st two "burly-looking men" – as they were described – were charged with "unlawfully entering enclosed land with nets and pegs for the purpose of taking game". It was alleged that Richard Williams and William Yates had gone onto Lord Derby's land at Dairy Farm in Rainford that was tenanted by elderly farmer Thomas Boardman. The farm has long gone but its legacy is Dairy Farm Road, which stretches from Ormskirk Road across the Rainford Bypass.
Four gamekeepers had watched Williams and Yates lay traps in the early hours of the morning and then catch two rabbits. They then "pounced out" from their concealed position and caught the men red-handed. Yates said in court: "We should never have come, only we had gotten out of work". However there was little sympathy for the two coal miners as they both had long criminal records.
Williams was fifty-two and had eleven previous convictions and three years earlier had served a month in prison for night poaching. Superintendent Garvey described Yates as not only a poacher but also a "dangerous kind of thief " and a "drunken and violent person". The sixty-year-old had been before the courts on fifty-three occasions, although his last conviction had been nine years ago when he was given six months for night poaching.
Both men pleaded for leniency with Yates saying: "I am getting a good age, I will never come here any more. I will chuck this game up altogether." However his record was too bad for the magistrates to be lenient and Yates was sentenced to three months hard labour, although Williams only received a £5 fine.
Before the war benefit fraud was largely unheard of – mainly because there were hardly any benefits for people to claim! Ungenerous old age pensions and tax allowances for children had both been introduced in 1909, but there wasn't much else. However many discharged and disabled soldiers were awarded pensions after returning from military service, which had potential for fraud.
On the 1st Patrick Kiernan from Borough Road was charged in St Helens Police Court with receiving £12 17s 6d by false pretences. The man had served in the army for four years and had practically lost the use of his left hand. Last December he had been medically certified as incapacitated and granted 33 shillings a week pension.
However Kiernan had since got married and decided that 33 shillings was insufficient for him and his wife to live on. So he got some part-time work at St Helens Collieries but failed to notify the authorities. Kiernan offered to pay back the £12 and his counsel appealed for leniency bearing in mind his client's war service. However the Bench was not in a lenient mood and jailed the man for 28 days.
Next week's stories will include the distribution of the St Helens Heroes Fund, the little girls that damaged spuds on Leach Hall Farm, trouble on a tram in Boundary Road, the "simply scandalous" behaviour at Ravenhead Colliery and the arrest of the singing collier from Thatto Heath and the 300-strong mob that tried to free him.
We begin on the 26th when another example of the unpopularity of the boys in blue was described in St Helens Police Court. John Bannister was charged with a breach of the peace and assaulting the police and his brother Thomas from Union Street (off College Street) was charged with obstruction.
PC Turner told the court that at 11:40pm on the previous night he had heard shouting and threatening language coming from Crook Street near Liverpool Road. He found John Bannister in front of a crowd saying he would "fight any ________ in the town", with the St Helens Reporter censuring his expletive. The constable spoke to the man and Bannister motioned to strike him, so the officer grabbed him by the wrist and placed his hand behind his back.
However Thomas Bannister then intervened and struggled with PC Turner, allowing his brother John to strike the constable three times, breaking one of his teeth. The officer blew his police whistle for assistance and after another constable had arrived, the pair went after the two brothers, who had gone into John Bannister's home at 18 Crook Street. However a crowd of 100 people had formed and they did what they could to obstruct the policemen but the Bannisters were eventually arrested.
John Bannister appealed for leniency from the Bench saying he had not been back from France very long after spending four years in the army. However the street hawker had five previous convictions and his brother had been in court six times. So John was fined £5 for the assault and bound over to keep the peace and Thomas Bannister was fined £2 for his obstruction.
On the 29th the magistrates in St Helens Police Court heard how a man from Thatto Heath had shot his dog and given it a slow death because his wife aggravated him. PC Cartledge gave evidence that at 10:40am on the 11th he had heard a gunshot coming from the direction of Rose Cottages, situated between Sutton Heath Road and Leicester Street.
Daniel Dingsdale and his wife Sarah and their four children occupied one of the two cottages. Upon approaching their home the officer met Mrs Dingsdale who said her husband had shot his dog in the garden. The man had disappeared by the time of the officer's arrival but Sarah found the gun and handed it to PC Cartledge saying she was frightened he might use it against her.
The whippet was still alive but bleeding profusely with two wounds to its breast and both its front legs broken. There was no hope of saving the animal and so it was destroyed. Later Daniel Dingsdale – a 47-year-old miner – was seen by the police and said: "My wife aggravated me to it. She never wanted me to have it. It is all through her. I had a drop of beer, and the wife worried me and I thought I would get rid of it."
Inspector Barrack told the hearing that it was about as cruel a case as he had heard of. The Bench agreed and fined Dingsdale £5, saying it had been a "very cruel thing to put this poor dog to a lingering death."
Also in court was Joseph Hanna from Wavertree who was charged with attempting to board a train in motion. The man commuted daily between Liverpool and St Helens and was seen to run up the subway at St Helens Station as the 5:05pm train was leaving. Hanna tried to open the door of a compartment but fell off the footboard and rolled onto the platform narrowly escaping serious injury.
The man told a railway detective that he had been running late that night and wanted to get home early. The company told the Bench that such cases were becoming common and people did not realise the "great danger of it". Joseph Hanna was fined 20 shillings.
There was an extraordinary inquest held on the 29th at the Rams Head Hotel in Haydock concerning a newly-born child belonging to Gertrude Stevens. The 21-year-old from Penny Lane had given birth to a baby boy around noon on the previous Sunday, hiding his body in a recess in her bedroom. During the morning she had told her mother that she felt unwell with pains in her back and so was given some medicine to take. Gertrude slept in the same bed as her older sister who had spent most of Sunday in the bedroom but said she had not been aware of the pregnancy or the birth.
Dr Jackson was also blissfully ignorant of Gertrude's condition. He told the hearing that he had treated the young woman for some time but had not realised that her complaint was pregnancy. Whether Gertrude herself knew was not stated in the report but she admitted that the father was a soldier stationed in the convalescent camp at Ashton.
Dr Jackson told the inquest that it had not been a stillbirth and if the mother had been properly attended to and the child taken care of, the baby would have lived – which might be seen as an indictment of himself. The coroner ruled that the baby had died from inattention at birth but the evidence did not warrant a charge of manslaughter.
The St Helens Reporter on the 29th wrote that Sydney Brown from Cowley Hill Lane – who was serving with the army of the Rhine as a dispatch rider – had competed in a military review in Cologne. The 21-year-old had won first prize for dispatch riders while riding his Triumph motorbike that he had previous ridden in France during the war.
Syd's father was Fred Brown, a well-known building contractor, who for the last few weeks had been working with the Ministry of Labour to open a training centre for disabled ex-soldiers. They would be taught aspects of the building trade at Brown's North Road works, which he had placed at the disposal of the ministry rent-free.
Upon making the return journey, the walkers went to their respective schools or the Village Hall for tea. The children were then taken to the grounds of Muncaster Hall where they played various sports, enjoyed Punch and Judy, a ventriloquist and a conjurer. At 9 o’clock a fireworks display brought the proceedings to a close.
John Parkinson from Glover Street was fined ten shillings in St Helens Police Court on the 30th for stealing some pieces of wood and a sheet of glass. He was the fireman at the Oxford Picturedrome and had taken the items from the cinema to repair some boards and a window at his home. The Duke Street cinema had been opened seven years earlier and would later be known as the Plaza and Cindy's nightclub.
In the County Police Court on the 1st two "burly-looking men" – as they were described – were charged with "unlawfully entering enclosed land with nets and pegs for the purpose of taking game". It was alleged that Richard Williams and William Yates had gone onto Lord Derby's land at Dairy Farm in Rainford that was tenanted by elderly farmer Thomas Boardman. The farm has long gone but its legacy is Dairy Farm Road, which stretches from Ormskirk Road across the Rainford Bypass.
Four gamekeepers had watched Williams and Yates lay traps in the early hours of the morning and then catch two rabbits. They then "pounced out" from their concealed position and caught the men red-handed. Yates said in court: "We should never have come, only we had gotten out of work". However there was little sympathy for the two coal miners as they both had long criminal records.
Williams was fifty-two and had eleven previous convictions and three years earlier had served a month in prison for night poaching. Superintendent Garvey described Yates as not only a poacher but also a "dangerous kind of thief " and a "drunken and violent person". The sixty-year-old had been before the courts on fifty-three occasions, although his last conviction had been nine years ago when he was given six months for night poaching.
Both men pleaded for leniency with Yates saying: "I am getting a good age, I will never come here any more. I will chuck this game up altogether." However his record was too bad for the magistrates to be lenient and Yates was sentenced to three months hard labour, although Williams only received a £5 fine.
Before the war benefit fraud was largely unheard of – mainly because there were hardly any benefits for people to claim! Ungenerous old age pensions and tax allowances for children had both been introduced in 1909, but there wasn't much else. However many discharged and disabled soldiers were awarded pensions after returning from military service, which had potential for fraud.
On the 1st Patrick Kiernan from Borough Road was charged in St Helens Police Court with receiving £12 17s 6d by false pretences. The man had served in the army for four years and had practically lost the use of his left hand. Last December he had been medically certified as incapacitated and granted 33 shillings a week pension.
However Kiernan had since got married and decided that 33 shillings was insufficient for him and his wife to live on. So he got some part-time work at St Helens Collieries but failed to notify the authorities. Kiernan offered to pay back the £12 and his counsel appealed for leniency bearing in mind his client's war service. However the Bench was not in a lenient mood and jailed the man for 28 days.
Next week's stories will include the distribution of the St Helens Heroes Fund, the little girls that damaged spuds on Leach Hall Farm, trouble on a tram in Boundary Road, the "simply scandalous" behaviour at Ravenhead Colliery and the arrest of the singing collier from Thatto Heath and the 300-strong mob that tried to free him.