IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 28 SEPT - 4 OCT 1926
This week's many stories include the dangerous outcrop mine workings, the striking Rainford miners who'd been employed on farms drift back to their pits, the popularity of opera in St Helens, the intimidation at Sutton Manor Colliery and the man who used the Emergency Powers Act as an excuse for running away from a policeman.
We begin on the 28th at the St Helens County Police Sessions when Greenall Whitley sought permission to make alterations at the Griffin Inn in Eccleston, which were granted. The pub had originally been known as The Magpie, as the Eccleston family used a magpie as their emblem.
It is somewhat surprising how in the 1920s opera was so popular in such a working class town like St Helens. Operatic companies would regularly perform for a week or two at the St Helens Theatre & Opera House, which was then the formal name of the Theatre Royal. The town also had its own group of operatic performers and this week the St Helens Amateur Operatic Society performed 'Iolanthe' at the Corporation Street venue. There were five bands of ticket prices ranging from 8d to 3/6.
The controversial Emergency Powers Act gave the authorities the ability to take action against the spread of disinformation. On the 28th a Manchester man called Theodore Aindey was charged with a breach of the emergency regulations by making a speech likely to cause disaffection amongst the civil population. The man had told a crowd at Higher Ince that he had spent a week in St Helens and seen police use batons to bludgeon helpless men, women and children and the bobbies had repeated their actions at Ashtons Green Colliery and at Haydock.
Aindey also called for a defence force to be set up "to meet the police on better terms than they were accustomed to." Although there were reports of abuse of the police baton, they seem to have been isolated cases and not as widespread as Aindey claimed and for his comments the man was sent to prison for 28 days.
The police were also clamping down on the dangerous practice of digging out so-called outcrop coal. These were essentially small, redundant surface mines. On the 29th Christopher Gill of Liverpool Street in St Helens was charged with taking coal from an outcrop seam near the brickworks of Woods and Co at Ravenhead.
PC Kitchen told the court that the firm constantly had to apply for police protection to prevent men from working these pits. Gill was employed in a hole that was 10 feet deep, which was considered very dangerous as it ran close to an old unused shaft that might collapse. It also ran under a footpath and so it was a danger not only to himself but also to passing pedestrians. Christopher Gill was fined 10 shillings.
Robert Kinder of Merton Bank Road appeared in court on the 30th of this week. The boy was charged with stealing 60 pounds of coal from an outcrop mine at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow. Robert pleaded that his sister was ill and they had no fire in their house.
Superintendent Dunn told the court that the boy was respectable and a fortnight earlier, the National Humane Society had presented him with a certificate for saving another boy from drowning. As a result Robert was given a more sympathetic hearing and ordered to pay only the 5 shillings cost of the hearing.
Many Rainford miners during the strike were in a better position than others. Their rural location meant there was plenty of temporary work for them on farms. Mechanisation had yet to kick in and so huge numbers of workers were needed at crop picking times. Working in the open-air would have been a pleasant novelty for the mineworkers but their pay would have been far less than they were used to.
On the 30th the Ormskirk Advertiser described how at Rainford Colliery in Siding Lane (pictured above), one hundred striking miners had signed on to resume work: "There is unquestionably a growing desire on the part of the men to resume their ordinary vocation. Some are engaged in the potato fields locally, in picking the tubers, but they appear to be like fish out of water, and as stated are anxious to return to the pits."
A couple of days earlier the Liverpool Echo had claimed that 70 Rainford Colliery miners had signed up and that the mine was the first in the St Helens district to break away from the common strike-bound front.
On October 1st Samuel Davies of Tennyson Street in Sutton Manor used the Emergency Powers Act as an excuse for running away from a policeman. Davies had been accused of street betting, with Police Constable Williams telling the court that he had seen the man receive a betting slip in Tennyson Street. The officer explained how he had chased him three times around a hut and then Davies had dashed through a house – but the officer said he had eventually caught his man.
Samuel denied committing the betting offence and said he could not understand why the policeman had been chasing him. Supt Dunn asked why he had run away if innocent. To that Samuel Davies replied: "Owing to the Emergency Powers Act a policeman can use his baton, and people get frightened." The magistrates decided to give him the benefit of the doubt but warned Davies not to run away from a policeman in future.
On October 1st 18 Sutton Manor mineworkers appeared in St Helens Police Court to face various charges in connection with the intimidation of working miners. It was estimated that some 130 men were now back at Sutton Manor Colliery and tempers were rising. Some workers were living in huts in Jubits Lane and while PC O’Hara was speaking to a man named William Gaskell outside No 2 Hut, Richard Glover was said to have shouted: "Scab. Turn out the scabs and send them up here."
Glover was also said to have attempted to incite people against the working miners and was found guilty of using language calculated to cause a breach of the peace. He was ordered to find a surety of £5 to be of good behaviour. Members of the Liverpool City Police force were augmenting St Helens police at Sutton Manor and some gave evidence against James Lucas of Milton Street who was accused of throwing stones and breaking a window at the No 2 Hut. He was fined £5.
And Harry Swift of Forest Road and Thomas Fisher of Tennyson Street pleaded guilty to intimidation offences and were both bound over for six months and the charges against 13 other defendants were withdrawn.
It must have been a very disturbing experience for a nurse at the Whiston Institution (workhouse / hospital) to find a man under her bed. Isaac Edwards had been discovered hiding in the Nurses Home after stealing a bag of surgical instruments and bunches of keys together valued at £3 4s. Superintendent Lewis asked the Prescot Bench for a remand of Edwards' case for eight days, which was granted.
Meanwhile, in St Helens Police Court, PC Porteous described how he had been involved in a rough fight in Bickerstaffe Street. He said he had found Michael Comerford acting indecently (without the Reporter explaining exactly what that meant). After the officer had accused Comerford of being drunk, he called him a " ________ liar" and refused to give his name and address (expletive censored by the paper).
Upon telling Comerford that he was being arrested, PC Porteous was struck in the mouth and knocked to the ground. Comerford made off but was caught and taken to the police lock up. The defendant denied the charge, saying that he had not been up before the magistrates since 1913 and he was fined 5 shillings for being drunk and 20 shillings for assaulting the police.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the lifesaving blood transfusion at St Helens Hospital, the Russian in Sutton Manor who was named Smith, praise for the St Helens Glee Club's founder and the magistrates that bought a hard-up woman a pedlar's licence.
We begin on the 28th at the St Helens County Police Sessions when Greenall Whitley sought permission to make alterations at the Griffin Inn in Eccleston, which were granted. The pub had originally been known as The Magpie, as the Eccleston family used a magpie as their emblem.
It is somewhat surprising how in the 1920s opera was so popular in such a working class town like St Helens. Operatic companies would regularly perform for a week or two at the St Helens Theatre & Opera House, which was then the formal name of the Theatre Royal. The town also had its own group of operatic performers and this week the St Helens Amateur Operatic Society performed 'Iolanthe' at the Corporation Street venue. There were five bands of ticket prices ranging from 8d to 3/6.
The controversial Emergency Powers Act gave the authorities the ability to take action against the spread of disinformation. On the 28th a Manchester man called Theodore Aindey was charged with a breach of the emergency regulations by making a speech likely to cause disaffection amongst the civil population. The man had told a crowd at Higher Ince that he had spent a week in St Helens and seen police use batons to bludgeon helpless men, women and children and the bobbies had repeated their actions at Ashtons Green Colliery and at Haydock.
Aindey also called for a defence force to be set up "to meet the police on better terms than they were accustomed to." Although there were reports of abuse of the police baton, they seem to have been isolated cases and not as widespread as Aindey claimed and for his comments the man was sent to prison for 28 days.
The police were also clamping down on the dangerous practice of digging out so-called outcrop coal. These were essentially small, redundant surface mines. On the 29th Christopher Gill of Liverpool Street in St Helens was charged with taking coal from an outcrop seam near the brickworks of Woods and Co at Ravenhead.
PC Kitchen told the court that the firm constantly had to apply for police protection to prevent men from working these pits. Gill was employed in a hole that was 10 feet deep, which was considered very dangerous as it ran close to an old unused shaft that might collapse. It also ran under a footpath and so it was a danger not only to himself but also to passing pedestrians. Christopher Gill was fined 10 shillings.
Robert Kinder of Merton Bank Road appeared in court on the 30th of this week. The boy was charged with stealing 60 pounds of coal from an outcrop mine at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow. Robert pleaded that his sister was ill and they had no fire in their house.
Superintendent Dunn told the court that the boy was respectable and a fortnight earlier, the National Humane Society had presented him with a certificate for saving another boy from drowning. As a result Robert was given a more sympathetic hearing and ordered to pay only the 5 shillings cost of the hearing.
Many Rainford miners during the strike were in a better position than others. Their rural location meant there was plenty of temporary work for them on farms. Mechanisation had yet to kick in and so huge numbers of workers were needed at crop picking times. Working in the open-air would have been a pleasant novelty for the mineworkers but their pay would have been far less than they were used to.
A couple of days earlier the Liverpool Echo had claimed that 70 Rainford Colliery miners had signed up and that the mine was the first in the St Helens district to break away from the common strike-bound front.
On October 1st Samuel Davies of Tennyson Street in Sutton Manor used the Emergency Powers Act as an excuse for running away from a policeman. Davies had been accused of street betting, with Police Constable Williams telling the court that he had seen the man receive a betting slip in Tennyson Street. The officer explained how he had chased him three times around a hut and then Davies had dashed through a house – but the officer said he had eventually caught his man.
Samuel denied committing the betting offence and said he could not understand why the policeman had been chasing him. Supt Dunn asked why he had run away if innocent. To that Samuel Davies replied: "Owing to the Emergency Powers Act a policeman can use his baton, and people get frightened." The magistrates decided to give him the benefit of the doubt but warned Davies not to run away from a policeman in future.
On October 1st 18 Sutton Manor mineworkers appeared in St Helens Police Court to face various charges in connection with the intimidation of working miners. It was estimated that some 130 men were now back at Sutton Manor Colliery and tempers were rising. Some workers were living in huts in Jubits Lane and while PC O’Hara was speaking to a man named William Gaskell outside No 2 Hut, Richard Glover was said to have shouted: "Scab. Turn out the scabs and send them up here."
Glover was also said to have attempted to incite people against the working miners and was found guilty of using language calculated to cause a breach of the peace. He was ordered to find a surety of £5 to be of good behaviour. Members of the Liverpool City Police force were augmenting St Helens police at Sutton Manor and some gave evidence against James Lucas of Milton Street who was accused of throwing stones and breaking a window at the No 2 Hut. He was fined £5.
And Harry Swift of Forest Road and Thomas Fisher of Tennyson Street pleaded guilty to intimidation offences and were both bound over for six months and the charges against 13 other defendants were withdrawn.
It must have been a very disturbing experience for a nurse at the Whiston Institution (workhouse / hospital) to find a man under her bed. Isaac Edwards had been discovered hiding in the Nurses Home after stealing a bag of surgical instruments and bunches of keys together valued at £3 4s. Superintendent Lewis asked the Prescot Bench for a remand of Edwards' case for eight days, which was granted.
Meanwhile, in St Helens Police Court, PC Porteous described how he had been involved in a rough fight in Bickerstaffe Street. He said he had found Michael Comerford acting indecently (without the Reporter explaining exactly what that meant). After the officer had accused Comerford of being drunk, he called him a " ________ liar" and refused to give his name and address (expletive censored by the paper).
Upon telling Comerford that he was being arrested, PC Porteous was struck in the mouth and knocked to the ground. Comerford made off but was caught and taken to the police lock up. The defendant denied the charge, saying that he had not been up before the magistrates since 1913 and he was fined 5 shillings for being drunk and 20 shillings for assaulting the police.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the lifesaving blood transfusion at St Helens Hospital, the Russian in Sutton Manor who was named Smith, praise for the St Helens Glee Club's founder and the magistrates that bought a hard-up woman a pedlar's licence.
This week's many stories include the dangerous outcrop mine workings, the striking Rainford miners who'd been employed on farms drift back to their pits, the popularity of opera in St Helens, the intimidation at Sutton Manor Colliery and the man who used the Emergency Powers Act as an excuse for running away from a policeman.
We begin on the 28th at the St Helens County Police Sessions when Greenall Whitley sought permission to make alterations at the Griffin Inn in Eccleston, which were granted.
The pub had originally been known as The Magpie, as the Eccleston family used a magpie as their emblem.
It is somewhat surprising how in the 1920s opera was so popular in such a working class town like St Helens.
Operatic companies would regularly perform for a week or two at the St Helens Theatre & Opera House, which was then the formal name of the Theatre Royal.
The town also had its own group of operatic performers and this week the St Helens Amateur Operatic Society performed 'Iolanthe' at the Corporation Street venue. There were five bands of ticket prices ranging from 8d to 3/6.
The controversial Emergency Powers Act gave the authorities the ability to take action against the spread of disinformation.
On the 28th a Manchester man called Theodore Aindey was charged with a breach of the emergency regulations by making a speech likely to cause disaffection amongst the civil population.
The man had told a crowd at Higher Ince that he had spent a week in St Helens and seen police use batons to bludgeon helpless men, women and children and the bobbies had repeated their actions at Ashtons Green Colliery and at Haydock.
Aindey also called for a defence force to be set up "to meet the police on better terms than they were accustomed to."
Although there were reports of abuse of the police baton, they seem to have been isolated cases and not as widespread as Aindey claimed and for his comments the man was sent to prison for 28 days.
The police were also clamping down on the dangerous practice of digging out so-called outcrop coal. These were essentially small, redundant surface mines.
On the 29th Christopher Gill of Liverpool Street in St Helens was charged with taking coal from an outcrop seam near the brickworks of Woods and Co at Ravenhead.
PC Kitchen told the court that the firm constantly had to apply for police protection to prevent men from working these pits.
Gill was employed in a hole that was 10 feet deep, which was considered very dangerous as it ran close to an old unused shaft that might collapse.
It also ran under a footpath and so it was a danger not only to himself but also to passing pedestrians. Christopher Gill was fined 10 shillings.
Robert Kinder of Merton Bank Road appeared in court on the 30th of this week.
The boy was charged with stealing 60 pounds of coal from an outcrop mine at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow.
Robert pleaded that his sister was ill and they had no fire in their house.
Superintendent Dunn told the court that the boy was respectable and a fortnight earlier, the National Humane Society had presented him with a certificate for saving another boy from drowning.
As a result Robert was given a more sympathetic hearing and ordered to pay only the 5 shillings cost of the hearing.
Many Rainford miners during the strike were in a better position than others.
Their rural location meant there was plenty of temporary work for them on farms.
Mechanisation had yet to kick in and so huge numbers of workers were needed at crop picking times.
Working in the open-air would have been a pleasant novelty for the mineworkers but their pay would have been far less than they were used to.
On the 30th the Ormskirk Advertiser described how at Rainford Colliery in Siding Lane (pictured above), one hundred striking miners had signed on to resume work:
"There is unquestionably a growing desire on the part of the men to resume their ordinary vocation. Some are engaged in the potato fields locally, in picking the tubers, but they appear to be like fish out of water, and as stated are anxious to return to the pits."
A couple of days earlier the Liverpool Echo had claimed that 70 Rainford Colliery miners had signed up and that the mine was the first in the St Helens district to break away from the common strike-bound front.
On October 1st Samuel Davies of Tennyson Street in Sutton Manor used the Emergency Powers Act as an excuse for running away from a policeman.
Davies had been accused of street betting, with Police Constable Williams telling the court that he had seen the man receive a betting slip in Tennyson Street.
The officer explained how he had chased him three times around a hut and then Davies had dashed through a house – but the officer said he had eventually caught his man.
Samuel denied committing the betting offence and said he could not understand why the policeman had been chasing him.
Supt Dunn asked why he had run away if innocent. To that Samuel Davies replied:
"Owing to the Emergency Powers Act a policeman can use his baton, and people get frightened."
The magistrates decided to give him the benefit of the doubt but warned Davies not to run away from a policeman in future.
On October 1st 18 Sutton Manor mineworkers appeared in St Helens Police Court to face various charges in connection with the intimidation of working miners.
It was estimated that some 130 men were now back at Sutton Manor Colliery and tempers were rising.
Some workers were living in huts in Jubits Lane and while PC O’Hara was speaking to a man named William Gaskell outside No 2 Hut, Richard Glover was said to have shouted: "Scab. Turn out the scabs and send them up here."
Glover was also said to have attempted to incite people against the working miners and was found guilty of using language calculated to cause a breach of the peace.
He was ordered to find a surety of £5 to be of good behaviour.
Members of the Liverpool City Police force were augmenting St Helens police at Sutton Manor and some gave evidence against James Lucas of Milton Street who was accused of throwing stones and breaking a window at the No 2 Hut. He was fined £5.
And Harry Swift of Forest Road and Thomas Fisher of Tennyson Street pleaded guilty to intimidation offences and were both bound over for six months and the charges against 13 other defendants were withdrawn.
It must have been a very disturbing experience for a nurse at the Whiston Institution (workhouse / hospital) to find a man under her bed.
Isaac Edwards had been discovered hiding in the Nurses Home after stealing a bag of surgical instruments and bunches of keys together valued at £3 4s.
Superintendent Lewis asked the Prescot Bench for a remand of Edwards' case for eight days, which was granted.
Meanwhile, in St Helens Police Court, PC Porteous described how he had been involved in a rough fight in Bickerstaffe Street.
He said he had found Michael Comerford acting indecently (without the Reporter explaining exactly what that meant).
After the officer had accused Comerford of being drunk, he called him a " ________ liar" and refused to give his name and address (expletive censored by the paper).
Upon telling Comerford that he was being arrested, PC Porteous was struck in the mouth and knocked to the ground.
Comerford made off but was caught and taken to the police lock up.
The defendant denied the charge, saying that he had not been up before the magistrates since 1913 and he was fined 5 shillings for being drunk and 20 shillings for assaulting the police.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the lifesaving blood transfusion at St Helens Hospital, the Russian in Sutton Manor who was named Smith, praise for the St Helens Glee Club's founder and the magistrates that bought a hard-up woman a pedlar's licence.
We begin on the 28th at the St Helens County Police Sessions when Greenall Whitley sought permission to make alterations at the Griffin Inn in Eccleston, which were granted.
The pub had originally been known as The Magpie, as the Eccleston family used a magpie as their emblem.
It is somewhat surprising how in the 1920s opera was so popular in such a working class town like St Helens.
Operatic companies would regularly perform for a week or two at the St Helens Theatre & Opera House, which was then the formal name of the Theatre Royal.
The town also had its own group of operatic performers and this week the St Helens Amateur Operatic Society performed 'Iolanthe' at the Corporation Street venue. There were five bands of ticket prices ranging from 8d to 3/6.
The controversial Emergency Powers Act gave the authorities the ability to take action against the spread of disinformation.
On the 28th a Manchester man called Theodore Aindey was charged with a breach of the emergency regulations by making a speech likely to cause disaffection amongst the civil population.
The man had told a crowd at Higher Ince that he had spent a week in St Helens and seen police use batons to bludgeon helpless men, women and children and the bobbies had repeated their actions at Ashtons Green Colliery and at Haydock.
Aindey also called for a defence force to be set up "to meet the police on better terms than they were accustomed to."
Although there were reports of abuse of the police baton, they seem to have been isolated cases and not as widespread as Aindey claimed and for his comments the man was sent to prison for 28 days.
The police were also clamping down on the dangerous practice of digging out so-called outcrop coal. These were essentially small, redundant surface mines.
On the 29th Christopher Gill of Liverpool Street in St Helens was charged with taking coal from an outcrop seam near the brickworks of Woods and Co at Ravenhead.
PC Kitchen told the court that the firm constantly had to apply for police protection to prevent men from working these pits.
Gill was employed in a hole that was 10 feet deep, which was considered very dangerous as it ran close to an old unused shaft that might collapse.
It also ran under a footpath and so it was a danger not only to himself but also to passing pedestrians. Christopher Gill was fined 10 shillings.
Robert Kinder of Merton Bank Road appeared in court on the 30th of this week.
The boy was charged with stealing 60 pounds of coal from an outcrop mine at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow.
Robert pleaded that his sister was ill and they had no fire in their house.
Superintendent Dunn told the court that the boy was respectable and a fortnight earlier, the National Humane Society had presented him with a certificate for saving another boy from drowning.
As a result Robert was given a more sympathetic hearing and ordered to pay only the 5 shillings cost of the hearing.
Many Rainford miners during the strike were in a better position than others.
Their rural location meant there was plenty of temporary work for them on farms.
Mechanisation had yet to kick in and so huge numbers of workers were needed at crop picking times.
Working in the open-air would have been a pleasant novelty for the mineworkers but their pay would have been far less than they were used to.
"There is unquestionably a growing desire on the part of the men to resume their ordinary vocation. Some are engaged in the potato fields locally, in picking the tubers, but they appear to be like fish out of water, and as stated are anxious to return to the pits."
A couple of days earlier the Liverpool Echo had claimed that 70 Rainford Colliery miners had signed up and that the mine was the first in the St Helens district to break away from the common strike-bound front.
On October 1st Samuel Davies of Tennyson Street in Sutton Manor used the Emergency Powers Act as an excuse for running away from a policeman.
Davies had been accused of street betting, with Police Constable Williams telling the court that he had seen the man receive a betting slip in Tennyson Street.
The officer explained how he had chased him three times around a hut and then Davies had dashed through a house – but the officer said he had eventually caught his man.
Samuel denied committing the betting offence and said he could not understand why the policeman had been chasing him.
Supt Dunn asked why he had run away if innocent. To that Samuel Davies replied:
"Owing to the Emergency Powers Act a policeman can use his baton, and people get frightened."
The magistrates decided to give him the benefit of the doubt but warned Davies not to run away from a policeman in future.
On October 1st 18 Sutton Manor mineworkers appeared in St Helens Police Court to face various charges in connection with the intimidation of working miners.
It was estimated that some 130 men were now back at Sutton Manor Colliery and tempers were rising.
Some workers were living in huts in Jubits Lane and while PC O’Hara was speaking to a man named William Gaskell outside No 2 Hut, Richard Glover was said to have shouted: "Scab. Turn out the scabs and send them up here."
Glover was also said to have attempted to incite people against the working miners and was found guilty of using language calculated to cause a breach of the peace.
He was ordered to find a surety of £5 to be of good behaviour.
Members of the Liverpool City Police force were augmenting St Helens police at Sutton Manor and some gave evidence against James Lucas of Milton Street who was accused of throwing stones and breaking a window at the No 2 Hut. He was fined £5.
And Harry Swift of Forest Road and Thomas Fisher of Tennyson Street pleaded guilty to intimidation offences and were both bound over for six months and the charges against 13 other defendants were withdrawn.
It must have been a very disturbing experience for a nurse at the Whiston Institution (workhouse / hospital) to find a man under her bed.
Isaac Edwards had been discovered hiding in the Nurses Home after stealing a bag of surgical instruments and bunches of keys together valued at £3 4s.
Superintendent Lewis asked the Prescot Bench for a remand of Edwards' case for eight days, which was granted.
Meanwhile, in St Helens Police Court, PC Porteous described how he had been involved in a rough fight in Bickerstaffe Street.
He said he had found Michael Comerford acting indecently (without the Reporter explaining exactly what that meant).
After the officer had accused Comerford of being drunk, he called him a " ________ liar" and refused to give his name and address (expletive censored by the paper).
Upon telling Comerford that he was being arrested, PC Porteous was struck in the mouth and knocked to the ground.
Comerford made off but was caught and taken to the police lock up.
The defendant denied the charge, saying that he had not been up before the magistrates since 1913 and he was fined 5 shillings for being drunk and 20 shillings for assaulting the police.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the lifesaving blood transfusion at St Helens Hospital, the Russian in Sutton Manor who was named Smith, praise for the St Helens Glee Club's founder and the magistrates that bought a hard-up woman a pedlar's licence.