IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (28th NOV. - 4th DEC. 1922)
This week's stories include the young Parr woman's strange suicide in St Helens Canal, the town centre begging by baby and gramophone, the Cambridge Road separation case, the Clock Face Colliery pick stealing, the hidden plague returns to the newspapers and the café chantant and dressed dolls exhibition at the Town Hall.
We begin on the 28th when the inquest on Ann Twist of Fry Street in Parr was held in St Helens Town Hall. The 24-year-old had drowned in St Helens Canal near Redgate Bridge and her death appeared likely to have been suicide. But no family member could think of any possible reason why Ann should take her own life or otherwise end up in the canal – despite penetrating questions from the coroner who said: "I don't want to say she wilfully murdered herself, and I want to have some reason so that I can return some other more meaningful verdict."
Her boyfriend, Harry Penkethman of Parr Stocks Road, offered the only possible motive for the apparent suicide. He told the inquest that on the previous evening the couple had attended a tea concert at Christ Church in Haydock. During the journey Ann had started crying and said that when she'd worked at the Sutton railway Sheeting Sheds she'd known a young man there. She insisted that she had done nothing wrong and Harry said he had told Ann to put the matter out of her mind.
The coroner asked Harry whether the couple had enjoyed an "honourable courtship" with "nothing impure" having taken place, which the young man confirmed. Ann's brother said his sister had been reserved and sensitive and the coroner was convinced the young woman had committed suicide. That was because she'd left her scarf on the canal bank, seemingly as a marker. The coroner felt that something had unsettled and unbalanced the young woman and returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.
I always find it strange how those employed in coalmines had to pay for everything that they needed to do their jobs. Even in the 1930s when pit baths began to be introduced, the miners were charged for using them. And the many mineworkers that cycled to work had to pay for their bikes to be stored in a shed and for such things as lamp oil. As the men had to provide their own tools (and even pay the colliery to sharpen them), the pitmen would understandably become annoyed if any went missing.
So when Louis Goldthorpe of Johnson Street in Parr appeared at the St Helens County Police Court on the 28th, it was more a case of principle than of great financial loss. The miner at Clock Face Colliery (pictured above) was accused of stealing a pick costing just 1s 6d that was the property of James Haslam. The latter had arranged for it to be sharpened but Goldthorpe had collected the pick, claiming it belonged to his father-in-law. However, the miners marked their tools with their initials and those on the pick did not correspond with those of Goldthorpe's father-in-law.
In his defence Goldthorpe said he worked with his wife's father and their own tools had gone missing. That admission led to the Chairman of the Bench suggesting the defendant had been trying to get his own back. His tools had been stolen and so he had helped himself to somebody else's, a practice that was not uncommon. Goldthorpe was fined £2 or had to go to prison for 28 days.
Begging could come in different forms but the method chosen by Herbert Reith and his wife Mary was quite novel. The couple from Liverpool appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 28th charged with "having the custody of a child for the purpose of inducing the giving of alms". Det. Maddocks told the court that he'd been in Naylor Street North in St Helens town centre when he saw the two defendants standing in the gutter with a small go-cart containing a child. Attached to the cart was a small wind-up gramophone playing tunes and a card that said "Out of work and no dole. Please, kindly help."
The detective said a large crowd had gathered and there was no doubt that the child had "excited the sympathy" of the onlookers. The couple had certainly been doing good business as they had taken 12s 4d in silver and copper during the previous hour. But they strongly denied using their child to elicit donations and the detective confirmed the child had been warm and well cared for. Mr Reith explained to the court that he was a watchmaker but due to lack of work had not been at that trade for several years. During the summer he had been selling sweets on Seaforth sands but had been having a very hard time of it of late. The Bench took pity on the man and decided to dismiss the case.
On the 29th the St Agnes Crèche held a grand exhibition of dressed dolls in the Town Hall. The St Agnes Maternity Home & Crèche – otherwise known as a home for "fallen women" – was at Nutgrove Hall. One committee ran its maternity side and a different one ran and fundraised for the crèche side. The event at the Town Hall also included entertainment and various stalls selling produce.
In its review of the fundraising event, the St Helens Reporter wrote: "The Assembly Room at the Town Hall takes on various aspects and figures in many divergent atmospheres, from grave to gay. The charming light in which it appeared on Tuesday afternoon and evening was surely amongst the happiest. The occasion was a delightful one and the object was the most praiseworthy – a perfect combination. It took the form of a café chantant and exhibition of dressed dolls."
I thought I had seen the last reference to the euphemism “The Hidden Plague" in the local newspapers. The old fashioned term for venereal disease seemed out of place once a treatment clinic had opened on Claughton Street and St Helens health authorities began demonstrating a more enlightened attitude. But the hidden plague was in the headline to an article in the Reporter, which described how at the council's Health Committee meeting on the 29th, Cllr. Dr Jackson had said paying £1,000 a year to treat venereal disease was throwing money away.
What he meant was that nothing was being done to prevent the disease from being contracted in the first place – all they were doing was treating VD once symptoms occurred. The fact that the Reporter was still using the term "hidden plague", perhaps indicates that the public were not yet receptive to educational campaigns on its prevention.
Since the fire at St Helens Parish Church in December 1916, church services had been held in the Assembly Room at the Town Hall. On the 3rd the Bishop of Liverpool, Dr Francis Chavasse, attended a service with his head bandaged after the 76-year-old had fallen on the street in Southport and gashed his head. The occasion was the 34th anniversary of the St Helens Parish Church Men's Bible Class and the congregation numbered over 500, including some twenty members of the original class.
There was another of those stupid separation hearings on the 4th. In reality they were applications for court orders that would set out the maintenance payments that the husband needed to pay his separated wife. But the cases were full of unnecessary lurid details that the newspapers covered with great relish.
And the case in St Helens Police Court involving Mary and Samuel Williams of Cambridge Road was even dafter than usual. That was because the husband had already offered his wife 10 shillings a week maintenance – but she wanted more. So she took her husband to court and all the couple's dirty washing was given a good public airing. And what did the magistrates grant her after a very lengthy hearing – 10 shillings a week!
The woman's case had not been a strong one. She had left home for 7 weeks supposedly on doctor's advice because of bad nerves – but admitted never telling her husband where she was. And when she returned home without warning her husband had pushed her out of the house and back onto the street. Mr Williams insisted to the court that he had never received "just and honourable treatment" from his wife who had not told him of her doctor's advice to go away.
The Hippodrome Theatre in Corporation Street was in its last stages as a music hall and soon would be converted into a cinema. Traditionally, eight or nine variety "turns" would perform twice a night for six nights and then a new line-up took over. But noticeably during 1922 there had been more plays and revues performed in the theatre, presumably because its management were experimenting with different types of entertainment to try and boost attendances.
From the 4th there were only two acts on the bill – although they comprised many individual performers. The headline act were The Swanee Minstrels who were described in the Reporter as: "Enormous attraction! In their famous negro melange, introducing high-class vocalism, laughable burlesque, instrumental & dancing specialities. Powerful cast." The other act was a group of child performers known as The Nine Dainty Dots. "Each child a perfect little artiste," said the ad. Gracie Fields had been a member of the juvenile troupe that sang and danced. One recruitment ad for the Dainty Dots that I've found says bluntly: "No good if over 4 feet".
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the horse that was ridden in Parr with a fractured pelvis, the female St Helens schoolteachers forced to resign upon getting married and the vicious Church Street attack by a man who thought he was killing the devil.
We begin on the 28th when the inquest on Ann Twist of Fry Street in Parr was held in St Helens Town Hall. The 24-year-old had drowned in St Helens Canal near Redgate Bridge and her death appeared likely to have been suicide. But no family member could think of any possible reason why Ann should take her own life or otherwise end up in the canal – despite penetrating questions from the coroner who said: "I don't want to say she wilfully murdered herself, and I want to have some reason so that I can return some other more meaningful verdict."
Her boyfriend, Harry Penkethman of Parr Stocks Road, offered the only possible motive for the apparent suicide. He told the inquest that on the previous evening the couple had attended a tea concert at Christ Church in Haydock. During the journey Ann had started crying and said that when she'd worked at the Sutton railway Sheeting Sheds she'd known a young man there. She insisted that she had done nothing wrong and Harry said he had told Ann to put the matter out of her mind.
The coroner asked Harry whether the couple had enjoyed an "honourable courtship" with "nothing impure" having taken place, which the young man confirmed. Ann's brother said his sister had been reserved and sensitive and the coroner was convinced the young woman had committed suicide. That was because she'd left her scarf on the canal bank, seemingly as a marker. The coroner felt that something had unsettled and unbalanced the young woman and returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.
I always find it strange how those employed in coalmines had to pay for everything that they needed to do their jobs. Even in the 1930s when pit baths began to be introduced, the miners were charged for using them. And the many mineworkers that cycled to work had to pay for their bikes to be stored in a shed and for such things as lamp oil. As the men had to provide their own tools (and even pay the colliery to sharpen them), the pitmen would understandably become annoyed if any went missing.
In his defence Goldthorpe said he worked with his wife's father and their own tools had gone missing. That admission led to the Chairman of the Bench suggesting the defendant had been trying to get his own back. His tools had been stolen and so he had helped himself to somebody else's, a practice that was not uncommon. Goldthorpe was fined £2 or had to go to prison for 28 days.
Begging could come in different forms but the method chosen by Herbert Reith and his wife Mary was quite novel. The couple from Liverpool appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 28th charged with "having the custody of a child for the purpose of inducing the giving of alms". Det. Maddocks told the court that he'd been in Naylor Street North in St Helens town centre when he saw the two defendants standing in the gutter with a small go-cart containing a child. Attached to the cart was a small wind-up gramophone playing tunes and a card that said "Out of work and no dole. Please, kindly help."
The detective said a large crowd had gathered and there was no doubt that the child had "excited the sympathy" of the onlookers. The couple had certainly been doing good business as they had taken 12s 4d in silver and copper during the previous hour. But they strongly denied using their child to elicit donations and the detective confirmed the child had been warm and well cared for. Mr Reith explained to the court that he was a watchmaker but due to lack of work had not been at that trade for several years. During the summer he had been selling sweets on Seaforth sands but had been having a very hard time of it of late. The Bench took pity on the man and decided to dismiss the case.
On the 29th the St Agnes Crèche held a grand exhibition of dressed dolls in the Town Hall. The St Agnes Maternity Home & Crèche – otherwise known as a home for "fallen women" – was at Nutgrove Hall. One committee ran its maternity side and a different one ran and fundraised for the crèche side. The event at the Town Hall also included entertainment and various stalls selling produce.
In its review of the fundraising event, the St Helens Reporter wrote: "The Assembly Room at the Town Hall takes on various aspects and figures in many divergent atmospheres, from grave to gay. The charming light in which it appeared on Tuesday afternoon and evening was surely amongst the happiest. The occasion was a delightful one and the object was the most praiseworthy – a perfect combination. It took the form of a café chantant and exhibition of dressed dolls."
I thought I had seen the last reference to the euphemism “The Hidden Plague" in the local newspapers. The old fashioned term for venereal disease seemed out of place once a treatment clinic had opened on Claughton Street and St Helens health authorities began demonstrating a more enlightened attitude. But the hidden plague was in the headline to an article in the Reporter, which described how at the council's Health Committee meeting on the 29th, Cllr. Dr Jackson had said paying £1,000 a year to treat venereal disease was throwing money away.
What he meant was that nothing was being done to prevent the disease from being contracted in the first place – all they were doing was treating VD once symptoms occurred. The fact that the Reporter was still using the term "hidden plague", perhaps indicates that the public were not yet receptive to educational campaigns on its prevention.
Since the fire at St Helens Parish Church in December 1916, church services had been held in the Assembly Room at the Town Hall. On the 3rd the Bishop of Liverpool, Dr Francis Chavasse, attended a service with his head bandaged after the 76-year-old had fallen on the street in Southport and gashed his head. The occasion was the 34th anniversary of the St Helens Parish Church Men's Bible Class and the congregation numbered over 500, including some twenty members of the original class.
There was another of those stupid separation hearings on the 4th. In reality they were applications for court orders that would set out the maintenance payments that the husband needed to pay his separated wife. But the cases were full of unnecessary lurid details that the newspapers covered with great relish.
And the case in St Helens Police Court involving Mary and Samuel Williams of Cambridge Road was even dafter than usual. That was because the husband had already offered his wife 10 shillings a week maintenance – but she wanted more. So she took her husband to court and all the couple's dirty washing was given a good public airing. And what did the magistrates grant her after a very lengthy hearing – 10 shillings a week!
The woman's case had not been a strong one. She had left home for 7 weeks supposedly on doctor's advice because of bad nerves – but admitted never telling her husband where she was. And when she returned home without warning her husband had pushed her out of the house and back onto the street. Mr Williams insisted to the court that he had never received "just and honourable treatment" from his wife who had not told him of her doctor's advice to go away.
The Hippodrome Theatre in Corporation Street was in its last stages as a music hall and soon would be converted into a cinema. Traditionally, eight or nine variety "turns" would perform twice a night for six nights and then a new line-up took over. But noticeably during 1922 there had been more plays and revues performed in the theatre, presumably because its management were experimenting with different types of entertainment to try and boost attendances.
From the 4th there were only two acts on the bill – although they comprised many individual performers. The headline act were The Swanee Minstrels who were described in the Reporter as: "Enormous attraction! In their famous negro melange, introducing high-class vocalism, laughable burlesque, instrumental & dancing specialities. Powerful cast." The other act was a group of child performers known as The Nine Dainty Dots. "Each child a perfect little artiste," said the ad. Gracie Fields had been a member of the juvenile troupe that sang and danced. One recruitment ad for the Dainty Dots that I've found says bluntly: "No good if over 4 feet".
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the horse that was ridden in Parr with a fractured pelvis, the female St Helens schoolteachers forced to resign upon getting married and the vicious Church Street attack by a man who thought he was killing the devil.
This week's stories include the young Parr woman's strange suicide in St Helens Canal, the town centre begging by baby and gramophone, the Cambridge Road separation case, the Clock Face Colliery pick stealing, the hidden plague returns to the newspapers and the café chantant and dressed dolls exhibition at the Town Hall.
We begin on the 28th when the inquest on Ann Twist of Fry Street in Parr was held in St Helens Town Hall.
The 24-year-old had drowned in St Helens Canal near Redgate Bridge and her death appeared likely to have been suicide.
But no family member could think of any possible reason why Ann should take her own life or otherwise end up in the canal – despite penetrating questions from the coroner who said:
"I don't want to say she wilfully murdered herself, and I want to have some reason so that I can return some other more meaningful verdict."
Her boyfriend, Harry Penkethman of Parr Stocks Road, offered the only possible motive for the apparent suicide.
He told the inquest that on the previous evening the couple had attended a tea concert at Christ Church in Haydock.
During the journey Ann had started crying and said that when she'd worked at the Sutton railway Sheeting Sheds she'd known a young man there.
She insisted that she had done nothing wrong and Harry said he had told Ann to put the matter out of her mind.
The coroner asked Harry whether the couple had enjoyed an "honourable courtship" with "nothing impure" having taken place, which the young man confirmed.
Ann's brother said his sister had been reserved and sensitive and the coroner was convinced the young woman had committed suicide. That was because she'd left her scarf on the canal bank, seemingly as a marker.
The coroner felt that something had unsettled and unbalanced the young woman and returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.
I always find it strange how those employed in coalmines had to pay for everything that they needed to do their jobs.
Even in the 1930s when pit baths began to be introduced, the miners were charged for using them.
And the many mineworkers that cycled to work had to pay for their bikes to be stored in a shed and for such things as lamp oil.
As the men had to provide their own tools (and even pay the colliery to sharpen them), the pitmen would understandably become annoyed if any went missing.
So when Louis Goldthorpe of Johnson Street in Parr appeared at the St Helens County Police Court on the 28th, it was more a case of principle than of great financial loss.
The miner at Clock Face Colliery (pictured above) was accused of stealing a pick costing just 1s 6d that was the property of James Haslam.
The latter had arranged for it to be sharpened but Goldthorpe had collected the pick, claiming it belonged to his father-in-law.
However, the miners marked their tools with their initials and those on the pick did not correspond with those of Goldthorpe's father-in-law.
In his defence Goldthorpe said he worked with his wife's father and their own tools had gone missing.
That admission led to the Chairman of the Bench suggesting the defendant had been trying to get his own back.
His tools had been stolen and so he had helped himself to somebody else's, a practice that was not uncommon. Goldthorpe was fined £2 or had to go to prison for 28 days.
Begging could come in different forms but the method chosen by Herbert Reith and his wife Mary was quite novel.
The couple from Liverpool appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 28th charged with "having the custody of a child for the purpose of inducing the giving of alms".
Det. Maddocks told the court that he'd been in Naylor Street North in St Helens town centre when he saw the two defendants standing in the gutter with a small go-cart containing a child.
Attached to the cart was a small wind-up gramophone playing tunes and a card that said "Out of work and no dole. Please, kindly help."
The detective said a large crowd had gathered and there was no doubt that the child had "excited the sympathy" of the onlookers.
The couple had certainly been doing good business as they had taken 12s 4d in silver and copper during the previous hour.
But they strongly denied using their child to elicit donations and the detective confirmed the child had been warm and well cared for.
Mr Reith explained to the court that he was a watchmaker but due to lack of work had not been at that trade for several years.
During the summer he had been selling sweets on Seaforth sands but had been having a very hard time of it of late. The Bench took pity on the man and decided to dismiss the case.
On the 29th the St Agnes Crèche held a grand exhibition of dressed dolls in the Town Hall.
The St Agnes Maternity Home & Crèche – otherwise known as a home for "fallen women" – was at Nutgrove Hall.
One committee ran its maternity side and a different one ran and fundraised for the crèche side.
The event at the Town Hall also included entertainment and various stalls selling produce.
In its review of the fundraising event, the St Helens Reporter wrote:
"The Assembly Room at the Town Hall takes on various aspects and figures in many divergent atmospheres, from grave to gay. The charming light in which it appeared on Tuesday afternoon and evening was surely amongst the happiest.
"The occasion was a delightful one and the object was the most praiseworthy – a perfect combination. It took the form of a café chantant and exhibition of dressed dolls."
I thought I had seen the last reference to the euphemism “The Hidden Plague" in the local newspapers.
The old fashioned term for venereal disease seemed out of place once a treatment clinic had opened on Claughton Street and St Helens health authorities began demonstrating a more enlightened attitude.
But the hidden plague was in the headline to an article in the Reporter, which described how at the council's Health Committee meeting on the 29th, Cllr. Dr Jackson had said paying £1,000 a year to treat venereal disease was throwing money away.
What he meant was that nothing was being done to prevent the disease from being contracted in the first place – all they were doing was treating VD once symptoms occurred.
The fact that the Reporter was still using the term "hidden plague", perhaps indicates that the public were not yet receptive to educational campaigns on its prevention.
Since the fire at St Helens Parish Church in December 1916, church services had been held in the Assembly Room at the Town Hall.
On the 3rd the Bishop of Liverpool, Dr Francis Chavasse, attended a service with his head bandaged after the 76-year-old had fallen on the street in Southport and gashed his head.
The occasion was the 34th anniversary of the St Helens Parish Church Men's Bible Class and the congregation numbered over 500, including some twenty members of the original class.
There was another of those stupid separation hearings on the 4th.
In reality they were applications for court orders that would set out the maintenance payments that the husband needed to pay his separated wife.
But the cases were full of unnecessary lurid details that the newspapers covered with great relish.
And the case in St Helens Police Court involving Mary and Samuel Williams of Cambridge Road was even dafter than usual.
That was because the husband had already offered his wife 10 shillings a week maintenance – but she wanted more.
So she took her husband to court and all the couple's dirty washing was given a good public airing.
And what did the magistrates grant her after a very lengthy hearing – 10 shillings a week!
The woman's case had not been a strong one. She had left home for 7 weeks supposedly on doctor's advice because of bad nerves – but admitted never telling her husband where she was.
And when she returned home without warning her husband had pushed her out of the house and back onto the street.
Mr Williams insisted to the court that he had never received "just and honourable treatment" from his wife who had not told him of her doctor's advice to go away.
The Hippodrome Theatre in Corporation Street was in its last stages as a music hall and soon would be converted into a cinema.
Traditionally, eight or nine variety "turns" would perform twice a night for six nights and then a new line-up took over.
But noticeably during 1922 there had been more plays and revues performed in the theatre, presumably because its management were experimenting with different types of entertainment to try and boost attendances.
From the 4th there were only two acts on the bill – although they comprised many individual performers. The headline act were The Swanee Minstrels who were described in the Reporter as:
"Enormous attraction! In their famous negro melange, introducing high-class vocalism, laughable burlesque, instrumental & dancing specialities. Powerful cast."
The other act was a group of child performers known as The Nine Dainty Dots. "Each child a perfect little artiste," said the ad.
Gracie Fields had been a member of the juvenile troupe that sang and danced. One recruitment ad for the Dainty Dots that I've found says bluntly: "No good if over 4 feet".
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the horse that was ridden in Parr with a fractured pelvis, the female St Helens schoolteachers forced to resign upon getting married and the vicious Church Street attack by a man who thought he was killing the devil.
We begin on the 28th when the inquest on Ann Twist of Fry Street in Parr was held in St Helens Town Hall.
The 24-year-old had drowned in St Helens Canal near Redgate Bridge and her death appeared likely to have been suicide.
But no family member could think of any possible reason why Ann should take her own life or otherwise end up in the canal – despite penetrating questions from the coroner who said:
"I don't want to say she wilfully murdered herself, and I want to have some reason so that I can return some other more meaningful verdict."
Her boyfriend, Harry Penkethman of Parr Stocks Road, offered the only possible motive for the apparent suicide.
He told the inquest that on the previous evening the couple had attended a tea concert at Christ Church in Haydock.
During the journey Ann had started crying and said that when she'd worked at the Sutton railway Sheeting Sheds she'd known a young man there.
She insisted that she had done nothing wrong and Harry said he had told Ann to put the matter out of her mind.
The coroner asked Harry whether the couple had enjoyed an "honourable courtship" with "nothing impure" having taken place, which the young man confirmed.
Ann's brother said his sister had been reserved and sensitive and the coroner was convinced the young woman had committed suicide. That was because she'd left her scarf on the canal bank, seemingly as a marker.
The coroner felt that something had unsettled and unbalanced the young woman and returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.
I always find it strange how those employed in coalmines had to pay for everything that they needed to do their jobs.
Even in the 1930s when pit baths began to be introduced, the miners were charged for using them.
And the many mineworkers that cycled to work had to pay for their bikes to be stored in a shed and for such things as lamp oil.
As the men had to provide their own tools (and even pay the colliery to sharpen them), the pitmen would understandably become annoyed if any went missing.
So when Louis Goldthorpe of Johnson Street in Parr appeared at the St Helens County Police Court on the 28th, it was more a case of principle than of great financial loss.
The latter had arranged for it to be sharpened but Goldthorpe had collected the pick, claiming it belonged to his father-in-law.
However, the miners marked their tools with their initials and those on the pick did not correspond with those of Goldthorpe's father-in-law.
In his defence Goldthorpe said he worked with his wife's father and their own tools had gone missing.
That admission led to the Chairman of the Bench suggesting the defendant had been trying to get his own back.
His tools had been stolen and so he had helped himself to somebody else's, a practice that was not uncommon. Goldthorpe was fined £2 or had to go to prison for 28 days.
Begging could come in different forms but the method chosen by Herbert Reith and his wife Mary was quite novel.
The couple from Liverpool appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 28th charged with "having the custody of a child for the purpose of inducing the giving of alms".
Det. Maddocks told the court that he'd been in Naylor Street North in St Helens town centre when he saw the two defendants standing in the gutter with a small go-cart containing a child.
Attached to the cart was a small wind-up gramophone playing tunes and a card that said "Out of work and no dole. Please, kindly help."
The detective said a large crowd had gathered and there was no doubt that the child had "excited the sympathy" of the onlookers.
The couple had certainly been doing good business as they had taken 12s 4d in silver and copper during the previous hour.
But they strongly denied using their child to elicit donations and the detective confirmed the child had been warm and well cared for.
Mr Reith explained to the court that he was a watchmaker but due to lack of work had not been at that trade for several years.
During the summer he had been selling sweets on Seaforth sands but had been having a very hard time of it of late. The Bench took pity on the man and decided to dismiss the case.
On the 29th the St Agnes Crèche held a grand exhibition of dressed dolls in the Town Hall.
The St Agnes Maternity Home & Crèche – otherwise known as a home for "fallen women" – was at Nutgrove Hall.
One committee ran its maternity side and a different one ran and fundraised for the crèche side.
The event at the Town Hall also included entertainment and various stalls selling produce.
In its review of the fundraising event, the St Helens Reporter wrote:
"The Assembly Room at the Town Hall takes on various aspects and figures in many divergent atmospheres, from grave to gay. The charming light in which it appeared on Tuesday afternoon and evening was surely amongst the happiest.
"The occasion was a delightful one and the object was the most praiseworthy – a perfect combination. It took the form of a café chantant and exhibition of dressed dolls."
I thought I had seen the last reference to the euphemism “The Hidden Plague" in the local newspapers.
The old fashioned term for venereal disease seemed out of place once a treatment clinic had opened on Claughton Street and St Helens health authorities began demonstrating a more enlightened attitude.
But the hidden plague was in the headline to an article in the Reporter, which described how at the council's Health Committee meeting on the 29th, Cllr. Dr Jackson had said paying £1,000 a year to treat venereal disease was throwing money away.
What he meant was that nothing was being done to prevent the disease from being contracted in the first place – all they were doing was treating VD once symptoms occurred.
The fact that the Reporter was still using the term "hidden plague", perhaps indicates that the public were not yet receptive to educational campaigns on its prevention.
Since the fire at St Helens Parish Church in December 1916, church services had been held in the Assembly Room at the Town Hall.
On the 3rd the Bishop of Liverpool, Dr Francis Chavasse, attended a service with his head bandaged after the 76-year-old had fallen on the street in Southport and gashed his head.
The occasion was the 34th anniversary of the St Helens Parish Church Men's Bible Class and the congregation numbered over 500, including some twenty members of the original class.
There was another of those stupid separation hearings on the 4th.
In reality they were applications for court orders that would set out the maintenance payments that the husband needed to pay his separated wife.
But the cases were full of unnecessary lurid details that the newspapers covered with great relish.
And the case in St Helens Police Court involving Mary and Samuel Williams of Cambridge Road was even dafter than usual.
That was because the husband had already offered his wife 10 shillings a week maintenance – but she wanted more.
So she took her husband to court and all the couple's dirty washing was given a good public airing.
And what did the magistrates grant her after a very lengthy hearing – 10 shillings a week!
The woman's case had not been a strong one. She had left home for 7 weeks supposedly on doctor's advice because of bad nerves – but admitted never telling her husband where she was.
And when she returned home without warning her husband had pushed her out of the house and back onto the street.
Mr Williams insisted to the court that he had never received "just and honourable treatment" from his wife who had not told him of her doctor's advice to go away.
The Hippodrome Theatre in Corporation Street was in its last stages as a music hall and soon would be converted into a cinema.
Traditionally, eight or nine variety "turns" would perform twice a night for six nights and then a new line-up took over.
But noticeably during 1922 there had been more plays and revues performed in the theatre, presumably because its management were experimenting with different types of entertainment to try and boost attendances.
From the 4th there were only two acts on the bill – although they comprised many individual performers. The headline act were The Swanee Minstrels who were described in the Reporter as:
"Enormous attraction! In their famous negro melange, introducing high-class vocalism, laughable burlesque, instrumental & dancing specialities. Powerful cast."
The other act was a group of child performers known as The Nine Dainty Dots. "Each child a perfect little artiste," said the ad.
Gracie Fields had been a member of the juvenile troupe that sang and danced. One recruitment ad for the Dainty Dots that I've found says bluntly: "No good if over 4 feet".
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the horse that was ridden in Parr with a fractured pelvis, the female St Helens schoolteachers forced to resign upon getting married and the vicious Church Street attack by a man who thought he was killing the devil.