IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 29 JUNE - 5 JULY 1926
This week's many stories include the holding of the biggest meeting that ever took place in St Helens, the dropping of the Redgate Bridge widening scheme, the mother's brave canal rescue, the fire at a College Street grocer's, the Dunriding Lane bike storage facility for rugby league fans and the illegal taking of shrapnel bullets from Sutton Bond.
One of the few incidents of note during the General Strike had taken place at Redgate Bridge in Blackbrook when 100 men had stopped traffic by tying a rope across it. The vehicles had been brought to a halt so that they could be searched to ensure they were not carrying anything but food and breaking the strike.
Redgate Bridge on the main road from Liverpool to Wigan was described as the "narrowest and most dangerous" in St Helens and a £17,000 scheme had been proposed to improve it. But on June 29th it was learned that the Ministry of Transport was not willing to provide any financial support and consequently the scheme had been dropped.
In a hearing on the 30th in St Helens County Court (pictured above), it was revealed that Margaret Bryant of Dunriding Lane had what we might call a "nice little earner". Along with her daughter who lived next door, Mrs Bryant allowed rugby league fans to store their bicycles in their yards while attending matches at the Knowsley Road ground.
Only charging 2d a time would not make the women rich. But up to 150 bikes could be stored at any one time and they were only in their yards for no more than around two hours. So their temporary cycle storage facility did bring in some welcome additional housekeeping cash.
The downside to their activity was the lack of any great security, with people allowed to take away their own bikes. When Warrington had played Wigan in a cup final at Knowsley Road on May 8th, Herbert Jones had been among the 150 persons who had left their bikes with Margaret Bryant and her daughter. But when he went to collect it, the newsagent from Chorley Street in Warrington found it missing and so he sued Mrs Bryant.
In court she denied that their security was lax, insisting they did not allow anyone to remove a bicycle unless they produced a ticket whose number matched the one that they had chalked on the saddle. Mr Jones claimed £9 10 shillings damages for the loss of his nearly new machine and the judge awarded him £8 with costs.
"St Helens Town Hall is out of date, and ought to be replaced with a new building," was what one councillor said at the Town Council meeting held on the 30th, when a number of proposals were submitted for improvements to the 50-year-old municipal centre. It was decided to hold a special joint meeting of the Public Buildings and Parliamentary Committees to consider the matter from every point of view.
With the miners still on strike, coal stealing was becoming prolific in St Helens but the police were keeping a firm lookout for offenders. At 4.30am on July 1st, PC Metcalfe saw six men taking coal out of wagons near Pilkington's glassworks. He chased after the men and while he was taking one into custody, the others dropped the bags of coal that they were carrying in Phythian Street.
While the constable went after another man called Alfred Mullen, the others returned to the spot and took away their dropped booty, as coal's scarcity during the strike made it like black gold. Later that same day in St Helens Police Court, Mullen was fined 10 shillings.
The first Thursday in July was always the 'Tradesmen's Holiday' (aka 'Traders Holiday') in St Helens. Virtually all the shops in the town closed for the whole day (instead of the usual half-day) and staff went on charabanc and train excursions.
In 1926 the day fell on July 1st and many employees went to Blackpool. The St Helens Chamber of Trade hired two trains to take a total of 1,000 people to Blackpool, with special half-price admission available for much of the resort's entertainments.
During the war the old Sutton Glassworks site in Lancots Lane that had closed in 1903 became a munitions plant called Sutton Bond (pictured above) in which shell cases were filled. An article in the St Helens Newspaper on the 2nd suggests that the many young women employed at the Bond filled the cases with shrapnel bullets. It was said that millions of shells were filled during Sutton Bond's short life and the plant was so vast that decommissioning it after the war took many years.
Pilkingtons owned the site and as a gesture to the miners that were out on strike, they had recently told them that they could take away some of the wooden cases inside the Bond. These could be had for a token payment and chopped up for firewood. But the men soon discovered that the cases were not all empty, as the Newspaper reported:
"The discovery of a valuable stock of shrapnel bullets amid the debris at the old “Sutton Bond” was exploited by a number of firewood buyers, who removed firewood and bullets as well, and sold the bullets as scrap lead." As a result fourteen men appeared in court this week charged with stealing leaden bullets, totalling £19 11s. 5d. They had sold them to dealers in St Helens, Warrington and Widnes.
The defendants pleaded innocence saying they did not think they were doing anything wrong, as no officials had stopped them from taking the bullets away. One person said: "If all the people who had had shrapnel bullets from the works were charged, they would have to bring a summons against all the residents of Sutton." At the conclusion of the hearing, each man was ordered to pay the court costs and compensation averaging around 10 shillings to Pilks.
Also on the 2nd, the Liverpool Echo was full of praise for a woman they identified only as Mrs Roberts who had saved the lives of two children, one of them her own boy. She was the wife of the lock-keeper of the canal and lived at Haydock Lock House on the Parr boundary of St Helens and her young children had been playing outside the house.
While looking out of the window, she noticed her son Tommy was missing and she dashed outside to find the 3-year-old in the water and sinking. Although fully dressed, she immediately jumped into the canal and found a lad called Amer was also in trouble. Mrs Roberts pushed the 10-year-old to one side and then dived down and found her own child and brought him to the surface.
By this time Mrs Roberts was becoming exhausted with the weight of her wet clothing and her son. However, her screams attracted the attention of a young man named Richard Aspley of Newton Road. He jumped into the water and assisted the distressed mother and child. A man named Dolan pulled out the boy Amer and he also assisted Mrs Roberts and Richard Aspley.
Her son Tommy needed considerable treatment before recovering but the other boy Amer was soon restored to health. Mrs Roberts said she had learned to swim when a girl but it had been thirteen years since she had been in the water.
Some people did become very casual about their house fires and appeared to forget about the danger that the flames could pose. This week the owner of Worthington's Grocery Stores in College Street was badly burned by a fire that had been caused by the man burning some rubbish in a grate.
Lying right next to his fire was some wood and sugar and when some burning paper fell by the sugar, the room was quickly ablaze. The fire burned for an hour and did considerable damage and Mr Worthington required treatment in Providence Hospital.
And finally, on the 4th what was described as the biggest meeting ever held in St Helens took place when 25,000 people welcomed Arthur Cook, the General Secretary of the Miners Federation of Great Britain. The venue was some land behind St Helens Hospital and it was said that the audience's enthusiastic cheering was so loud that it could be heard two miles away at Thatto Heath.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Gerards Bridge firewood raiders, the breach of promise of marriage case, the mother who stood up for her brutal son in court and there is an update on the building of the new St Helens Parish Church.
One of the few incidents of note during the General Strike had taken place at Redgate Bridge in Blackbrook when 100 men had stopped traffic by tying a rope across it. The vehicles had been brought to a halt so that they could be searched to ensure they were not carrying anything but food and breaking the strike.
Redgate Bridge on the main road from Liverpool to Wigan was described as the "narrowest and most dangerous" in St Helens and a £17,000 scheme had been proposed to improve it. But on June 29th it was learned that the Ministry of Transport was not willing to provide any financial support and consequently the scheme had been dropped.
Only charging 2d a time would not make the women rich. But up to 150 bikes could be stored at any one time and they were only in their yards for no more than around two hours. So their temporary cycle storage facility did bring in some welcome additional housekeeping cash.
The downside to their activity was the lack of any great security, with people allowed to take away their own bikes. When Warrington had played Wigan in a cup final at Knowsley Road on May 8th, Herbert Jones had been among the 150 persons who had left their bikes with Margaret Bryant and her daughter. But when he went to collect it, the newsagent from Chorley Street in Warrington found it missing and so he sued Mrs Bryant.
In court she denied that their security was lax, insisting they did not allow anyone to remove a bicycle unless they produced a ticket whose number matched the one that they had chalked on the saddle. Mr Jones claimed £9 10 shillings damages for the loss of his nearly new machine and the judge awarded him £8 with costs.
"St Helens Town Hall is out of date, and ought to be replaced with a new building," was what one councillor said at the Town Council meeting held on the 30th, when a number of proposals were submitted for improvements to the 50-year-old municipal centre. It was decided to hold a special joint meeting of the Public Buildings and Parliamentary Committees to consider the matter from every point of view.
With the miners still on strike, coal stealing was becoming prolific in St Helens but the police were keeping a firm lookout for offenders. At 4.30am on July 1st, PC Metcalfe saw six men taking coal out of wagons near Pilkington's glassworks. He chased after the men and while he was taking one into custody, the others dropped the bags of coal that they were carrying in Phythian Street.
While the constable went after another man called Alfred Mullen, the others returned to the spot and took away their dropped booty, as coal's scarcity during the strike made it like black gold. Later that same day in St Helens Police Court, Mullen was fined 10 shillings.
The first Thursday in July was always the 'Tradesmen's Holiday' (aka 'Traders Holiday') in St Helens. Virtually all the shops in the town closed for the whole day (instead of the usual half-day) and staff went on charabanc and train excursions.
In 1926 the day fell on July 1st and many employees went to Blackpool. The St Helens Chamber of Trade hired two trains to take a total of 1,000 people to Blackpool, with special half-price admission available for much of the resort's entertainments.
Pilkingtons owned the site and as a gesture to the miners that were out on strike, they had recently told them that they could take away some of the wooden cases inside the Bond. These could be had for a token payment and chopped up for firewood. But the men soon discovered that the cases were not all empty, as the Newspaper reported:
"The discovery of a valuable stock of shrapnel bullets amid the debris at the old “Sutton Bond” was exploited by a number of firewood buyers, who removed firewood and bullets as well, and sold the bullets as scrap lead." As a result fourteen men appeared in court this week charged with stealing leaden bullets, totalling £19 11s. 5d. They had sold them to dealers in St Helens, Warrington and Widnes.
The defendants pleaded innocence saying they did not think they were doing anything wrong, as no officials had stopped them from taking the bullets away. One person said: "If all the people who had had shrapnel bullets from the works were charged, they would have to bring a summons against all the residents of Sutton." At the conclusion of the hearing, each man was ordered to pay the court costs and compensation averaging around 10 shillings to Pilks.
Also on the 2nd, the Liverpool Echo was full of praise for a woman they identified only as Mrs Roberts who had saved the lives of two children, one of them her own boy. She was the wife of the lock-keeper of the canal and lived at Haydock Lock House on the Parr boundary of St Helens and her young children had been playing outside the house.
While looking out of the window, she noticed her son Tommy was missing and she dashed outside to find the 3-year-old in the water and sinking. Although fully dressed, she immediately jumped into the canal and found a lad called Amer was also in trouble. Mrs Roberts pushed the 10-year-old to one side and then dived down and found her own child and brought him to the surface.
By this time Mrs Roberts was becoming exhausted with the weight of her wet clothing and her son. However, her screams attracted the attention of a young man named Richard Aspley of Newton Road. He jumped into the water and assisted the distressed mother and child. A man named Dolan pulled out the boy Amer and he also assisted Mrs Roberts and Richard Aspley.
Her son Tommy needed considerable treatment before recovering but the other boy Amer was soon restored to health. Mrs Roberts said she had learned to swim when a girl but it had been thirteen years since she had been in the water.
Some people did become very casual about their house fires and appeared to forget about the danger that the flames could pose. This week the owner of Worthington's Grocery Stores in College Street was badly burned by a fire that had been caused by the man burning some rubbish in a grate.
Lying right next to his fire was some wood and sugar and when some burning paper fell by the sugar, the room was quickly ablaze. The fire burned for an hour and did considerable damage and Mr Worthington required treatment in Providence Hospital.
And finally, on the 4th what was described as the biggest meeting ever held in St Helens took place when 25,000 people welcomed Arthur Cook, the General Secretary of the Miners Federation of Great Britain. The venue was some land behind St Helens Hospital and it was said that the audience's enthusiastic cheering was so loud that it could be heard two miles away at Thatto Heath.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Gerards Bridge firewood raiders, the breach of promise of marriage case, the mother who stood up for her brutal son in court and there is an update on the building of the new St Helens Parish Church.
This week's many stories include the holding of the biggest meeting that ever took place in St Helens, the dropping of the Redgate Bridge widening scheme, the mother's brave canal rescue, the fire at a College Street grocer's, the Dunriding Lane bike storage facility for rugby league fans and the illegal taking of shrapnel bullets from Sutton Bond.
One of the few incidents of note during the General Strike had taken place at Redgate Bridge in Blackbrook when 100 men had stopped traffic by tying a rope across it.
The vehicles had been brought to a halt so that they could be searched to ensure they were not carrying anything but food and breaking the strike.
Redgate Bridge on the main road from Liverpool to Wigan was described as the "narrowest and most dangerous" in St Helens and a £17,000 scheme had been proposed to improve it.
But on June 29th it was learned that the Ministry of Transport was not willing to provide any financial support and consequently the scheme had been dropped.
In a hearing on the 30th in St Helens County Court (pictured above), it was revealed that Margaret Bryant of Dunriding Lane had what we might call a "nice little earner".
Along with her daughter who lived next door, Mrs Bryant allowed rugby league fans to store their bicycles in their yards while attending matches at the Knowsley Road ground.
Only charging 2d a time would not make the women rich. But up to 150 bikes could be stored at any one time and they were only in their yards for no more than around two hours.
So their temporary cycle storage facility did bring in some welcome additional housekeeping cash.
The downside to their activity was the lack of any great security, with people allowed to take away their own bikes.
When Warrington had played Wigan in a cup final at Knowsley Road on May 8th, Herbert Jones had been among the 150 persons who had left their bikes with Margaret Bryant and her daughter.
But when he went to collect it, the newsagent from Chorley Street in Warrington found it missing and so he sued Mrs Bryant.
In court she denied that their security was lax, insisting they did not allow anyone to remove a bicycle unless they produced a ticket whose number matched the one that they had chalked on the saddle.
Mr Jones claimed £9 10 shillings damages for the loss of his nearly new machine and the judge awarded him £8 with costs.
"St Helens Town Hall is out of date, and ought to be replaced with a new building," was what one councillor said at the Town Council meeting held on the 30th, when a number of proposals were submitted for improvements to the 50-year-old municipal centre.
It was decided to hold a special joint meeting of the Public Buildings and Parliamentary Committees to consider the matter from every point of view.
With the miners still on strike, coal stealing was becoming prolific in St Helens but the police were keeping a firm lookout for offenders.
At 4.30am on July 1st, PC Metcalfe saw six men taking coal out of wagons near Pilkington's glassworks.
He chased after the men and while he was taking one into custody, the others dropped the bags of coal that they were carrying in Phythian Street.
While the constable went after another man called Alfred Mullen, the others returned to the spot and took away their dropped booty, as coal's scarcity during the strike made it like black gold.
Later that same day in St Helens Police Court, Mullen was fined 10 shillings.
The first Thursday in July was always the 'Tradesmen's Holiday' (aka 'Traders Holiday') in St Helens.
Virtually all the shops in the town closed for the whole day (instead of the usual half-day) and staff went on charabanc and train excursions.
In 1926 the day fell on July 1st and many employees went to Blackpool.
The St Helens Chamber of Trade hired two trains to take a total of 1,000 people to Blackpool, with special half-price admission available for much of the resort's entertainments.
During the war the old Sutton Glassworks site in Lancots Lane that had closed in 1903 became a munitions plant called Sutton Bond (pictured above) in which shell cases were filled.
An article in the St Helens Newspaper on the 2nd suggests that the many young women employed at the Bond filled the cases with shrapnel bullets.
It was said that millions of shells were filled during Sutton Bond's short life and the plant was so vast that decommissioning it after the war took many years.
Pilkingtons owned the site and as a gesture to the miners that were out on strike, they had recently told them that they could take away some of the wooden cases inside the Bond.
These could be had for a token payment and chopped up for firewood. But the men soon discovered that the cases were not all empty, as the Newspaper reported:
"The discovery of a valuable stock of shrapnel bullets amid the debris at the old “Sutton Bond” was exploited by a number of firewood buyers, who removed firewood and bullets as well, and sold the bullets as scrap lead."
As a result fourteen men appeared in court this week charged with stealing leaden bullets, totalling £19 11s. 5d.
They had sold them to dealers in St Helens, Warrington and Widnes.
The defendants pleaded innocence saying they did not think they were doing anything wrong, as no officials had stopped them from taking the bullets away. One person said:
"If all the people who had had shrapnel bullets from the works were charged, they would have to bring a summons against all the residents of Sutton."
At the conclusion of the hearing, each man was ordered to pay the court costs and compensation averaging around 10 shillings to Pilks.
Also on the 2nd, the Liverpool Echo was full of praise for a woman they identified only as Mrs Roberts who had saved the lives of two children, one of them her own boy.
She was the wife of the lock-keeper of the canal and lived at Haydock Lock House on the Parr boundary of St Helens and her young children had been playing outside the house.
While looking out of the window, she noticed her son Tommy was missing and she dashed outside to find the 3-year-old in the water and sinking.
Although fully dressed, she immediately jumped into the canal and found a lad called Amer was also in trouble.
Mrs Roberts pushed the 10-year-old to one side and then dived down and found her own child and brought him to the surface.
By this time Mrs Roberts was becoming exhausted with the weight of her wet clothing and her son.
However, her screams attracted the attention of a young man named Richard Aspley of Newton Road.
He jumped into the water and assisted the distressed mother and child.
A man named Dolan pulled out the boy Amer and he also assisted Mrs Roberts and Richard Aspley.
Her son Tommy needed considerable treatment before recovering but the other boy Amer was soon restored to health.
Mrs Roberts said she had learned to swim when a girl but it had been thirteen years since she had been in the water.
Some people did become very casual about their house fires and appeared to forget about the danger that the flames could pose.
This week the owner of Worthington's Grocery Stores in College Street was badly burned by a fire that had been caused by the man burning some rubbish in a grate.
Lying right next to his fire was some wood and sugar and when some burning paper fell by the sugar, the room was quickly ablaze.
The fire burned for an hour and did considerable damage and Mr Worthington required treatment in Providence Hospital.
And finally, on the 4th what was described as the biggest meeting ever held in St Helens took place when 25,000 people welcomed Arthur Cook, the General Secretary of the Miners Federation of Great Britain.
The venue was some land behind St Helens Hospital and it was said that the audience's enthusiastic cheering was so loud that it could be heard two miles away at Thatto Heath.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Gerards Bridge firewood raiders, the breach of promise of marriage case, the mother who stood up for her brutal son in court and there is an update on the building of the new St Helens Parish Church.
One of the few incidents of note during the General Strike had taken place at Redgate Bridge in Blackbrook when 100 men had stopped traffic by tying a rope across it.
The vehicles had been brought to a halt so that they could be searched to ensure they were not carrying anything but food and breaking the strike.
Redgate Bridge on the main road from Liverpool to Wigan was described as the "narrowest and most dangerous" in St Helens and a £17,000 scheme had been proposed to improve it.
But on June 29th it was learned that the Ministry of Transport was not willing to provide any financial support and consequently the scheme had been dropped.
Along with her daughter who lived next door, Mrs Bryant allowed rugby league fans to store their bicycles in their yards while attending matches at the Knowsley Road ground.
Only charging 2d a time would not make the women rich. But up to 150 bikes could be stored at any one time and they were only in their yards for no more than around two hours.
So their temporary cycle storage facility did bring in some welcome additional housekeeping cash.
The downside to their activity was the lack of any great security, with people allowed to take away their own bikes.
When Warrington had played Wigan in a cup final at Knowsley Road on May 8th, Herbert Jones had been among the 150 persons who had left their bikes with Margaret Bryant and her daughter.
But when he went to collect it, the newsagent from Chorley Street in Warrington found it missing and so he sued Mrs Bryant.
In court she denied that their security was lax, insisting they did not allow anyone to remove a bicycle unless they produced a ticket whose number matched the one that they had chalked on the saddle.
Mr Jones claimed £9 10 shillings damages for the loss of his nearly new machine and the judge awarded him £8 with costs.
"St Helens Town Hall is out of date, and ought to be replaced with a new building," was what one councillor said at the Town Council meeting held on the 30th, when a number of proposals were submitted for improvements to the 50-year-old municipal centre.
It was decided to hold a special joint meeting of the Public Buildings and Parliamentary Committees to consider the matter from every point of view.
With the miners still on strike, coal stealing was becoming prolific in St Helens but the police were keeping a firm lookout for offenders.
At 4.30am on July 1st, PC Metcalfe saw six men taking coal out of wagons near Pilkington's glassworks.
He chased after the men and while he was taking one into custody, the others dropped the bags of coal that they were carrying in Phythian Street.
While the constable went after another man called Alfred Mullen, the others returned to the spot and took away their dropped booty, as coal's scarcity during the strike made it like black gold.
Later that same day in St Helens Police Court, Mullen was fined 10 shillings.
The first Thursday in July was always the 'Tradesmen's Holiday' (aka 'Traders Holiday') in St Helens.
Virtually all the shops in the town closed for the whole day (instead of the usual half-day) and staff went on charabanc and train excursions.
In 1926 the day fell on July 1st and many employees went to Blackpool.
The St Helens Chamber of Trade hired two trains to take a total of 1,000 people to Blackpool, with special half-price admission available for much of the resort's entertainments.
An article in the St Helens Newspaper on the 2nd suggests that the many young women employed at the Bond filled the cases with shrapnel bullets.
It was said that millions of shells were filled during Sutton Bond's short life and the plant was so vast that decommissioning it after the war took many years.
Pilkingtons owned the site and as a gesture to the miners that were out on strike, they had recently told them that they could take away some of the wooden cases inside the Bond.
These could be had for a token payment and chopped up for firewood. But the men soon discovered that the cases were not all empty, as the Newspaper reported:
"The discovery of a valuable stock of shrapnel bullets amid the debris at the old “Sutton Bond” was exploited by a number of firewood buyers, who removed firewood and bullets as well, and sold the bullets as scrap lead."
As a result fourteen men appeared in court this week charged with stealing leaden bullets, totalling £19 11s. 5d.
They had sold them to dealers in St Helens, Warrington and Widnes.
The defendants pleaded innocence saying they did not think they were doing anything wrong, as no officials had stopped them from taking the bullets away. One person said:
"If all the people who had had shrapnel bullets from the works were charged, they would have to bring a summons against all the residents of Sutton."
At the conclusion of the hearing, each man was ordered to pay the court costs and compensation averaging around 10 shillings to Pilks.
Also on the 2nd, the Liverpool Echo was full of praise for a woman they identified only as Mrs Roberts who had saved the lives of two children, one of them her own boy.
She was the wife of the lock-keeper of the canal and lived at Haydock Lock House on the Parr boundary of St Helens and her young children had been playing outside the house.
While looking out of the window, she noticed her son Tommy was missing and she dashed outside to find the 3-year-old in the water and sinking.
Although fully dressed, she immediately jumped into the canal and found a lad called Amer was also in trouble.
Mrs Roberts pushed the 10-year-old to one side and then dived down and found her own child and brought him to the surface.
By this time Mrs Roberts was becoming exhausted with the weight of her wet clothing and her son.
However, her screams attracted the attention of a young man named Richard Aspley of Newton Road.
He jumped into the water and assisted the distressed mother and child.
A man named Dolan pulled out the boy Amer and he also assisted Mrs Roberts and Richard Aspley.
Her son Tommy needed considerable treatment before recovering but the other boy Amer was soon restored to health.
Mrs Roberts said she had learned to swim when a girl but it had been thirteen years since she had been in the water.
Some people did become very casual about their house fires and appeared to forget about the danger that the flames could pose.
This week the owner of Worthington's Grocery Stores in College Street was badly burned by a fire that had been caused by the man burning some rubbish in a grate.
Lying right next to his fire was some wood and sugar and when some burning paper fell by the sugar, the room was quickly ablaze.
The fire burned for an hour and did considerable damage and Mr Worthington required treatment in Providence Hospital.
And finally, on the 4th what was described as the biggest meeting ever held in St Helens took place when 25,000 people welcomed Arthur Cook, the General Secretary of the Miners Federation of Great Britain.
The venue was some land behind St Helens Hospital and it was said that the audience's enthusiastic cheering was so loud that it could be heard two miles away at Thatto Heath.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Gerards Bridge firewood raiders, the breach of promise of marriage case, the mother who stood up for her brutal son in court and there is an update on the building of the new St Helens Parish Church.