IOO YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (31st MAY - 6th JUNE 1921)
This week's stories include uproar at a St Helens Town Council meeting, a St Helens bigamy case, the dastardly Sinn Fein telephone wire cutting and forty-eight miners are summoned to court for ruining a Parr farmer's field.
During the war there was a huge rise in cases of bigamy and many illegal marriages were only now coming to light. Four of the twenty-four prisoners at the last Liverpool Assizes faced charges of bigamy and each was sentenced to 9 months in prison. So William Chisnall knew what was likely to be in store for him when he appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 31st facing the same charge.
Inspector Roe told the Bench that Chisnall had married legitimately in 1913 at Haydock and his wife and child were now believed to be living in New Zealand. In November 1915 while serving in the army in the south of England, Chisnall had married another woman at Maidstone and upon being arrested had said, "I want to clear the matter up." Chisnall was remanded in custody for a week.
In 1928 the St Helens Chief Constable Arthur Ellerington (pictured above with his funeral cortege on the right) would make the national news for several weeks after a dispute with the council's Watch Committee. A 17-day official board of inquiry took place after Labour members on the committee that supervised the police attempted to get Ellerington sacked. The seeds of the dispute were presently being planted and on June 1st at the monthly Town Council meeting there was uproar and very nearly a punch-up when the minutes of a Watch Committee meeting were discussed.
Upon Ellerington's advice the committee had narrowly voted to dismiss a police sergeant on grounds of discipline and, in retaliation, Cllr. Thackray gave notice that he intended proposing a motion to reduce the Chief Constable's salary. When his ally Cllr. McCormick insisted that the minute was an untrue record of what had occurred at the Watch Committee meeting, the Mayor ruled him out of order. However Cllr. McCormick persisted with his argument amid uproar and Alderman Forster rose to move that the councillor should leave the room.
"I won't do that," retorted McCormick. "You will have to," said the Mayor. To that, Cllr. McCormick (according to the Liverpool Echo) said: "You will have something to do then, and who will be the first man to touch me?" The version of the Runcorn Weekly News was that McCormick had said: "And there'll be some trouble for the first man that lays a hand on him [meaning himself]."
Eventually after the Mayor had been hammering away with his gavel for some time, McCormick agreed to resume his seat and his Labour colleague Cllr. Waring stated that the Watch Committee's decision to sack the sergeant had been "one of the biggest scandals and the greatest piece of Prussianism that has ever been done in St Helens." The sergeant had previous been suspended and then re-instated and the Labour councillors believed the Chief Constable was victimising him. A bad business if true, although probably not quite the same as the Germans starting WW1!
On the 3rd the Liverpool Echo wrote: "The Sinn Fein campaign of destruction has taken a new turn", as they described how during the night telephone and telegraph wires had been cut around Liverpool, Knowsley and Collins Green. Their huge operation led to about 300 circuits being affected, with men using motor cars to move quickly from one location to another to undertake their "dastardly work".
In the days before police had radios and police boxes, such hit and run tactics proved highly successful for the extremists – who were usually referred to as "Sinn Fein" in England and "IRA" when in Ireland. In one instance near St Helens a whole telegraph pole had been chopped down as well as the wires.
However what was occurring on the mainland was pretty minor compared to the brutality that was taking place in Ireland. Adjacent to the Echo's report was a description of the many incidents that had taken place in the Emerald Isle over the past 24 hours – including an ambush in County Mayo in which a group of 100 IRA men had attacked a 17-member police patrol. A battle of rifle and machine gun fire lasted for several hours and eight of the police were either dead or expected to die of their injuries.
A month ago I reported on a court case concerning the so-called "crop coal" that was illegally being removed from the shallow mines of St Helens during the coal strike. These were mainly where seams of disused pits "outcropped" near to the surface and so could be fairly easily accessed. Two haulage contractors called Richard and Benjamin Hall had been charged with receiving stolen coal from a farmer's field in Parr. Witnesses gave evidence that the two brothers had bought the coal off the miners illegally working in the field. And so had lots of other people, including, amazingly, St Helens Corporation's own Gas Department and Walker's Ale of Warrington!
Since then the more than 1,000 miners involved in getting the crop-coal from various sites in St Helens had agreed to stop, as their union said it was damaging their cause. And two men who had broken ranks and carried on digging had been killed at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow. One might have thought that the latter experience might have acted as a deterrent. But in desperate times during strikes people do desperate things and some men were still hewing coal from the surface seams.
Others who had given up the practice were being identified and brought to book. On the 6th forty-eight men were charged by the Parr farmer involved in the Hall brothers case with damaging his crops through digging surface coal. John Smith told the magistrates in St Helens Police Court that almost half of his ten-acre field had been ruined by the mining activity. Inspector Bowden gave evidence that thousands of tons of coal had been removed and he predicted that within a short period of time the surface would collapse and "sink in all directions and would be useless for some time to come". The magistrates fined each of the men 10 shillings and ordered them to each pay damages to Mr Smith of £1 and 5 shillings each towards his legal costs.
Two fully licensed pubs with bowling greens on Lord Derby's estate in Rainford were sold by auction this week. The Golden Lion went for £4,000 and the Eagle and Child – also in Church Road – was knocked down (not literally!) for £3,300.
On the 7th a motor lorry killed the brother of the late Sir Joseph B. Leach, the St Helens estate agent and founder of the annual New Year's Day poor children's breakfasts. 70-year-old Benjamin Leach was run down near his Eccleston Park home as he attempted to board a tramcar. These days an ambulance would be summoned to the scene – but public kiosks were yet to be installed. So the driver, Arthur Neale, picked up Mr Leach from out of the road and drove him to the Pilkington Hospital in Borough Road where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
And finally the non-St Helens item in the Liverpool Echo that caught my eye this week was a series of reflections on the multi-cultural nature of the city in an article headlined "Liverpool's Foreigners":
"In a cosmopolitan city like Liverpool one meets many strange and curious characters. On my first visit I was impressed by the diversity of races in the streets. The majority of these were, of course, sailors seeing the sights. I could not help admiring the native grace and dignity of the Indian coolies. Poorly clad in cotton clothes and wearing quaint headgear, they walk with that curious, high-stepping gait which is so characteristic of the children of the jungle.
"They gaze at the shops and the magnificent new Liverpool public buildings with a detached air. Their conduct affords a marked contrast to the boisterous behaviour of many of the white sailors. The Greek sailors, with their olive complexions and gold ear-rings, have an inordinate love for pretty clothes and cheap jewellery. They wear pill-box caps with ornate bands of tinsel, gold braid, and beads. They are of very slender build, but they are extraordinary lithe and active.
"The negro sailor's greatest ambition is to pose as a blasé man about town. He dresses in a most extravagant style. He often mistakes the attention which his extraordinary love of colour attracts for admiration. I think the negroes spend quite a large proportion of their earnings on dress. Their clothes are usually of very good quality. In marked contrast to the extravagance of the negro is the uniformity of the Chinaman's wearing apparel. Even the wealthy Chinese are conservative in their clothes.
"They like quiet colours, and navy blue is their favourite. The majority of the Liverpool Chinamen wear a navy blue tunic, with patch pockets, blue trousers and either a cap or a bowler hat. In the Chinese quarter in Liverpool, the houses are dark. There is the subtle mystery of the East about them. Little children with dark, lank hair and bright, oblique eyes play about the doorways. The men, however, appear quiet and inoffensive. They are mostly sailors or laundrymen. Their laundries have a particularly uninviting exterior. However, they turn out good work. What particularly impressed me about the Chinese was their thrift. Usually every available penny is sent home."
Next week's stories will include a coroner's fears over the rising road death toll, a Parr club's concerns of losing its licence, the St Helens bigamy case returns to court and the police officer near Knowsley who was fired at by IRA wire cutting desperadoes.
During the war there was a huge rise in cases of bigamy and many illegal marriages were only now coming to light. Four of the twenty-four prisoners at the last Liverpool Assizes faced charges of bigamy and each was sentenced to 9 months in prison. So William Chisnall knew what was likely to be in store for him when he appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 31st facing the same charge.
Inspector Roe told the Bench that Chisnall had married legitimately in 1913 at Haydock and his wife and child were now believed to be living in New Zealand. In November 1915 while serving in the army in the south of England, Chisnall had married another woman at Maidstone and upon being arrested had said, "I want to clear the matter up." Chisnall was remanded in custody for a week.
Upon Ellerington's advice the committee had narrowly voted to dismiss a police sergeant on grounds of discipline and, in retaliation, Cllr. Thackray gave notice that he intended proposing a motion to reduce the Chief Constable's salary. When his ally Cllr. McCormick insisted that the minute was an untrue record of what had occurred at the Watch Committee meeting, the Mayor ruled him out of order. However Cllr. McCormick persisted with his argument amid uproar and Alderman Forster rose to move that the councillor should leave the room.
"I won't do that," retorted McCormick. "You will have to," said the Mayor. To that, Cllr. McCormick (according to the Liverpool Echo) said: "You will have something to do then, and who will be the first man to touch me?" The version of the Runcorn Weekly News was that McCormick had said: "And there'll be some trouble for the first man that lays a hand on him [meaning himself]."
Eventually after the Mayor had been hammering away with his gavel for some time, McCormick agreed to resume his seat and his Labour colleague Cllr. Waring stated that the Watch Committee's decision to sack the sergeant had been "one of the biggest scandals and the greatest piece of Prussianism that has ever been done in St Helens." The sergeant had previous been suspended and then re-instated and the Labour councillors believed the Chief Constable was victimising him. A bad business if true, although probably not quite the same as the Germans starting WW1!
On the 3rd the Liverpool Echo wrote: "The Sinn Fein campaign of destruction has taken a new turn", as they described how during the night telephone and telegraph wires had been cut around Liverpool, Knowsley and Collins Green. Their huge operation led to about 300 circuits being affected, with men using motor cars to move quickly from one location to another to undertake their "dastardly work".
In the days before police had radios and police boxes, such hit and run tactics proved highly successful for the extremists – who were usually referred to as "Sinn Fein" in England and "IRA" when in Ireland. In one instance near St Helens a whole telegraph pole had been chopped down as well as the wires.
However what was occurring on the mainland was pretty minor compared to the brutality that was taking place in Ireland. Adjacent to the Echo's report was a description of the many incidents that had taken place in the Emerald Isle over the past 24 hours – including an ambush in County Mayo in which a group of 100 IRA men had attacked a 17-member police patrol. A battle of rifle and machine gun fire lasted for several hours and eight of the police were either dead or expected to die of their injuries.
A month ago I reported on a court case concerning the so-called "crop coal" that was illegally being removed from the shallow mines of St Helens during the coal strike. These were mainly where seams of disused pits "outcropped" near to the surface and so could be fairly easily accessed. Two haulage contractors called Richard and Benjamin Hall had been charged with receiving stolen coal from a farmer's field in Parr. Witnesses gave evidence that the two brothers had bought the coal off the miners illegally working in the field. And so had lots of other people, including, amazingly, St Helens Corporation's own Gas Department and Walker's Ale of Warrington!
Since then the more than 1,000 miners involved in getting the crop-coal from various sites in St Helens had agreed to stop, as their union said it was damaging their cause. And two men who had broken ranks and carried on digging had been killed at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow. One might have thought that the latter experience might have acted as a deterrent. But in desperate times during strikes people do desperate things and some men were still hewing coal from the surface seams.
Others who had given up the practice were being identified and brought to book. On the 6th forty-eight men were charged by the Parr farmer involved in the Hall brothers case with damaging his crops through digging surface coal. John Smith told the magistrates in St Helens Police Court that almost half of his ten-acre field had been ruined by the mining activity. Inspector Bowden gave evidence that thousands of tons of coal had been removed and he predicted that within a short period of time the surface would collapse and "sink in all directions and would be useless for some time to come". The magistrates fined each of the men 10 shillings and ordered them to each pay damages to Mr Smith of £1 and 5 shillings each towards his legal costs.
Two fully licensed pubs with bowling greens on Lord Derby's estate in Rainford were sold by auction this week. The Golden Lion went for £4,000 and the Eagle and Child – also in Church Road – was knocked down (not literally!) for £3,300.
On the 7th a motor lorry killed the brother of the late Sir Joseph B. Leach, the St Helens estate agent and founder of the annual New Year's Day poor children's breakfasts. 70-year-old Benjamin Leach was run down near his Eccleston Park home as he attempted to board a tramcar. These days an ambulance would be summoned to the scene – but public kiosks were yet to be installed. So the driver, Arthur Neale, picked up Mr Leach from out of the road and drove him to the Pilkington Hospital in Borough Road where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
And finally the non-St Helens item in the Liverpool Echo that caught my eye this week was a series of reflections on the multi-cultural nature of the city in an article headlined "Liverpool's Foreigners":
"In a cosmopolitan city like Liverpool one meets many strange and curious characters. On my first visit I was impressed by the diversity of races in the streets. The majority of these were, of course, sailors seeing the sights. I could not help admiring the native grace and dignity of the Indian coolies. Poorly clad in cotton clothes and wearing quaint headgear, they walk with that curious, high-stepping gait which is so characteristic of the children of the jungle.
"They gaze at the shops and the magnificent new Liverpool public buildings with a detached air. Their conduct affords a marked contrast to the boisterous behaviour of many of the white sailors. The Greek sailors, with their olive complexions and gold ear-rings, have an inordinate love for pretty clothes and cheap jewellery. They wear pill-box caps with ornate bands of tinsel, gold braid, and beads. They are of very slender build, but they are extraordinary lithe and active.
"The negro sailor's greatest ambition is to pose as a blasé man about town. He dresses in a most extravagant style. He often mistakes the attention which his extraordinary love of colour attracts for admiration. I think the negroes spend quite a large proportion of their earnings on dress. Their clothes are usually of very good quality. In marked contrast to the extravagance of the negro is the uniformity of the Chinaman's wearing apparel. Even the wealthy Chinese are conservative in their clothes.
"They like quiet colours, and navy blue is their favourite. The majority of the Liverpool Chinamen wear a navy blue tunic, with patch pockets, blue trousers and either a cap or a bowler hat. In the Chinese quarter in Liverpool, the houses are dark. There is the subtle mystery of the East about them. Little children with dark, lank hair and bright, oblique eyes play about the doorways. The men, however, appear quiet and inoffensive. They are mostly sailors or laundrymen. Their laundries have a particularly uninviting exterior. However, they turn out good work. What particularly impressed me about the Chinese was their thrift. Usually every available penny is sent home."
Next week's stories will include a coroner's fears over the rising road death toll, a Parr club's concerns of losing its licence, the St Helens bigamy case returns to court and the police officer near Knowsley who was fired at by IRA wire cutting desperadoes.
This week's stories include uproar at a St Helens Town Council meeting, a St Helens bigamy case, the dastardly Sinn Fein telephone wire cutting and forty-eight miners are summoned to court for ruining a Parr farmer's field.
During the war there was a huge rise in cases of bigamy and many illegal marriages were only now coming to light.
Four of the twenty-four prisoners at the last Liverpool Assizes faced charges of bigamy and each was sentenced to 9 months in prison.
So William Chisnall knew what was likely to be in store for him when he appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 31st facing the same charge.
Inspector Roe told the Bench that Chisnall had married legitimately in 1913 at Haydock and his wife and child were now believed to be living in New Zealand.
In November 1915 while serving in the army in the south of England, Chisnall had married another woman at Maidstone and upon being arrested had said, "I want to clear the matter up." Chisnall was remanded in custody for a week.
In 1928 the St Helens Chief Constable Arthur Ellerington (pictured above) would make the national news for several weeks after a dispute with the council's Watch Committee.
A 17-day official board of inquiry took place after Labour members on the committee that supervised the police attempted to get Ellerington sacked.
The seeds of the dispute were presently being planted and on June 1st at the monthly Town Council meeting there was uproar and very nearly a punch-up when the minutes of a Watch Committee meeting were discussed.
Upon Ellerington's advice the committee had narrowly voted to dismiss a police sergeant on grounds of discipline and, in retaliation, Cllr. Thackray gave notice that he intended proposing a motion to reduce the Chief Constable's salary.
When his ally Cllr. McCormick insisted that the minute was an untrue record of what had occurred at the Watch Committee meeting, the Mayor ruled him out of order.
However Cllr. McCormick persisted with his argument amid uproar and Alderman Forster rose to move that the councillor should leave the room.
"I won't do that," retorted McCormick. "You will have to," said the Mayor.
To that, Cllr. McCormick (according to the Liverpool Echo) said: "You will have something to do then, and who will be the first man to touch me?"
The version of the Runcorn Weekly News was that McCormick had said: "And there'll be some trouble for the first man that lays a hand on him [meaning himself]."
Eventually after the Mayor had been hammering away with his gavel for some time, McCormick agreed to resume his seat and his Labour colleague Cllr. Waring stated that the Watch Committee's decision to sack the sergeant had been "one of the biggest scandals and the greatest piece of Prussianism that has ever been done in St Helens."
The sergeant had previous been suspended and then re-instated and the Labour councillors believed the Chief Constable was victimising him.
A bad business if true, although probably not quite the same as the Germans starting WW1!
On the 3rd the Liverpool Echo wrote: "The Sinn Fein campaign of destruction has taken a new turn", as they described how during the night telephone and telegraph wires had been cut around Liverpool, Knowsley and Collins Green.
Their huge operation led to about 300 circuits being affected, with men using motor cars to move quickly from one location to another to undertake their "dastardly work".
In the days before police had radios and police boxes, such hit and run tactics proved highly successful for the extremists – who were usually referred to as "Sinn Fein" in England and "IRA" when in Ireland.
In one instance near St Helens a whole telegraph pole had been chopped down as well as the wires.
However what was occurring on the mainland was pretty minor compared to the brutality that was taking place in Ireland.
Adjacent to the Echo's report was a description of the many incidents that had taken place in the Emerald Isle over the past 24 hours – including an ambush in County Mayo in which a group of 100 IRA men had attacked a 17-member police patrol.
A battle of rifle and machine gun fire lasted for several hours and eight of the police were either dead or expected to die of their injuries.
A month ago I reported on a court case concerning the so-called "crop coal" that was illegally being removed from the shallow mines of St Helens during the coal strike.
These were mainly where seams of disused pits "outcropped" near to the surface and so could be fairly easily accessed.
Two haulage contractors called Richard and Benjamin Hall had been charged with receiving stolen coal from a farmer's field in Parr.
Witnesses gave evidence that the two brothers had bought the coal off the miners illegally working in the field.
And so had lots of other people, including, amazingly, St Helens Corporation's own Gas Department and Walker's Ale of Warrington!
Since then the more than 1,000 miners involved in getting the crop-coal from various sites in St Helens had agreed to stop, as their union said it was damaging their cause.
And two men who had broken ranks and carried on digging had been killed at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow.
One might have thought that the latter experience might have acted as a deterrent.
But in desperate times during strikes people do desperate things and some men were still hewing coal from the surface seams.
Others who had given up the practice were being identified and brought to book.
On the 6th forty-eight men were charged by the Parr farmer involved in the Hall brothers case with damaging his crops through digging surface coal.
John Smith told the magistrates in St Helens Police Court that almost half of his ten-acre field had been ruined by the mining activity.
Inspector Bowden gave evidence that thousands of tons of coal had been removed and he predicted that within a short period of time the surface would collapse and "sink in all directions and would be useless for some time to come".
The magistrates fined each of the men 10 shillings and ordered them to each pay damages to Mr Smith of £1 and 5 shillings each towards his legal costs.
Two fully licensed pubs with bowling greens on Lord Derby's estate in Rainford were sold by auction this week.
The Golden Lion went for £4,000 and the Eagle and Child – also in Church Road – was knocked down (not literally!) for £3,300.
On the 7th a motor lorry killed the brother of the late Sir Joseph B. Leach, the St Helens estate agent and founder of the annual New Year's Day poor children's breakfasts.
70-year-old Benjamin Leach was run down near his Eccleston Park home as he attempted to board a tramcar.
These days an ambulance would be summoned to the scene – but public kiosks were yet to be installed.
So the driver, Arthur Neale, picked up Mr Leach from out of the road and drove him to the Pilkington Hospital in Borough Road where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
And finally the non-St Helens item in the Liverpool Echo that caught my eye this week was a series of reflections on the multi-cultural nature of the city in an article headlined "Liverpool's Foreigners":
"In a cosmopolitan city like Liverpool one meets many strange and curious characters. On my first visit I was impressed by the diversity of races in the streets. The majority of these were, of course, sailors seeing the sights.
"I could not help admiring the native grace and dignity of the Indian coolies.
"Poorly clad in cotton clothes and wearing quaint headgear, they walk with that curious, high-stepping gait which is so characteristic of the children of the jungle.
"They gaze at the shops and the magnificent new Liverpool public buildings with a detached air. Their conduct affords a marked contrast to the boisterous behaviour of many of the white sailors.
"The Greek sailors, with their olive complexions and gold ear-rings, have an inordinate love for pretty clothes and cheap jewellery.
"They wear pill-box caps with ornate bands of tinsel, gold braid, and beads. They are of very slender build, but they are extraordinary lithe and active.
"The negro sailor's greatest ambition is to pose as a blasé man about town. He dresses in a most extravagant style. He often mistakes the attention which his extraordinary love of colour attracts for admiration.
"I think the negroes spend quite a large proportion of their earnings on dress. Their clothes are usually of very good quality.
"In marked contrast to the extravagance of the negro is the uniformity of the Chinaman's wearing apparel. Even the wealthy Chinese are conservative in their clothes.
"They like quiet colours, and navy blue is their favourite. The majority of the Liverpool Chinamen wear a navy blue tunic, with patch pockets, blue trousers and either a cap or a bowler hat.
"In the Chinese quarter in Liverpool, the houses are dark. There is the subtle mystery of the East about them. Little children with dark, lank hair and bright, oblique eyes play about the doorways.
"The men, however, appear quiet and inoffensive. They are mostly sailors or laundrymen. Their laundries have a particularly uninviting exterior. However, they turn out good work.
"What particularly impressed me about the Chinese was their thrift. Usually every available penny is sent home."
Next week's stories will include a coroner's fears over the rising road death toll, a Parr club's concerns of losing its licence, the St Helens bigamy case returns to court and the police officer near Knowsley who was fired at by IRA wire cutting desperadoes.
During the war there was a huge rise in cases of bigamy and many illegal marriages were only now coming to light.
Four of the twenty-four prisoners at the last Liverpool Assizes faced charges of bigamy and each was sentenced to 9 months in prison.
So William Chisnall knew what was likely to be in store for him when he appeared in St Helens Police Court on the 31st facing the same charge.
Inspector Roe told the Bench that Chisnall had married legitimately in 1913 at Haydock and his wife and child were now believed to be living in New Zealand.
In November 1915 while serving in the army in the south of England, Chisnall had married another woman at Maidstone and upon being arrested had said, "I want to clear the matter up." Chisnall was remanded in custody for a week.
A 17-day official board of inquiry took place after Labour members on the committee that supervised the police attempted to get Ellerington sacked.
The seeds of the dispute were presently being planted and on June 1st at the monthly Town Council meeting there was uproar and very nearly a punch-up when the minutes of a Watch Committee meeting were discussed.
Upon Ellerington's advice the committee had narrowly voted to dismiss a police sergeant on grounds of discipline and, in retaliation, Cllr. Thackray gave notice that he intended proposing a motion to reduce the Chief Constable's salary.
When his ally Cllr. McCormick insisted that the minute was an untrue record of what had occurred at the Watch Committee meeting, the Mayor ruled him out of order.
However Cllr. McCormick persisted with his argument amid uproar and Alderman Forster rose to move that the councillor should leave the room.
"I won't do that," retorted McCormick. "You will have to," said the Mayor.
To that, Cllr. McCormick (according to the Liverpool Echo) said: "You will have something to do then, and who will be the first man to touch me?"
The version of the Runcorn Weekly News was that McCormick had said: "And there'll be some trouble for the first man that lays a hand on him [meaning himself]."
Eventually after the Mayor had been hammering away with his gavel for some time, McCormick agreed to resume his seat and his Labour colleague Cllr. Waring stated that the Watch Committee's decision to sack the sergeant had been "one of the biggest scandals and the greatest piece of Prussianism that has ever been done in St Helens."
The sergeant had previous been suspended and then re-instated and the Labour councillors believed the Chief Constable was victimising him.
A bad business if true, although probably not quite the same as the Germans starting WW1!
On the 3rd the Liverpool Echo wrote: "The Sinn Fein campaign of destruction has taken a new turn", as they described how during the night telephone and telegraph wires had been cut around Liverpool, Knowsley and Collins Green.
Their huge operation led to about 300 circuits being affected, with men using motor cars to move quickly from one location to another to undertake their "dastardly work".
In the days before police had radios and police boxes, such hit and run tactics proved highly successful for the extremists – who were usually referred to as "Sinn Fein" in England and "IRA" when in Ireland.
In one instance near St Helens a whole telegraph pole had been chopped down as well as the wires.
However what was occurring on the mainland was pretty minor compared to the brutality that was taking place in Ireland.
Adjacent to the Echo's report was a description of the many incidents that had taken place in the Emerald Isle over the past 24 hours – including an ambush in County Mayo in which a group of 100 IRA men had attacked a 17-member police patrol.
A battle of rifle and machine gun fire lasted for several hours and eight of the police were either dead or expected to die of their injuries.
A month ago I reported on a court case concerning the so-called "crop coal" that was illegally being removed from the shallow mines of St Helens during the coal strike.
These were mainly where seams of disused pits "outcropped" near to the surface and so could be fairly easily accessed.
Two haulage contractors called Richard and Benjamin Hall had been charged with receiving stolen coal from a farmer's field in Parr.
Witnesses gave evidence that the two brothers had bought the coal off the miners illegally working in the field.
And so had lots of other people, including, amazingly, St Helens Corporation's own Gas Department and Walker's Ale of Warrington!
Since then the more than 1,000 miners involved in getting the crop-coal from various sites in St Helens had agreed to stop, as their union said it was damaging their cause.
And two men who had broken ranks and carried on digging had been killed at Glade Hill, at the bottom of Island's Brow.
One might have thought that the latter experience might have acted as a deterrent.
But in desperate times during strikes people do desperate things and some men were still hewing coal from the surface seams.
Others who had given up the practice were being identified and brought to book.
On the 6th forty-eight men were charged by the Parr farmer involved in the Hall brothers case with damaging his crops through digging surface coal.
John Smith told the magistrates in St Helens Police Court that almost half of his ten-acre field had been ruined by the mining activity.
Inspector Bowden gave evidence that thousands of tons of coal had been removed and he predicted that within a short period of time the surface would collapse and "sink in all directions and would be useless for some time to come".
The magistrates fined each of the men 10 shillings and ordered them to each pay damages to Mr Smith of £1 and 5 shillings each towards his legal costs.
Two fully licensed pubs with bowling greens on Lord Derby's estate in Rainford were sold by auction this week.
The Golden Lion went for £4,000 and the Eagle and Child – also in Church Road – was knocked down (not literally!) for £3,300.
On the 7th a motor lorry killed the brother of the late Sir Joseph B. Leach, the St Helens estate agent and founder of the annual New Year's Day poor children's breakfasts.
70-year-old Benjamin Leach was run down near his Eccleston Park home as he attempted to board a tramcar.
These days an ambulance would be summoned to the scene – but public kiosks were yet to be installed.
So the driver, Arthur Neale, picked up Mr Leach from out of the road and drove him to the Pilkington Hospital in Borough Road where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
And finally the non-St Helens item in the Liverpool Echo that caught my eye this week was a series of reflections on the multi-cultural nature of the city in an article headlined "Liverpool's Foreigners":
"In a cosmopolitan city like Liverpool one meets many strange and curious characters. On my first visit I was impressed by the diversity of races in the streets. The majority of these were, of course, sailors seeing the sights.
"I could not help admiring the native grace and dignity of the Indian coolies.
"Poorly clad in cotton clothes and wearing quaint headgear, they walk with that curious, high-stepping gait which is so characteristic of the children of the jungle.
"They gaze at the shops and the magnificent new Liverpool public buildings with a detached air. Their conduct affords a marked contrast to the boisterous behaviour of many of the white sailors.
"The Greek sailors, with their olive complexions and gold ear-rings, have an inordinate love for pretty clothes and cheap jewellery.
"They wear pill-box caps with ornate bands of tinsel, gold braid, and beads. They are of very slender build, but they are extraordinary lithe and active.
"The negro sailor's greatest ambition is to pose as a blasé man about town. He dresses in a most extravagant style. He often mistakes the attention which his extraordinary love of colour attracts for admiration.
"I think the negroes spend quite a large proportion of their earnings on dress. Their clothes are usually of very good quality.
"In marked contrast to the extravagance of the negro is the uniformity of the Chinaman's wearing apparel. Even the wealthy Chinese are conservative in their clothes.
"They like quiet colours, and navy blue is their favourite. The majority of the Liverpool Chinamen wear a navy blue tunic, with patch pockets, blue trousers and either a cap or a bowler hat.
"In the Chinese quarter in Liverpool, the houses are dark. There is the subtle mystery of the East about them. Little children with dark, lank hair and bright, oblique eyes play about the doorways.
"The men, however, appear quiet and inoffensive. They are mostly sailors or laundrymen. Their laundries have a particularly uninviting exterior. However, they turn out good work.
"What particularly impressed me about the Chinese was their thrift. Usually every available penny is sent home."
Next week's stories will include a coroner's fears over the rising road death toll, a Parr club's concerns of losing its licence, the St Helens bigamy case returns to court and the police officer near Knowsley who was fired at by IRA wire cutting desperadoes.