150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 7 - 13 JULY 1875
This week's many stories include criticism of the chosen location for St Helens new post office, the vicious horse that jibbed at every street corner, the Whiston Workhouse master admonished for severely flogging boys, the ex-St Helens grocer said to have spent £1,000 on booze, the mother left penniless by her husband who fainted through lack of food and the two tragic child drownings that took place within half-an-hour of each other.
Buying a horse in the 19th century was similar to buying a second-hand car in modern times. The dealer might make all kinds of promises as to its condition but only time would tell how good it was. In St Helens County Court on the 7th ironfounder James Varley brought an action against Thomas Hatton. The horse dealer and butcher had sold a horse to Varley for £50 and given an assurance that the nag was "quiet in harness and to drive".
But according to Varley the opposite had been the case. Two witnesses gave evidence that after its purchase the animal had run away several times and broken a carriage to which it was attached. One of the witnesses was Richard Varley who stated that the horse was "most unmanageable, jibbing at every street corner it had to pass." Richard Sutton, a hay and straw dealer, also stated that he had ridden the animal to Liverpool and found it "very vicious".
But Hatton refused to take the horse back and eventually James Varley sold the animal at Liverpool but lost nearly £30 on the deal. And so he brought an action for that amount but had made the mistake of hanging onto the horse for too long before complaining, perhaps assuming that it needed time to settle in. As a result the judge ruled in favour of the defendant.
On the 8th in Oldham Police Court, Joseph Murray from St Helens was charged with breaking the windows of a cotton mill and attempting to set it on fire. The Chief Constable stated that it appeared that Murray had been to three or four mills in the neighbourhood with the intention of setting them on fire.
A police constable stated that the middle-aged man had been in the grocery business at St Helens and had been left £1,000, which he had "dissipated in drink". As the average wage was around 25 shillings per week and with beer so cheap, spending £1,000 on booze would take quite some doing! Murray was ordered to pay 50 shillings and costs in each instance, or serve two terms of two months in prison.
Also on the 8th two boys drowned in St Helens in separate tragedies. The first to perish was John Hamlet Norris. The 9-year-old was the son of the landlord of the Red Lion Inn of Robins Lane in Sutton. The boy was playing with other lads near an old gas tank in Sutton Road that was empty, apart from water. John accidentally fell into the water and was drowned before help could be obtained.
About half-an-hour later a one-year-old child called Walter Lawrenson from Parr went out of his home to play. It was very common for toddlers to be allowed out of their houses unsupervised by adults and that inevitably led to a number of accidents. An older sister found Walter dead with his head immersed in a water-filled sinkhole just 17 yards from the rear of his house.
Also on the 8th a meeting of the Prescot Guardians took place. Mr Archer, the master of Whiston Workhouse, was called before the board to be admonished for having what was described as "too severely flogged the boys all round on the night of the 22nd ult., when they were in bed." Flogging boys using a cane or birch rod was considered an acceptable punishment for naughty boys. But Archer had decided to punish all the lads for some offence while they were undressed and in bed and that was considered to be unacceptable.
Bernard Dromgoole, the editor and proprietor of the St Helens Newspaper, was very outspoken and he wrote some highly critical leader columns. On the 8th Dromgoole had the post office in his sights after they had decided to build their new office at the bottom of Bridge Street, near to the Running Horses Inn. "A more inconvenient site or in a worse neighbourhood could scarcely have been picked out," wrote Dromgoole.
The present post office was a small building in Market Street and eventually the Bridge Street decision would be reversed and in 1879 a new office was opened in Church Street. Nearly a hundred years later a post office would be opened in Bridge Street, not far from the site chosen in 1875.
On the 12th an inquest into the death of Ann Hewitt was held at the Golden Lion Inn in Lyon Street in St Helens. The 14-month-old child had pulled a can of hot tea over herself at her Wilson Street home in St Helens (near Boundary Road) and died from the scalding she received three days later.
When Margaret Philips appeared in court on the 12th the St Helens Newspaper described her as an elderly woman. That essentially means she was over 45! But Margaret probably looked considerably older, as many people then had a very hard life, not helped if you slept rough and spent time in prison.
Margaret was charged with sleeping in an entry in Water Street just before midnight on Sunday but, despite looking ancient, Margaret was clearly a defiant sort. In court she vehemently denied being asleep, saying: "How could I be asleep when I answered the officer when he spoke to me?". By waking up first, perhaps? And on leaving the dock after being sentenced to 7 days in prison, Margaret declared: "Seven days is nothing, I can do that easy enough."
It was a temptation for carters to pack as many goods as they could on to carts, as it would cut down the number of trips that they had to make. But there was a limit to the weight their horse or donkey could reasonably haul. Hugh Carter was summoned to the Petty Sessions for ill-treating a donkey through overloading it.
Sergeant Robinson told the court that about noon he had seen the defendant driving a pair of donkeys and a cart containing coal down Combshop Brow, as Croppers Hill used to be called. The weight was evidently too much for the donkey that was in the shafts. The appropriately named Hugh Carter told the officer that the weight was 14 cwt, which meant each donkey was only pulling 7 cwt. But Sgt Robinson insisted that one animal had the full weight upon it and the man was fined 5 shillings and costs.
Timothy Finn sounds like he was a very unpleasant sort of fellow. He appeared in court charged with neglecting to maintain his wife and four children, who had become chargeable to the Prescot Union. Despite being in work Finn had refused to give his wife any money for the past three weeks. As a result the cashless Mrs Finn had needed to claim relief money for her starving brood and on her way to the relieving officer to ask for some cash she had fainted for lack of food.
It was stated in court that such relief had needed to be granted to the family on more than a dozen occasions over the past year and if it had not been for the assistance of neighbours, Mrs Finn and her children would have starved "many a time". Timothy Finn had about twenty convictions for drunkenness and although he had now become a teetotaller, it was claimed that he had since behaved even worse to his wife. The man was sent to prison for one month.
Sutton Grange (pictured above) was situated off Marshalls Cross Road, almost directly opposite the southern edge of present-day Sutton Park and set back about 50 yards from the road. A self-contained property with much land of its own, the Grange was contiguous with, but separate from Sherdley Park. In 1874 William Blinkhorn, the manager of Sutton Glassworks, had taken over Sutton Grange but he was having a problem with some cows eating his grass.
Ellen Owen had four cows and a pony and for some time she had been letting them loose on Mr Blinkhorn's field. It was claimed that 18 shillings worth of damage had been done but Blinkhorn's farm bailiff / manager told the court that his client did not wish to press for heavy damages as long as Mrs Owen would promise not to trespass again. She was fined a total of 18 shillings, including costs.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the three railway accidents in which two men and a child lost limbs, the violent assault on a constable in Peasley Cross, the death down Gillars Green Colliery and the rationing of the town's water supply.
Buying a horse in the 19th century was similar to buying a second-hand car in modern times. The dealer might make all kinds of promises as to its condition but only time would tell how good it was. In St Helens County Court on the 7th ironfounder James Varley brought an action against Thomas Hatton. The horse dealer and butcher had sold a horse to Varley for £50 and given an assurance that the nag was "quiet in harness and to drive".
But according to Varley the opposite had been the case. Two witnesses gave evidence that after its purchase the animal had run away several times and broken a carriage to which it was attached. One of the witnesses was Richard Varley who stated that the horse was "most unmanageable, jibbing at every street corner it had to pass." Richard Sutton, a hay and straw dealer, also stated that he had ridden the animal to Liverpool and found it "very vicious".
But Hatton refused to take the horse back and eventually James Varley sold the animal at Liverpool but lost nearly £30 on the deal. And so he brought an action for that amount but had made the mistake of hanging onto the horse for too long before complaining, perhaps assuming that it needed time to settle in. As a result the judge ruled in favour of the defendant.
On the 8th in Oldham Police Court, Joseph Murray from St Helens was charged with breaking the windows of a cotton mill and attempting to set it on fire. The Chief Constable stated that it appeared that Murray had been to three or four mills in the neighbourhood with the intention of setting them on fire.
A police constable stated that the middle-aged man had been in the grocery business at St Helens and had been left £1,000, which he had "dissipated in drink". As the average wage was around 25 shillings per week and with beer so cheap, spending £1,000 on booze would take quite some doing! Murray was ordered to pay 50 shillings and costs in each instance, or serve two terms of two months in prison.
Also on the 8th two boys drowned in St Helens in separate tragedies. The first to perish was John Hamlet Norris. The 9-year-old was the son of the landlord of the Red Lion Inn of Robins Lane in Sutton. The boy was playing with other lads near an old gas tank in Sutton Road that was empty, apart from water. John accidentally fell into the water and was drowned before help could be obtained.
About half-an-hour later a one-year-old child called Walter Lawrenson from Parr went out of his home to play. It was very common for toddlers to be allowed out of their houses unsupervised by adults and that inevitably led to a number of accidents. An older sister found Walter dead with his head immersed in a water-filled sinkhole just 17 yards from the rear of his house.
Also on the 8th a meeting of the Prescot Guardians took place. Mr Archer, the master of Whiston Workhouse, was called before the board to be admonished for having what was described as "too severely flogged the boys all round on the night of the 22nd ult., when they were in bed." Flogging boys using a cane or birch rod was considered an acceptable punishment for naughty boys. But Archer had decided to punish all the lads for some offence while they were undressed and in bed and that was considered to be unacceptable.
Bernard Dromgoole, the editor and proprietor of the St Helens Newspaper, was very outspoken and he wrote some highly critical leader columns. On the 8th Dromgoole had the post office in his sights after they had decided to build their new office at the bottom of Bridge Street, near to the Running Horses Inn. "A more inconvenient site or in a worse neighbourhood could scarcely have been picked out," wrote Dromgoole.
The present post office was a small building in Market Street and eventually the Bridge Street decision would be reversed and in 1879 a new office was opened in Church Street. Nearly a hundred years later a post office would be opened in Bridge Street, not far from the site chosen in 1875.
On the 12th an inquest into the death of Ann Hewitt was held at the Golden Lion Inn in Lyon Street in St Helens. The 14-month-old child had pulled a can of hot tea over herself at her Wilson Street home in St Helens (near Boundary Road) and died from the scalding she received three days later.
When Margaret Philips appeared in court on the 12th the St Helens Newspaper described her as an elderly woman. That essentially means she was over 45! But Margaret probably looked considerably older, as many people then had a very hard life, not helped if you slept rough and spent time in prison.
Margaret was charged with sleeping in an entry in Water Street just before midnight on Sunday but, despite looking ancient, Margaret was clearly a defiant sort. In court she vehemently denied being asleep, saying: "How could I be asleep when I answered the officer when he spoke to me?". By waking up first, perhaps? And on leaving the dock after being sentenced to 7 days in prison, Margaret declared: "Seven days is nothing, I can do that easy enough."
It was a temptation for carters to pack as many goods as they could on to carts, as it would cut down the number of trips that they had to make. But there was a limit to the weight their horse or donkey could reasonably haul. Hugh Carter was summoned to the Petty Sessions for ill-treating a donkey through overloading it.
Sergeant Robinson told the court that about noon he had seen the defendant driving a pair of donkeys and a cart containing coal down Combshop Brow, as Croppers Hill used to be called. The weight was evidently too much for the donkey that was in the shafts. The appropriately named Hugh Carter told the officer that the weight was 14 cwt, which meant each donkey was only pulling 7 cwt. But Sgt Robinson insisted that one animal had the full weight upon it and the man was fined 5 shillings and costs.
Timothy Finn sounds like he was a very unpleasant sort of fellow. He appeared in court charged with neglecting to maintain his wife and four children, who had become chargeable to the Prescot Union. Despite being in work Finn had refused to give his wife any money for the past three weeks. As a result the cashless Mrs Finn had needed to claim relief money for her starving brood and on her way to the relieving officer to ask for some cash she had fainted for lack of food.
It was stated in court that such relief had needed to be granted to the family on more than a dozen occasions over the past year and if it had not been for the assistance of neighbours, Mrs Finn and her children would have starved "many a time". Timothy Finn had about twenty convictions for drunkenness and although he had now become a teetotaller, it was claimed that he had since behaved even worse to his wife. The man was sent to prison for one month.
Ellen Owen had four cows and a pony and for some time she had been letting them loose on Mr Blinkhorn's field. It was claimed that 18 shillings worth of damage had been done but Blinkhorn's farm bailiff / manager told the court that his client did not wish to press for heavy damages as long as Mrs Owen would promise not to trespass again. She was fined a total of 18 shillings, including costs.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the three railway accidents in which two men and a child lost limbs, the violent assault on a constable in Peasley Cross, the death down Gillars Green Colliery and the rationing of the town's water supply.
This week's many stories include criticism of the chosen location for St Helens new post office, the vicious horse that jibbed at every street corner, the Whiston Workhouse master admonished for severely flogging boys, the ex-St Helens grocer said to have spent £1,000 on booze, the mother left penniless by her husband who fainted through lack of food and the two tragic child drownings that took place within half-an-hour of each other.
Buying a horse in the 19th century was similar to buying a second-hand car in modern times. The dealer might make all kinds of promises as to its condition but only time would tell how good it was.
In St Helens County Court on the 7th ironfounder James Varley brought an action against Thomas Hatton.
The horse dealer and butcher had sold a horse to Varley for £50 and given an assurance that the nag was "quiet in harness and to drive".
But according to Varley the opposite had been the case. Two witnesses gave evidence that after its purchase the animal had run away several times and broken a carriage to which it was attached.
One of the witnesses was Richard Varley who stated that the horse was "most unmanageable, jibbing at every street corner it had to pass."
Richard Sutton, a hay and straw dealer, also stated that he had ridden the animal to Liverpool and found it "very vicious".
But Hatton refused to take the horse back and eventually James Varley sold the animal at Liverpool but lost nearly £30 on the deal.
And so he brought an action for that amount but had made the mistake of hanging onto the horse for too long before complaining, perhaps assuming that it needed time to settle in.
As a result the judge ruled in favour of the defendant.
On the 8th in Oldham Police Court, Joseph Murray from St Helens was charged with breaking the windows of a cotton mill and attempting to set it on fire.
The Chief Constable stated that it appeared that Murray had been to three or four mills in the neighbourhood with the intention of setting them on fire.
A police constable stated that the middle-aged man had been in the grocery business at St Helens and had been left £1,000, which he had "dissipated in drink".
As the average wage was around 25 shillings per week and with beer so cheap, spending £1,000 on booze would take quite some doing!
Murray was ordered to pay 50 shillings and costs in each instance, or serve two terms of two months in prison.
Also on the 8th two boys drowned in St Helens in separate tragedies.
The first to perish was John Hamlet Norris. The 9-year-old was the son of the landlord of the Red Lion Inn of Robins Lane in Sutton.
The boy was playing with other lads near an old gas tank in Sutton Road that was empty, apart from water.
John accidentally fell into the water and was drowned before help could be obtained.
About half-an-hour later a one-year-old child called Walter Lawrenson from Parr went out of his home to play.
It was very common for toddlers to be allowed out of their houses unsupervised by adults and that inevitably led to a number of accidents.
An older sister found Walter dead with his head immersed in a water-filled sinkhole just 17 yards from the rear of his house.
Also on the 8th a meeting of the Prescot Guardians took place. Mr Archer, the master of Whiston Workhouse, was called before the board to be admonished for having what was described as "too severely flogged the boys all round on the night of the 22nd ult., when they were in bed."
Flogging boys using a cane or birch rod was considered an acceptable punishment for naughty boys.
But Archer had decided to punish all the lads for some offence while they were undressed and in bed and that was considered to be unacceptable.
Bernard Dromgoole, the editor and proprietor of the St Helens Newspaper, was very outspoken and he wrote some highly critical leader columns.
On the 8th Dromgoole had the post office in his sights after they had decided to build their new office at the bottom of Bridge Street, near to the Running Horses Inn.
"A more inconvenient site or in a worse neighbourhood could scarcely have been picked out," wrote Dromgoole.
The present post office was a small building in Market Street and eventually the Bridge Street decision would be reversed and in 1879 a new office was opened in Church Street.
Nearly a hundred years later a post office would be opened in Bridge Street, not far from the site chosen in 1875.
On the 12th an inquest into the death of Ann Hewitt was held at the Golden Lion Inn in Lyon Street in St Helens.
The 14-month-old child had pulled a can of hot tea over herself at her Wilson Street home in St Helens (near Boundary Road) and died from the scalding she received three days later.
When Margaret Philips appeared in court on the 12th the St Helens Newspaper described her as an elderly woman. That essentially means she was over 45!
But Margaret probably looked considerably older, as many people then had a very hard life, not helped if you slept rough and spent time in prison.
Margaret was charged with sleeping in an entry in Water Street just before midnight on Sunday but, despite looking ancient, Margaret was clearly a defiant sort.
In court she vehemently denied being asleep, saying: "How could I be asleep when I answered the officer when he spoke to me?". By waking up first, perhaps?
And on leaving the dock after being sentenced to 7 days in prison, Margaret declared: "Seven days is nothing, I can do that easy enough."
It was a temptation for carters to pack as many goods as they could on to carts, as it would cut down the number of trips that they had to make. But there was a limit to the weight their horse or donkey could reasonably haul.
Hugh Carter was summoned to the Petty Sessions for ill-treating a donkey through overloading it.
Sergeant Robinson told the court that about noon he had seen the defendant driving a pair of donkeys and a cart containing coal down Combshop Brow, as Croppers Hill used to be called.
The weight was evidently too much for the donkey that was in the shafts.
The appropriately named Hugh Carter told the officer that the weight was 14 cwt, which meant each donkey was only pulling 7 cwt.
But Sgt Robinson insisted that one animal had the full weight upon it and the man was fined 5 shillings and costs.
Timothy Finn sounds like he was a very unpleasant sort of fellow. He appeared in court charged with neglecting to maintain his wife and four children, who had become chargeable to the Prescot Union.
Despite being in work Finn had refused to give his wife any money for the past three weeks.
As a result the cashless Mrs Finn had needed to claim relief money for her starving brood and on her way to the relieving officer to ask for some cash she had fainted for lack of food.
It was stated in court that such relief had needed to be granted to the family on more than a dozen occasions over the past year and if it had not been for the assistance of neighbours, Mrs Finn and her children would have starved "many a time".
Timothy Finn had about twenty convictions for drunkenness and although he had now become a teetotaller, it was claimed that he had since behaved even worse to his wife.
The man was sent to prison for one month.
Sutton Grange (pictured above) was situated off Marshalls Cross Road, almost directly opposite the southern edge of present-day Sutton Park and set back about 50 yards from the road.
A self-contained property with much land of its own, the Grange was contiguous with, but separate from Sherdley Park.
In 1874 William Blinkhorn, the manager of Sutton Glassworks, had taken over Sutton Grange but he was having a problem with some cows eating his grass.
Ellen Owen had four cows and a pony and for some time she had been letting them loose on Mr Blinkhorn's field.
It was claimed that 18 shillings worth of damage had been done but Blinkhorn's farm bailiff / manager told the court that his client did not wish to press for heavy damages as long as Mrs Owen would promise not to trespass again. She was fined a total of 18 shillings, including costs.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the three railway accidents in which two men and a child lost limbs, the violent assault on a constable in Peasley Cross, the death down Gillars Green Colliery and the rationing of the town's water supply.
Buying a horse in the 19th century was similar to buying a second-hand car in modern times. The dealer might make all kinds of promises as to its condition but only time would tell how good it was.
In St Helens County Court on the 7th ironfounder James Varley brought an action against Thomas Hatton.
The horse dealer and butcher had sold a horse to Varley for £50 and given an assurance that the nag was "quiet in harness and to drive".
But according to Varley the opposite had been the case. Two witnesses gave evidence that after its purchase the animal had run away several times and broken a carriage to which it was attached.
One of the witnesses was Richard Varley who stated that the horse was "most unmanageable, jibbing at every street corner it had to pass."
Richard Sutton, a hay and straw dealer, also stated that he had ridden the animal to Liverpool and found it "very vicious".
But Hatton refused to take the horse back and eventually James Varley sold the animal at Liverpool but lost nearly £30 on the deal.
And so he brought an action for that amount but had made the mistake of hanging onto the horse for too long before complaining, perhaps assuming that it needed time to settle in.
As a result the judge ruled in favour of the defendant.
On the 8th in Oldham Police Court, Joseph Murray from St Helens was charged with breaking the windows of a cotton mill and attempting to set it on fire.
The Chief Constable stated that it appeared that Murray had been to three or four mills in the neighbourhood with the intention of setting them on fire.
A police constable stated that the middle-aged man had been in the grocery business at St Helens and had been left £1,000, which he had "dissipated in drink".
As the average wage was around 25 shillings per week and with beer so cheap, spending £1,000 on booze would take quite some doing!
Murray was ordered to pay 50 shillings and costs in each instance, or serve two terms of two months in prison.
Also on the 8th two boys drowned in St Helens in separate tragedies.
The first to perish was John Hamlet Norris. The 9-year-old was the son of the landlord of the Red Lion Inn of Robins Lane in Sutton.
The boy was playing with other lads near an old gas tank in Sutton Road that was empty, apart from water.
John accidentally fell into the water and was drowned before help could be obtained.
About half-an-hour later a one-year-old child called Walter Lawrenson from Parr went out of his home to play.
It was very common for toddlers to be allowed out of their houses unsupervised by adults and that inevitably led to a number of accidents.
An older sister found Walter dead with his head immersed in a water-filled sinkhole just 17 yards from the rear of his house.
Also on the 8th a meeting of the Prescot Guardians took place. Mr Archer, the master of Whiston Workhouse, was called before the board to be admonished for having what was described as "too severely flogged the boys all round on the night of the 22nd ult., when they were in bed."
Flogging boys using a cane or birch rod was considered an acceptable punishment for naughty boys.
But Archer had decided to punish all the lads for some offence while they were undressed and in bed and that was considered to be unacceptable.
Bernard Dromgoole, the editor and proprietor of the St Helens Newspaper, was very outspoken and he wrote some highly critical leader columns.
On the 8th Dromgoole had the post office in his sights after they had decided to build their new office at the bottom of Bridge Street, near to the Running Horses Inn.
"A more inconvenient site or in a worse neighbourhood could scarcely have been picked out," wrote Dromgoole.
The present post office was a small building in Market Street and eventually the Bridge Street decision would be reversed and in 1879 a new office was opened in Church Street.
Nearly a hundred years later a post office would be opened in Bridge Street, not far from the site chosen in 1875.
On the 12th an inquest into the death of Ann Hewitt was held at the Golden Lion Inn in Lyon Street in St Helens.
The 14-month-old child had pulled a can of hot tea over herself at her Wilson Street home in St Helens (near Boundary Road) and died from the scalding she received three days later.
When Margaret Philips appeared in court on the 12th the St Helens Newspaper described her as an elderly woman. That essentially means she was over 45!
But Margaret probably looked considerably older, as many people then had a very hard life, not helped if you slept rough and spent time in prison.
Margaret was charged with sleeping in an entry in Water Street just before midnight on Sunday but, despite looking ancient, Margaret was clearly a defiant sort.
In court she vehemently denied being asleep, saying: "How could I be asleep when I answered the officer when he spoke to me?". By waking up first, perhaps?
And on leaving the dock after being sentenced to 7 days in prison, Margaret declared: "Seven days is nothing, I can do that easy enough."
It was a temptation for carters to pack as many goods as they could on to carts, as it would cut down the number of trips that they had to make. But there was a limit to the weight their horse or donkey could reasonably haul.
Hugh Carter was summoned to the Petty Sessions for ill-treating a donkey through overloading it.
Sergeant Robinson told the court that about noon he had seen the defendant driving a pair of donkeys and a cart containing coal down Combshop Brow, as Croppers Hill used to be called.
The weight was evidently too much for the donkey that was in the shafts.
The appropriately named Hugh Carter told the officer that the weight was 14 cwt, which meant each donkey was only pulling 7 cwt.
But Sgt Robinson insisted that one animal had the full weight upon it and the man was fined 5 shillings and costs.
Timothy Finn sounds like he was a very unpleasant sort of fellow. He appeared in court charged with neglecting to maintain his wife and four children, who had become chargeable to the Prescot Union.
Despite being in work Finn had refused to give his wife any money for the past three weeks.
As a result the cashless Mrs Finn had needed to claim relief money for her starving brood and on her way to the relieving officer to ask for some cash she had fainted for lack of food.
It was stated in court that such relief had needed to be granted to the family on more than a dozen occasions over the past year and if it had not been for the assistance of neighbours, Mrs Finn and her children would have starved "many a time".
Timothy Finn had about twenty convictions for drunkenness and although he had now become a teetotaller, it was claimed that he had since behaved even worse to his wife.
The man was sent to prison for one month.
A self-contained property with much land of its own, the Grange was contiguous with, but separate from Sherdley Park.
In 1874 William Blinkhorn, the manager of Sutton Glassworks, had taken over Sutton Grange but he was having a problem with some cows eating his grass.
Ellen Owen had four cows and a pony and for some time she had been letting them loose on Mr Blinkhorn's field.
It was claimed that 18 shillings worth of damage had been done but Blinkhorn's farm bailiff / manager told the court that his client did not wish to press for heavy damages as long as Mrs Owen would promise not to trespass again. She was fined a total of 18 shillings, including costs.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the three railway accidents in which two men and a child lost limbs, the violent assault on a constable in Peasley Cross, the death down Gillars Green Colliery and the rationing of the town's water supply.