150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (9 - 15 OCTOBER 1873)
This week's many stories include the men charged with attempted murder, the arrangements for the laying of the foundation stone for the new Town Hall, the no-show St Helens magistrates, the defence of a violent wife-beater, a notorious female impersonator comes to St Helens and the Nutgrove granddad who told a court that his grandson was only a distant relative.
The St Helens Newspaper regularly complained about the magistrates in St Helens Petty Sessions prioritising their business affairs over their magisterial duties. Often they failed to turn up to court, which caused huge inconvenience to many people. Members of the Pilkington glass family dominated the St Helens Bench and they regularly failed to appear in the courtroom. On the 11th the Wigan Observer described how Pilkingtons in prosecuting some of their own workers had experienced the same inconvenience that they caused others:
"The sessional business of the division suffers much delay and inconvenience through the difficulty of obtaining magistrates. Every week the same complaint arises more or less. Several master and servant cases, entered by Messrs. Pilkington, glass manufactures, have been adjourned weekly, as it seems impossible to secure a bench unless one or more of the members of the firm give their attendance, and they cannot hear cases in which they are the complainants. The dissatisfaction at this state of things is universal."
During the evening of the 11th a "ventriloquial, mimic & personation entertainment, & grand concert" was presented in the Volunteer Hall in St Helens by a man called Ernest Boulton. Before the days of radio, TV and film very few people knew how famous people sounded like – or even looked like. And so impersonators concentrated on cross-dressing. Men performed as feminine characters and women as males.
However, Ernest Boulton was famous in his own right after having been put on trial with others in 1870 charged with "conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence". Boulton created suspicion by wearing women's clothes in private and even had to endure the indignity of being medically examined by doctors to show he had not engaged in "unnatural offences".
The insinuation was that Boulton went further than simply acting as a woman for entertainment purposes. There was plenty of suspicion but insufficient evidence to prove guilt and so Boulton and the other defendants were all cleared. And so he was now cashing in on his notoriety, touring the country with his "high-class variety company".
It was a crime for a man to abdicate his responsibilities to his family, with the law on the subject stating: "Every person running away and leaving his wife, or his or her child or children chargeable to any parish, shall be deemed a rogue and vagabond." The parish was the poor law authority, which for the St Helens district meant the Prescot Union at Whiston.
Their Guardians ran the workhouse and supported destitute persons in the community – although the payments they provided were meagre. If the runaway husband reappeared then the Guardians would try and get their money back, with prison the ultimate destination for those that refused to cough up. However, other male family members could be seen as financially responsible for relatives in need, even if they lived elsewhere.
And so a son or grandson might be taken to court if their father or grandfather became destitute and if they refused to contribute to their maintenance. That might be on the grounds that they earned very little and had a large family of their own to support. But James Lunt's appearance in the St Helens Petty Sessions this week was an unusual one. The 49-year-old from Nutgrove was summoned to make weekly payments for the support of his grandson, after the boy's father had disappeared.
That was after magistrates had issued an order for the father to pay 2s 6d a week towards the support of his wife and child. The Prescot Guardians now wanted that responsibility transferring to the grandfather, as Lunt Snr was working as a bricksetter and no longer had any children of his own to keep. But James Lunt's solicitor, Thomas Swift, was outraged by the demand, claiming that the granddad was only a distant relative of the boy and adding:
"It was never intended that labouring men should be driven to pauperism to relieve a chance pauper holding a distant relationship to him." One would have thought that a granddad was far from being a distant relative. However, the Bench decided to compromise and issued an order for James Lunt to contribute one shilling a week towards his grandson's maintenance.
In February 1874 Benjamin Disraeli would become Prime Minister for the second time. On the 11th the leader of the opposition arrived at Knowsley Hall where he spent the weekend as a guest of Lord Derby.
The 12th was a Sunday and collections in aid of the new Cottage Hospital took place in the parish churches of Sutton and Rainhill and in several Catholic churches in St Helens. There was still some hostility to the new hospital and commenting on the collections, the St Helens Newspaper wrote: "The willingness of the clergy to devote a Sunday to this object is by no means general."
At the beginning of the month St Helens Town Council decided that the Mayor should lay the foundation stone of the new Town Hall. The date was set for November 6th and a committee was formed to organise the event. On the 13th the committee held its first meeting and Cllr. Bishop spoke of the "advisability of bringing ladies into the celebration", as the Newspaper put it.
He was not referring to its organisation or their presence at the ceremony itself. Those were the preserves of the men! But Cllr. Bishop thought that after the stone-laying ceremony had taken place, a luncheon should be held and the ladies could be there to decorate the event. Tickets, he suggested, should cost a guinea. Twenty-one shillings was more than many people then earned in a week but the cost would make it more exclusive and the committee accepted his idea.
They later decided that those with a luncheon ticket should have access to a viewing platform to watch the stone laying take place. It was also proposed that a ball be held at night but no ticket price was set. Henry Sumner was the architect of the new Town Hall and he informed the meeting that the foundation or memorial stone would be a large block of granite and laid beneath the window of the Mayor's parlour.
A simmering dispute between two lodgers that ended in a very violent assault was described in St Helens Police Court on the 13th. Thomas Swift was prosecuting and told the magistrates that no amount of "wordy provocation" could justify the attack that a witness said had left blood streaming from John Meredith's face "like water". The defendant John Mackay claimed that Meredith had given him "constant provocation", and he could not help the assault. The Chairman told Mackay that he would be fined 40 shillings and costs.
In the next case Thomas Swift represented the defendant and tried his hardest to get a wife-beater off a charge of assault, simply because the poor woman had on one occasion fought back against her brutal husband. Catherine Corcoran described the incident that led to the court hearing, telling the Bench that her husband Patrick had come home and immediately began beating her.
To escape his violence Mrs Corcoran had dashed out into the street but her husband caught her, knocked her down and started dragging her about. Several women screamed "murder", and she said it required what was described as "violent exertion" on the part of another man to save her. Catherine complained of her husband's general cruelty and abuse during their marriage. But while being cross-examined by Thomas Swift, she had to admit having once retaliated. The Newspaper wrote:
"In the course of cross-examination it was elicited that she had not let the defendant have the fighting all to himself, for she caught up a can and gave him such a blow upon the eye that the optic went into immediate mourning, and wept tears of blood. "Mr. Swift made a very lengthened speech, to convince the magistrates that the case should be dismissed, but they fined him [Patrick Corcoran] 20s. and costs."
On the 14th James Fagan and Patrick Thompson were charged in St Helens Petty Sessions with the attempted murder of William Power by drowning. The latter told the court that on the previous Saturday night after leaving Cleary's pub on the canal bank he'd got into a squabble with Fagan and Thompson. The pair attacked him and threw him into the water, which was described as "almost poisonous" at that spot.
When Power attempted to climb back up the bank, the two men flung him back in. Eventually, he said, he managed to get out of the water and run away but his assailants pursued him. It was only with great difficulty that Power managed to get to the Greenbank Alkali works, where he was able to take refuge. The case was remanded for three days for further inquiries. But when it returned to court the two men had lots of witnesses to claim they were somewhere else at the time of the incident and the charges were ultimately dismissed.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the violent assault on St Helens Junction's stationmaster, the Bold youth imprisoned for stealing bread, Lowe House's lending library and the abominable act by a Rainford policeman.
The St Helens Newspaper regularly complained about the magistrates in St Helens Petty Sessions prioritising their business affairs over their magisterial duties. Often they failed to turn up to court, which caused huge inconvenience to many people. Members of the Pilkington glass family dominated the St Helens Bench and they regularly failed to appear in the courtroom. On the 11th the Wigan Observer described how Pilkingtons in prosecuting some of their own workers had experienced the same inconvenience that they caused others:
"The sessional business of the division suffers much delay and inconvenience through the difficulty of obtaining magistrates. Every week the same complaint arises more or less. Several master and servant cases, entered by Messrs. Pilkington, glass manufactures, have been adjourned weekly, as it seems impossible to secure a bench unless one or more of the members of the firm give their attendance, and they cannot hear cases in which they are the complainants. The dissatisfaction at this state of things is universal."
During the evening of the 11th a "ventriloquial, mimic & personation entertainment, & grand concert" was presented in the Volunteer Hall in St Helens by a man called Ernest Boulton. Before the days of radio, TV and film very few people knew how famous people sounded like – or even looked like. And so impersonators concentrated on cross-dressing. Men performed as feminine characters and women as males.
However, Ernest Boulton was famous in his own right after having been put on trial with others in 1870 charged with "conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence". Boulton created suspicion by wearing women's clothes in private and even had to endure the indignity of being medically examined by doctors to show he had not engaged in "unnatural offences".
The insinuation was that Boulton went further than simply acting as a woman for entertainment purposes. There was plenty of suspicion but insufficient evidence to prove guilt and so Boulton and the other defendants were all cleared. And so he was now cashing in on his notoriety, touring the country with his "high-class variety company".
It was a crime for a man to abdicate his responsibilities to his family, with the law on the subject stating: "Every person running away and leaving his wife, or his or her child or children chargeable to any parish, shall be deemed a rogue and vagabond." The parish was the poor law authority, which for the St Helens district meant the Prescot Union at Whiston.
Their Guardians ran the workhouse and supported destitute persons in the community – although the payments they provided were meagre. If the runaway husband reappeared then the Guardians would try and get their money back, with prison the ultimate destination for those that refused to cough up. However, other male family members could be seen as financially responsible for relatives in need, even if they lived elsewhere.
And so a son or grandson might be taken to court if their father or grandfather became destitute and if they refused to contribute to their maintenance. That might be on the grounds that they earned very little and had a large family of their own to support. But James Lunt's appearance in the St Helens Petty Sessions this week was an unusual one. The 49-year-old from Nutgrove was summoned to make weekly payments for the support of his grandson, after the boy's father had disappeared.
That was after magistrates had issued an order for the father to pay 2s 6d a week towards the support of his wife and child. The Prescot Guardians now wanted that responsibility transferring to the grandfather, as Lunt Snr was working as a bricksetter and no longer had any children of his own to keep. But James Lunt's solicitor, Thomas Swift, was outraged by the demand, claiming that the granddad was only a distant relative of the boy and adding:
"It was never intended that labouring men should be driven to pauperism to relieve a chance pauper holding a distant relationship to him." One would have thought that a granddad was far from being a distant relative. However, the Bench decided to compromise and issued an order for James Lunt to contribute one shilling a week towards his grandson's maintenance.
The 12th was a Sunday and collections in aid of the new Cottage Hospital took place in the parish churches of Sutton and Rainhill and in several Catholic churches in St Helens. There was still some hostility to the new hospital and commenting on the collections, the St Helens Newspaper wrote: "The willingness of the clergy to devote a Sunday to this object is by no means general."
At the beginning of the month St Helens Town Council decided that the Mayor should lay the foundation stone of the new Town Hall. The date was set for November 6th and a committee was formed to organise the event. On the 13th the committee held its first meeting and Cllr. Bishop spoke of the "advisability of bringing ladies into the celebration", as the Newspaper put it.
He was not referring to its organisation or their presence at the ceremony itself. Those were the preserves of the men! But Cllr. Bishop thought that after the stone-laying ceremony had taken place, a luncheon should be held and the ladies could be there to decorate the event. Tickets, he suggested, should cost a guinea. Twenty-one shillings was more than many people then earned in a week but the cost would make it more exclusive and the committee accepted his idea.
They later decided that those with a luncheon ticket should have access to a viewing platform to watch the stone laying take place. It was also proposed that a ball be held at night but no ticket price was set. Henry Sumner was the architect of the new Town Hall and he informed the meeting that the foundation or memorial stone would be a large block of granite and laid beneath the window of the Mayor's parlour.
A simmering dispute between two lodgers that ended in a very violent assault was described in St Helens Police Court on the 13th. Thomas Swift was prosecuting and told the magistrates that no amount of "wordy provocation" could justify the attack that a witness said had left blood streaming from John Meredith's face "like water". The defendant John Mackay claimed that Meredith had given him "constant provocation", and he could not help the assault. The Chairman told Mackay that he would be fined 40 shillings and costs.
In the next case Thomas Swift represented the defendant and tried his hardest to get a wife-beater off a charge of assault, simply because the poor woman had on one occasion fought back against her brutal husband. Catherine Corcoran described the incident that led to the court hearing, telling the Bench that her husband Patrick had come home and immediately began beating her.
To escape his violence Mrs Corcoran had dashed out into the street but her husband caught her, knocked her down and started dragging her about. Several women screamed "murder", and she said it required what was described as "violent exertion" on the part of another man to save her. Catherine complained of her husband's general cruelty and abuse during their marriage. But while being cross-examined by Thomas Swift, she had to admit having once retaliated. The Newspaper wrote:
"In the course of cross-examination it was elicited that she had not let the defendant have the fighting all to himself, for she caught up a can and gave him such a blow upon the eye that the optic went into immediate mourning, and wept tears of blood. "Mr. Swift made a very lengthened speech, to convince the magistrates that the case should be dismissed, but they fined him [Patrick Corcoran] 20s. and costs."
On the 14th James Fagan and Patrick Thompson were charged in St Helens Petty Sessions with the attempted murder of William Power by drowning. The latter told the court that on the previous Saturday night after leaving Cleary's pub on the canal bank he'd got into a squabble with Fagan and Thompson. The pair attacked him and threw him into the water, which was described as "almost poisonous" at that spot.
When Power attempted to climb back up the bank, the two men flung him back in. Eventually, he said, he managed to get out of the water and run away but his assailants pursued him. It was only with great difficulty that Power managed to get to the Greenbank Alkali works, where he was able to take refuge. The case was remanded for three days for further inquiries. But when it returned to court the two men had lots of witnesses to claim they were somewhere else at the time of the incident and the charges were ultimately dismissed.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the violent assault on St Helens Junction's stationmaster, the Bold youth imprisoned for stealing bread, Lowe House's lending library and the abominable act by a Rainford policeman.
This week's many stories include the men charged with attempted murder, the arrangements for the laying of the foundation stone for the new Town Hall, the no-show St Helens magistrates, the defence of a violent wife-beater, a notorious female impersonator comes to St Helens and the Nutgrove granddad who told a court that his grandson was only a distant relative.
The St Helens Newspaper regularly complained about the magistrates in St Helens Petty Sessions prioritising their business affairs over their magisterial duties.
Often they failed to turn up to court, which caused huge inconvenience to many people.
Members of the Pilkington glass family dominated the St Helens Bench and they regularly failed to appear in the courtroom.
On the 11th the Wigan Observer described how Pilkingtons in prosecuting some of their own workers had experienced the same inconvenience that they caused others:
"The sessional business of the division suffers much delay and inconvenience through the difficulty of obtaining magistrates. Every week the same complaint arises more or less.
"Several master and servant cases, entered by Messrs. Pilkington, glass manufactures, have been adjourned weekly, as it seems impossible to secure a bench unless one or more of the members of the firm give their attendance, and they cannot hear cases in which they are the complainants. The dissatisfaction at this state of things is universal."
During the evening of the 11th a "ventriloquial, mimic & personation entertainment, & grand concert" was presented in the Volunteer Hall in St Helens by a man called Ernest Boulton.
Before the days of radio, TV and film very few people knew how famous people sounded like – or even looked like.
And so impersonators concentrated on cross-dressing. Men performed as feminine characters and women as males.
However, Ernest Boulton was famous in his own right after having been put on trial with others in 1870 charged with "conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence".
Boulton created suspicion by wearing women's clothes in private and even had to endure the indignity of being medically examined by doctors to show he had not engaged in "unnatural offences".
The insinuation was that Boulton went further than simply acting as a woman for entertainment purposes.
There was plenty of suspicion but insufficient evidence to prove guilt and so Boulton and the other defendants were all cleared.
And so he was now cashing in on his notoriety, touring the country with his "high-class variety company".
It was a crime for a man to abdicate his responsibilities to his family, with the law on the subject stating:
"Every person running away and leaving his wife, or his or her child or children chargeable to any parish, shall be deemed a rogue and vagabond."
The parish was the poor law authority, which for the St Helens district meant the Prescot Union at Whiston.
Their Guardians ran the workhouse and supported destitute persons in the community – although the payments they provided were meagre.
If the runaway husband reappeared then the Guardians would try and get their money back, with prison the ultimate destination for those that refused to cough up.
However, other male family members could be seen as financially responsible for relatives in need, even if they lived elsewhere.
And so a son or grandson might be taken to court if their father or grandfather became destitute and if they refused to contribute to their maintenance.
That might be on the grounds that they earned very little and had a large family of their own to support.
But James Lunt's appearance in the St Helens Petty Sessions this week was an unusual one.
The 49-year-old from Nutgrove was summoned to make weekly payments for the support of his grandson, after the boy's father had disappeared.
That was after magistrates had issued an order for the father to pay 2s 6d a week towards the support of his wife and child.
The Prescot Guardians now wanted that responsibility transferring to the grandfather, as Lunt Snr was working as a bricksetter and no longer had any children of his own to keep.
But James Lunt's solicitor, Thomas Swift, was outraged by the demand, claiming that the granddad was only a distant relative of the boy and adding:
"It was never intended that labouring men should be driven to pauperism to relieve a chance pauper holding a distant relationship to him."
One would have thought that a granddad was far from being a distant relative. However, the Bench decided to compromise and issued an order for James Lunt to contribute one shilling a week towards his grandson's maintenance.
In February 1874 Benjamin Disraeli would become Prime Minister for the second time.
On the 11th the leader of the opposition arrived at Knowsley Hall where he spent the weekend as a guest of Lord Derby.
The 12th was a Sunday and collections in aid of the new Cottage Hospital took place in the parish churches of Sutton and Rainhill and in several Catholic churches in St Helens.
There was still some hostility to the new hospital and commenting on the collections, the St Helens Newspaper wrote:
"The willingness of the clergy to devote a Sunday to this object is by no means general."
At the beginning of the month St Helens Town Council decided that the Mayor should lay the foundation stone of the new Town Hall.
The date was set for November 6th and a committee was formed to organise the event.
On the 13th the committee held its first meeting and Cllr. Bishop spoke of the "advisability of bringing ladies into the celebration", as the Newspaper put it.
He was not referring to its organisation or their presence at the ceremony itself. Those were the preserves of the men!
But Cllr. Bishop thought that after the stone-laying ceremony had taken place, a luncheon should be held and the ladies could be there to decorate the event.
Tickets, he suggested, should cost a guinea. Twenty-one shillings was more than many people then earned in a week but the cost would make it more exclusive and the committee accepted his idea.
They later decided that those with a luncheon ticket should have access to a viewing platform to watch the stone laying take place. It was also proposed that a ball be held at night but no ticket price was set.
Henry Sumner was the architect of the new Town Hall and he informed the meeting that the foundation or memorial stone would be a large block of granite and laid beneath the window of the Mayor's parlour.
A simmering dispute between two lodgers that ended in a very violent assault was described in St Helens Police Court on the 13th.
Thomas Swift was prosecuting and told the magistrates that no amount of "wordy provocation" could justify the attack that a witness said had left blood streaming from John Meredith's face "like water".
The defendant John Mackay claimed that Meredith had given him "constant provocation", and he could not help the assault. The Chairman told Mackay that he would be fined 40 shillings and costs.
In the next case Thomas Swift represented the defendant and tried his hardest to get a wife-beater off a charge of assault, simply because the poor woman had on one occasion fought back against her brutal husband.
Catherine Corcoran described the incident that led to the court hearing, telling the Bench that her husband Patrick had come home and immediately began beating her.
To escape his violence Mrs Corcoran had dashed out into the street but her husband caught her, knocked her down and started dragging her about.
Several women screamed "murder", and she said it required what was described as "violent exertion" on the part of another man to save her.
Catherine complained of her husband's general cruelty and abuse during their marriage.
But while being cross-examined by Thomas Swift, she had to admit having once retaliated. The Newspaper wrote:
"In the course of cross-examination it was elicited that she had not let the defendant have the fighting all to himself, for she caught up a can and gave him such a blow upon the eye that the optic went into immediate mourning, and wept tears of blood.
"Mr. Swift made a very lengthened speech, to convince the magistrates that the case should be dismissed, but they fined him [Patrick Corcoran] 20s. and costs."
On the 14th James Fagan and Patrick Thompson were charged in St Helens Petty Sessions with the attempted murder of William Power by drowning.
The latter told the court that on the previous Saturday night after leaving Cleary's pub on the canal bank he'd got into a squabble with Fagan and Thompson.
The pair attacked him and threw him into the water, which was described as "almost poisonous" at that spot.
When Power attempted to climb back up the bank, the two men flung him back in. Eventually, he said, he managed to get out of the water and run away but his assailants pursued him.
It was only with great difficulty that Power managed to get to the Greenbank Alkali works, where he was able to take refuge. The case was remanded for three days for further inquiries.
But when it returned to court the two men had lots of witnesses to claim they were somewhere else at the time of the incident and the charges were ultimately dismissed.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the violent assault on St Helens Junction's stationmaster, the Bold youth imprisoned for stealing bread, Lowe House's lending library and the abominable act by a Rainford policeman.
The St Helens Newspaper regularly complained about the magistrates in St Helens Petty Sessions prioritising their business affairs over their magisterial duties.
Often they failed to turn up to court, which caused huge inconvenience to many people.
Members of the Pilkington glass family dominated the St Helens Bench and they regularly failed to appear in the courtroom.
On the 11th the Wigan Observer described how Pilkingtons in prosecuting some of their own workers had experienced the same inconvenience that they caused others:
"The sessional business of the division suffers much delay and inconvenience through the difficulty of obtaining magistrates. Every week the same complaint arises more or less.
"Several master and servant cases, entered by Messrs. Pilkington, glass manufactures, have been adjourned weekly, as it seems impossible to secure a bench unless one or more of the members of the firm give their attendance, and they cannot hear cases in which they are the complainants. The dissatisfaction at this state of things is universal."
During the evening of the 11th a "ventriloquial, mimic & personation entertainment, & grand concert" was presented in the Volunteer Hall in St Helens by a man called Ernest Boulton.
Before the days of radio, TV and film very few people knew how famous people sounded like – or even looked like.
And so impersonators concentrated on cross-dressing. Men performed as feminine characters and women as males.
However, Ernest Boulton was famous in his own right after having been put on trial with others in 1870 charged with "conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence".
Boulton created suspicion by wearing women's clothes in private and even had to endure the indignity of being medically examined by doctors to show he had not engaged in "unnatural offences".
The insinuation was that Boulton went further than simply acting as a woman for entertainment purposes.
There was plenty of suspicion but insufficient evidence to prove guilt and so Boulton and the other defendants were all cleared.
And so he was now cashing in on his notoriety, touring the country with his "high-class variety company".
It was a crime for a man to abdicate his responsibilities to his family, with the law on the subject stating:
"Every person running away and leaving his wife, or his or her child or children chargeable to any parish, shall be deemed a rogue and vagabond."
The parish was the poor law authority, which for the St Helens district meant the Prescot Union at Whiston.
Their Guardians ran the workhouse and supported destitute persons in the community – although the payments they provided were meagre.
If the runaway husband reappeared then the Guardians would try and get their money back, with prison the ultimate destination for those that refused to cough up.
However, other male family members could be seen as financially responsible for relatives in need, even if they lived elsewhere.
And so a son or grandson might be taken to court if their father or grandfather became destitute and if they refused to contribute to their maintenance.
That might be on the grounds that they earned very little and had a large family of their own to support.
But James Lunt's appearance in the St Helens Petty Sessions this week was an unusual one.
The 49-year-old from Nutgrove was summoned to make weekly payments for the support of his grandson, after the boy's father had disappeared.
That was after magistrates had issued an order for the father to pay 2s 6d a week towards the support of his wife and child.
The Prescot Guardians now wanted that responsibility transferring to the grandfather, as Lunt Snr was working as a bricksetter and no longer had any children of his own to keep.
But James Lunt's solicitor, Thomas Swift, was outraged by the demand, claiming that the granddad was only a distant relative of the boy and adding:
"It was never intended that labouring men should be driven to pauperism to relieve a chance pauper holding a distant relationship to him."
One would have thought that a granddad was far from being a distant relative. However, the Bench decided to compromise and issued an order for James Lunt to contribute one shilling a week towards his grandson's maintenance.
On the 11th the leader of the opposition arrived at Knowsley Hall where he spent the weekend as a guest of Lord Derby.
The 12th was a Sunday and collections in aid of the new Cottage Hospital took place in the parish churches of Sutton and Rainhill and in several Catholic churches in St Helens.
There was still some hostility to the new hospital and commenting on the collections, the St Helens Newspaper wrote:
"The willingness of the clergy to devote a Sunday to this object is by no means general."
At the beginning of the month St Helens Town Council decided that the Mayor should lay the foundation stone of the new Town Hall.
The date was set for November 6th and a committee was formed to organise the event.
On the 13th the committee held its first meeting and Cllr. Bishop spoke of the "advisability of bringing ladies into the celebration", as the Newspaper put it.
He was not referring to its organisation or their presence at the ceremony itself. Those were the preserves of the men!
But Cllr. Bishop thought that after the stone-laying ceremony had taken place, a luncheon should be held and the ladies could be there to decorate the event.
Tickets, he suggested, should cost a guinea. Twenty-one shillings was more than many people then earned in a week but the cost would make it more exclusive and the committee accepted his idea.
They later decided that those with a luncheon ticket should have access to a viewing platform to watch the stone laying take place. It was also proposed that a ball be held at night but no ticket price was set.
Henry Sumner was the architect of the new Town Hall and he informed the meeting that the foundation or memorial stone would be a large block of granite and laid beneath the window of the Mayor's parlour.
A simmering dispute between two lodgers that ended in a very violent assault was described in St Helens Police Court on the 13th.
Thomas Swift was prosecuting and told the magistrates that no amount of "wordy provocation" could justify the attack that a witness said had left blood streaming from John Meredith's face "like water".
The defendant John Mackay claimed that Meredith had given him "constant provocation", and he could not help the assault. The Chairman told Mackay that he would be fined 40 shillings and costs.
In the next case Thomas Swift represented the defendant and tried his hardest to get a wife-beater off a charge of assault, simply because the poor woman had on one occasion fought back against her brutal husband.
Catherine Corcoran described the incident that led to the court hearing, telling the Bench that her husband Patrick had come home and immediately began beating her.
To escape his violence Mrs Corcoran had dashed out into the street but her husband caught her, knocked her down and started dragging her about.
Several women screamed "murder", and she said it required what was described as "violent exertion" on the part of another man to save her.
Catherine complained of her husband's general cruelty and abuse during their marriage.
But while being cross-examined by Thomas Swift, she had to admit having once retaliated. The Newspaper wrote:
"In the course of cross-examination it was elicited that she had not let the defendant have the fighting all to himself, for she caught up a can and gave him such a blow upon the eye that the optic went into immediate mourning, and wept tears of blood.
"Mr. Swift made a very lengthened speech, to convince the magistrates that the case should be dismissed, but they fined him [Patrick Corcoran] 20s. and costs."
On the 14th James Fagan and Patrick Thompson were charged in St Helens Petty Sessions with the attempted murder of William Power by drowning.
The latter told the court that on the previous Saturday night after leaving Cleary's pub on the canal bank he'd got into a squabble with Fagan and Thompson.
The pair attacked him and threw him into the water, which was described as "almost poisonous" at that spot.
When Power attempted to climb back up the bank, the two men flung him back in. Eventually, he said, he managed to get out of the water and run away but his assailants pursued him.
It was only with great difficulty that Power managed to get to the Greenbank Alkali works, where he was able to take refuge. The case was remanded for three days for further inquiries.
But when it returned to court the two men had lots of witnesses to claim they were somewhere else at the time of the incident and the charges were ultimately dismissed.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the violent assault on St Helens Junction's stationmaster, the Bold youth imprisoned for stealing bread, Lowe House's lending library and the abominable act by a Rainford policeman.