150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (10th - 16th FEBRUARY 1870)
This week's stories include the Prescot boys imprisoned and flogged for stealing a rabbit, a destitute woman is sent to prison for stealing coal, the ingenious puppet show at the Town Hall, Pilkington's annual workers' soiree, the dirty lights on the streets of St Helens and the severe weather in the town.
We begin on the 10th with a meeting of the Prescot Board of Guardians in which they discussed buying a clock for the schoolroom at Whiston Workhouse. A budget of 30 shillings had been set but one guardian suggested buying an American clock for 6/9 and said it would keep better time than an English one costing 30 shillings. A long discussion took place about the relative merits of a 6/9 clock against a 30/- clock. That was until one wag said if the clock they bought lost as much time as the guardians did, it would be dear even at 6/9! The guardians also approved a change to the diet of the inmates of the workhouse. Instead of oatmeal porridge for supper, the paupers would now have bread and milk.
What was described as an "extraordinary novelty" was held at the Town Hall for four days from the 10th. It was a puppet show featuring Sam Bayliss's French marionettes with a different programme on each day. Bayliss was a trained actor and ventriloquist and the Lancaster Gazette wrote about his "skilful manipulation and mechanical contrivance" of his puppets, adding:
"All their movements and gestures, even to the movements of their lips, are produced with a naturalness which is marvellously life-like, so that it is scarcely possible to believe that they are mere automatons." The St Helens Newspaper in its review of the first night said: "The performance is a most astonishing display of ingenuity, mechanical and pictorial, and is well worth a visit."
It is quite extraordinary that vaccination is just as controversial today as it was back in 1870. On the 12th John Hunt of Windle Street in St Helens had a letter published in the Wigan Observer. The 35-year-old carpenter had been upset to read of a man fined in court for refusing to have his child vaccinated and the comments that had been made by the Bench.
A magistrate called Ackerley had referred to the defendant as "one of those silly and mischievous persons who set themselves up as judges of that which is right and proper." That remark infuriated John Hunt who wrote: "How does Mr. Ackerley know that it [vaccination] is right and proper, and because he thinks it is right and proper is that a sufficient reason why everybody else is to believe it too, and to be stigmatised as silly, mischievous; &c., if they refuse?
"Are the people to swallow and believe all that medical men say without judging for themselves? Verily, Mr. Editor, I never yet met with more extreme selfishness, ignorance, and bigotry, nor with a more cruel and wilful determination to crush all independence of mind and free thought with reference to this much agitated subject of vaccination. I could quote the names of large numbers of medical men who after twenty or thirty years' experience have come to the conclusion that vaccination is a delusion, and ought to be abandoned from the statute books as compulsory."
The exploits of Dr Livingstone fascinated people with the explorer currently on a mission to find the source of the Nile. There had been all kinds of reports on Livingstone that we might call fake news that had been published in the St Helens Newspaper. The latest article was on the 12th and described Livingstone's reported death by burning. These days speculation about events on social media is rife because communication is so easy. However 150 years speculation was rampant through poor communication, especially from places like Africa, where letters could take weeks or months to reach their destination.
I recently wrote of a scheme to improve the lighting in St Helens. A letter published in the Newspaper commented how much of this had now been completed, although there was one big problem. The correspondent wrote: "The posts are good, the lamps, although not made in St. Helens, appear suitable – even the gas is certified as of excellent illuminating power, and yet we have a poor, miserable, and what is worse, a dirty light." The letter writer used the pseudonym "A. Ratepayer" added that the "gross blundering" was through using the wrong type of burner.
A tale of severe poverty was told in the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 14th when Mary Ryan was charged with stealing coal from Groves Colliery. This was situated in Burtonhead Road and was also known as Ravenhead Colliery. Mary told the Bench that she had picked up a few "dirty bits" of coal in order to make a fire to warm her children. Her husband was out of work and her family was in a "state of great destitution" and to reduce the pangs of hunger she had wanted to provide some heat for the children. Mary's explanation did not impress the magistrates who sent her to Kirkdale prison in Liverpool for seven days.
In contrast Patrick Tighe and Michael Fanning were only fined five shillings each for assaulting Terence Dolan. The latter had been drinking in the Globe Inn when Tighe and Fanning removed his cap and knocked him to the ground. The Newspaper wrote: "In order that both the defendants with some others might kick and beat him in undisturbed security, the door of the room was closed to prevent ingress."
There used to be two Globe Inns in St Helens in Hardshaw Street and Ormskirk Street and the Newspaper did not specify which it was. The men's defence was that Dolan had walked off with a man's hat while he'd been in the Victoria Inn in Market Street. When they met him in the Globe they taxed him with taking the hat and he denied it in very insulting language "for which he got a few knocks".
The Prescot Harmonic Society held a concert during the evening of the 14th in the New Court Room in Prescot. Tickets cost from 6d in the back of the hall to 1 shilling in the main body. With no amplification it would be hard to hear much at the rear, so it would have been well worth paying the extra tanner.
Four boys aged 14 to 15 appeared in the Prescot Petty Sessions on the 15th accused of stealing a dead rabbit worth 1s 6d. John Hockenhull kept a butcher's shop in Eccleston Street and his niece Ann gave evidence of seeing Michael Hora take a rabbit from the shop with the help of John Hickey. The two boys – along with James Carney and John Cunningham – then ran off in the direction of Mill Brow. Constable Berry arrested John Hickey on the same evening and he immediately confessed and incriminated the others.
As the evidence against Carney and Cunningham was not considered strong, the magistrates decided to acquit them both. However Hora had four previous convictions and he was sent to prison for a month and Hickey was sentenced to Kirkdale Gaol for a week. John Hickey would also receive a flogging and the Chairman of the Bench said he hoped that when he came out of prison he'd tell the others how he’d liked the flogging, so it might serve as a warning to them. Ann Crosby was also sentenced to a month in prison for stealing a leather legging (as it was described) from a Rainhill schoolboy called William Anderson.
The St Helens Newspaper's Tuesday edition was published on the 15th and commented on the recent weather: "For about a week past we have had unusually severe weather, even for this season. The heavy snow which fell last week, and whitened our highways and byeways, is gradually disappearing, but we are still troubled with a slight frost and a strong wind of great keenness. It was expected that we would have another interval of skating, but the frost has not been sufficiently strong to make that pastime a really safe one. The neighbouring dams were skated over on Saturday and Sunday, but the ice was not of a thickness to give confidence to the lovers of the sport, and the feats which make it most enjoyable were not indulged in to any extent."
On the 16th what was described as the annual soiree of Pilkington's employees and their wives was held in the Volunteer Hall. The St Helens Newspaper wrote: "The good feeling which ought in every case to exist between employer and employed is here annually exemplified. A very large number assembled in the hall for tea, every sitting being occupied, and a more respectable looking gathering of the artisan class it would be difficult to find. The tea was of the description usually provided on these occasions, and the hardy workmen and their blooming and healthful companions kept the presiding ladies as busy as they cared to be, until their appetites were appeased.
"A stage had been erected at the northern end of the room, as it was intended to have a farce performed by a number of amateurs. On each of the longitudinal walls was hung an immense sheet of canvas, on which were executed, in old English characters, the inscriptions:- “The Gas, Coal, Brick, and Chemical trades, may they flourish in the future,” and “May the St. Helens Crown Glassworks always flourish”. Beneath the gallery was another, bearing the inscription:- “Continued success to the Pilkington family”. The lettering was done with exceeding taste, in various colours." The report also mentioned that Pilkington's workers had their own Recreation Club, which contained a library with newspapers available in a reading room.
Next week's stories will include the Welsh woman from Moss Nook who was kicked unconscious, criticism of the Prescot Board of Guardians for slinking off to the pub, the "backwardation" of smoky gas lamps in St Helens and the distinguished St Helens Catholic Charity Ball.
We begin on the 10th with a meeting of the Prescot Board of Guardians in which they discussed buying a clock for the schoolroom at Whiston Workhouse. A budget of 30 shillings had been set but one guardian suggested buying an American clock for 6/9 and said it would keep better time than an English one costing 30 shillings. A long discussion took place about the relative merits of a 6/9 clock against a 30/- clock. That was until one wag said if the clock they bought lost as much time as the guardians did, it would be dear even at 6/9! The guardians also approved a change to the diet of the inmates of the workhouse. Instead of oatmeal porridge for supper, the paupers would now have bread and milk.
What was described as an "extraordinary novelty" was held at the Town Hall for four days from the 10th. It was a puppet show featuring Sam Bayliss's French marionettes with a different programme on each day. Bayliss was a trained actor and ventriloquist and the Lancaster Gazette wrote about his "skilful manipulation and mechanical contrivance" of his puppets, adding:
"All their movements and gestures, even to the movements of their lips, are produced with a naturalness which is marvellously life-like, so that it is scarcely possible to believe that they are mere automatons." The St Helens Newspaper in its review of the first night said: "The performance is a most astonishing display of ingenuity, mechanical and pictorial, and is well worth a visit."
It is quite extraordinary that vaccination is just as controversial today as it was back in 1870. On the 12th John Hunt of Windle Street in St Helens had a letter published in the Wigan Observer. The 35-year-old carpenter had been upset to read of a man fined in court for refusing to have his child vaccinated and the comments that had been made by the Bench.
A magistrate called Ackerley had referred to the defendant as "one of those silly and mischievous persons who set themselves up as judges of that which is right and proper." That remark infuriated John Hunt who wrote: "How does Mr. Ackerley know that it [vaccination] is right and proper, and because he thinks it is right and proper is that a sufficient reason why everybody else is to believe it too, and to be stigmatised as silly, mischievous; &c., if they refuse?
"Are the people to swallow and believe all that medical men say without judging for themselves? Verily, Mr. Editor, I never yet met with more extreme selfishness, ignorance, and bigotry, nor with a more cruel and wilful determination to crush all independence of mind and free thought with reference to this much agitated subject of vaccination. I could quote the names of large numbers of medical men who after twenty or thirty years' experience have come to the conclusion that vaccination is a delusion, and ought to be abandoned from the statute books as compulsory."
The exploits of Dr Livingstone fascinated people with the explorer currently on a mission to find the source of the Nile. There had been all kinds of reports on Livingstone that we might call fake news that had been published in the St Helens Newspaper. The latest article was on the 12th and described Livingstone's reported death by burning. These days speculation about events on social media is rife because communication is so easy. However 150 years speculation was rampant through poor communication, especially from places like Africa, where letters could take weeks or months to reach their destination.
I recently wrote of a scheme to improve the lighting in St Helens. A letter published in the Newspaper commented how much of this had now been completed, although there was one big problem. The correspondent wrote: "The posts are good, the lamps, although not made in St. Helens, appear suitable – even the gas is certified as of excellent illuminating power, and yet we have a poor, miserable, and what is worse, a dirty light." The letter writer used the pseudonym "A. Ratepayer" added that the "gross blundering" was through using the wrong type of burner.
A tale of severe poverty was told in the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 14th when Mary Ryan was charged with stealing coal from Groves Colliery. This was situated in Burtonhead Road and was also known as Ravenhead Colliery. Mary told the Bench that she had picked up a few "dirty bits" of coal in order to make a fire to warm her children. Her husband was out of work and her family was in a "state of great destitution" and to reduce the pangs of hunger she had wanted to provide some heat for the children. Mary's explanation did not impress the magistrates who sent her to Kirkdale prison in Liverpool for seven days.
In contrast Patrick Tighe and Michael Fanning were only fined five shillings each for assaulting Terence Dolan. The latter had been drinking in the Globe Inn when Tighe and Fanning removed his cap and knocked him to the ground. The Newspaper wrote: "In order that both the defendants with some others might kick and beat him in undisturbed security, the door of the room was closed to prevent ingress."
There used to be two Globe Inns in St Helens in Hardshaw Street and Ormskirk Street and the Newspaper did not specify which it was. The men's defence was that Dolan had walked off with a man's hat while he'd been in the Victoria Inn in Market Street. When they met him in the Globe they taxed him with taking the hat and he denied it in very insulting language "for which he got a few knocks".
The Prescot Harmonic Society held a concert during the evening of the 14th in the New Court Room in Prescot. Tickets cost from 6d in the back of the hall to 1 shilling in the main body. With no amplification it would be hard to hear much at the rear, so it would have been well worth paying the extra tanner.
Four boys aged 14 to 15 appeared in the Prescot Petty Sessions on the 15th accused of stealing a dead rabbit worth 1s 6d. John Hockenhull kept a butcher's shop in Eccleston Street and his niece Ann gave evidence of seeing Michael Hora take a rabbit from the shop with the help of John Hickey. The two boys – along with James Carney and John Cunningham – then ran off in the direction of Mill Brow. Constable Berry arrested John Hickey on the same evening and he immediately confessed and incriminated the others.
As the evidence against Carney and Cunningham was not considered strong, the magistrates decided to acquit them both. However Hora had four previous convictions and he was sent to prison for a month and Hickey was sentenced to Kirkdale Gaol for a week. John Hickey would also receive a flogging and the Chairman of the Bench said he hoped that when he came out of prison he'd tell the others how he’d liked the flogging, so it might serve as a warning to them. Ann Crosby was also sentenced to a month in prison for stealing a leather legging (as it was described) from a Rainhill schoolboy called William Anderson.
The St Helens Newspaper's Tuesday edition was published on the 15th and commented on the recent weather: "For about a week past we have had unusually severe weather, even for this season. The heavy snow which fell last week, and whitened our highways and byeways, is gradually disappearing, but we are still troubled with a slight frost and a strong wind of great keenness. It was expected that we would have another interval of skating, but the frost has not been sufficiently strong to make that pastime a really safe one. The neighbouring dams were skated over on Saturday and Sunday, but the ice was not of a thickness to give confidence to the lovers of the sport, and the feats which make it most enjoyable were not indulged in to any extent."
On the 16th what was described as the annual soiree of Pilkington's employees and their wives was held in the Volunteer Hall. The St Helens Newspaper wrote: "The good feeling which ought in every case to exist between employer and employed is here annually exemplified. A very large number assembled in the hall for tea, every sitting being occupied, and a more respectable looking gathering of the artisan class it would be difficult to find. The tea was of the description usually provided on these occasions, and the hardy workmen and their blooming and healthful companions kept the presiding ladies as busy as they cared to be, until their appetites were appeased.
"A stage had been erected at the northern end of the room, as it was intended to have a farce performed by a number of amateurs. On each of the longitudinal walls was hung an immense sheet of canvas, on which were executed, in old English characters, the inscriptions:- “The Gas, Coal, Brick, and Chemical trades, may they flourish in the future,” and “May the St. Helens Crown Glassworks always flourish”. Beneath the gallery was another, bearing the inscription:- “Continued success to the Pilkington family”. The lettering was done with exceeding taste, in various colours." The report also mentioned that Pilkington's workers had their own Recreation Club, which contained a library with newspapers available in a reading room.
Next week's stories will include the Welsh woman from Moss Nook who was kicked unconscious, criticism of the Prescot Board of Guardians for slinking off to the pub, the "backwardation" of smoky gas lamps in St Helens and the distinguished St Helens Catholic Charity Ball.
This week's stories include the Prescot boys imprisoned and flogged for stealing a rabbit, a destitute woman is sent to prison for stealing coal, the ingenious puppet show at the Town Hall, Pilkington's annual workers' soiree, the dirty lights on the streets of St Helens and the severe weather in the town.
We begin on the 10th with a meeting of the Prescot Board of Guardians in which they discussed buying a clock for the schoolroom at Whiston Workhouse.
A budget of 30 shillings had been set but one guardian suggested buying an American clock for 6/9 and said it would keep better time than an English one costing 30 shillings.
A long discussion took place about the relative merits of a 6/9 clock against a 30/- clock.
That was until one wag said if the clock they bought lost as much time as the guardians did, it would be dear even at 6/9!
The guardians also approved a change to the diet of the inmates of the workhouse. Instead of oatmeal porridge for supper, the paupers would now have bread and milk.
What was described as an "extraordinary novelty" was held at the Town Hall for four days from the 10th.
It was a puppet show featuring Sam Bayliss's French marionettes with a different programme on each day.
Bayliss was a trained actor and ventriloquist and the Lancaster Gazette wrote about his "skilful manipulation and mechanical contrivance" of his puppets, adding:
"All their movements and gestures, even to the movements of their lips, are produced with a naturalness which is marvellously life-like, so that it is scarcely possible to believe that they are mere automatons."
The St Helens Newspaper in its review of the first night said: "The performance is a most astonishing display of ingenuity, mechanical and pictorial, and is well worth a visit."
It is quite extraordinary that vaccination is just as controversial today as it was back in 1870.
On the 12th John Hunt of Windle Street in St Helens had a letter published in the Wigan Observer.
The 35-year-old carpenter had been upset to read of a man fined in court for refusing to have his child vaccinated and the comments that had been made by the Bench.
A magistrate called Ackerley had referred to the defendant as "one of those silly and mischievous persons who set themselves up as judges of that which is right and proper."
That remark infuriated John Hunt who wrote: "How does Mr. Ackerley know that it [vaccination] is right and proper, and because he thinks it is right and proper is that a sufficient reason why everybody else is to believe it too, and to be stigmatised as silly, mischievous; &c., if they refuse?
"Are the people to swallow and believe all that medical men say without judging for themselves? Verily, Mr. Editor, I never yet met with more extreme selfishness, ignorance, and bigotry, nor with a more cruel and wilful determination to crush all independence of mind and free thought with reference to this much agitated subject of vaccination.
"I could quote the names of large numbers of medical men who after twenty or thirty years' experience have come to the conclusion that vaccination is a delusion, and ought to be abandoned from the statute books as compulsory."
The exploits of Dr Livingstone fascinated people with the explorer currently on a mission to find the source of the Nile.
There had been all kinds of reports on Livingstone that we might call fake news that had been published in the St Helens Newspaper.
The latest article was on the 12th and described Livingstone's reported death by burning.
These days speculation about events on social media is rife because communication is so easy.
However 150 years speculation was rampant through poor communication, especially from places like Africa, where letters could take weeks or months to reach their destination.
I recently wrote of a scheme to improve the lighting in St Helens.
A letter published in the Newspaper commented how much of this had now been completed, although there was one big problem. The correspondent wrote:
"The posts are good, the lamps, although not made in St. Helens, appear suitable – even the gas is certified as of excellent illuminating power, and yet we have a poor, miserable, and what is worse, a dirty light."
The letter writer used the pseudonym "A. Ratepayer" added that the "gross blundering" was through using the wrong type of burner.
A tale of severe poverty was told in the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 14th when Mary Ryan was charged with stealing coal from Groves Colliery.
This was situated in Burtonhead Road and was also known as Ravenhead Colliery.
Mary told the Bench that she had picked up a few "dirty bits" of coal in order to make a fire to warm her children.
Her husband was out of work and her family was in a "state of great destitution" and to reduce the pangs of hunger she had wanted to provide some heat for the children.
Mary's explanation did not impress the magistrates who sent her to Kirkdale prison in Liverpool for seven days.
In contrast Patrick Tighe and Michael Fanning were only fined five shillings each for assaulting Terence Dolan.
The latter had been drinking in the Globe Inn when Tighe and Fanning removed his cap and knocked him to the ground.
The Newspaper wrote: "In order that both the defendants with some others might kick and beat him in undisturbed security, the door of the room was closed to prevent ingress."
There used to be two Globe Inns in St Helens in Hardshaw Street and Ormskirk Street and the Newspaper did not specify which it was.
The men's defence was that Dolan had walked off with a man's hat while he'd been in the Victoria Inn in Market Street.
When they met him in the Globe they taxed him with taking the hat and he denied it in very insulting language "for which he got a few knocks".
The Prescot Harmonic Society held a concert during the evening of the 14th in the New Court Room in Prescot.
Tickets cost from 6d in the back of the hall to 1 shilling in the main body. With no amplification it would be hard to hear much at the rear, so it would have been well worth paying the extra tanner.
Four boys aged 14 to 15 appeared in the Prescot Petty Sessions on the 15th accused of stealing a dead rabbit worth 1s 6d.
John Hockenhull kept a butcher's shop in Eccleston Street and his niece Ann gave evidence of seeing Michael Hora take a rabbit from the shop with the help of John Hickey.
The two boys – along with James Carney and John Cunningham – then ran off in the direction of Mill Brow.
Constable Berry arrested John Hickey on the same evening and he immediately confessed and incriminated the others.
As the evidence against Carney and Cunningham was not considered strong, the magistrates decided to acquit them both.
However Hora had four previous convictions and he was sent to prison for a month and Hickey was sentenced to Kirkdale Gaol for a week.
John Hickey would also receive a flogging and the Chairman of the Bench said he hoped that when he came out of prison he'd tell the others how he’d liked the flogging, so it might serve as a warning to them.
Ann Crosby was also sentenced to a month in prison for stealing a leather legging (as it was described) from a Rainhill schoolboy called William Anderson.
The St Helens Newspaper's Tuesday edition was published on the 15th and commented on the recent weather:
"For about a week past we have had unusually severe weather, even for this season. The heavy snow which fell last week, and whitened our highways and byeways, is gradually disappearing, but we are still troubled with a slight frost and a strong wind of great keenness.
"It was expected that we would have another interval of skating, but the frost has not been sufficiently strong to make that pastime a really safe one.
"The neighbouring dams were skated over on Saturday and Sunday, but the ice was not of a thickness to give confidence to the lovers of the sport, and the feats which make it most enjoyable were not indulged in to any extent."
On the 16th what was described as the annual soiree of Pilkington's employees and their wives was held in the Volunteer Hall. The St Helens Newspaper wrote:
"The good feeling which ought in every case to exist between employer and employed is here annually exemplified. A very large number assembled in the hall for tea, every sitting being occupied, and a more respectable looking gathering of the artisan class it would be difficult to find.
"The tea was of the description usually provided on these occasions, and the hardy workmen and their blooming and healthful companions kept the presiding ladies as busy as they cared to be, until their appetites were appeased.
"A stage had been erected at the northern end of the room, as it was intended to have a farce performed by a number of amateurs.
"On each of the longitudinal walls was hung an immense sheet of canvas, on which were executed, in old English characters, the inscriptions:- “The Gas, Coal, Brick, and Chemical trades, may they flourish in the future,” and “May the St. Helens Crown Glassworks always flourish”.
"Beneath the gallery was another, bearing the inscription:- “Continued success to the Pilkington family”. The lettering was done with exceeding taste, in various colours."
The report also mentioned that Pilkington's workers had their own Recreation Club, which contained a library with newspapers available in a reading room.
Next week's stories will include the Welsh woman from Moss Nook who was kicked unconscious, criticism of the Prescot Board of Guardians for slinking off to the pub, the "backwardation" of smoky gas lamps in St Helens and the distinguished St Helens Catholic Charity Ball.
We begin on the 10th with a meeting of the Prescot Board of Guardians in which they discussed buying a clock for the schoolroom at Whiston Workhouse.
A budget of 30 shillings had been set but one guardian suggested buying an American clock for 6/9 and said it would keep better time than an English one costing 30 shillings.
A long discussion took place about the relative merits of a 6/9 clock against a 30/- clock.
That was until one wag said if the clock they bought lost as much time as the guardians did, it would be dear even at 6/9!
The guardians also approved a change to the diet of the inmates of the workhouse. Instead of oatmeal porridge for supper, the paupers would now have bread and milk.
What was described as an "extraordinary novelty" was held at the Town Hall for four days from the 10th.
It was a puppet show featuring Sam Bayliss's French marionettes with a different programme on each day.
Bayliss was a trained actor and ventriloquist and the Lancaster Gazette wrote about his "skilful manipulation and mechanical contrivance" of his puppets, adding:
"All their movements and gestures, even to the movements of their lips, are produced with a naturalness which is marvellously life-like, so that it is scarcely possible to believe that they are mere automatons."
The St Helens Newspaper in its review of the first night said: "The performance is a most astonishing display of ingenuity, mechanical and pictorial, and is well worth a visit."
It is quite extraordinary that vaccination is just as controversial today as it was back in 1870.
On the 12th John Hunt of Windle Street in St Helens had a letter published in the Wigan Observer.
The 35-year-old carpenter had been upset to read of a man fined in court for refusing to have his child vaccinated and the comments that had been made by the Bench.
A magistrate called Ackerley had referred to the defendant as "one of those silly and mischievous persons who set themselves up as judges of that which is right and proper."
That remark infuriated John Hunt who wrote: "How does Mr. Ackerley know that it [vaccination] is right and proper, and because he thinks it is right and proper is that a sufficient reason why everybody else is to believe it too, and to be stigmatised as silly, mischievous; &c., if they refuse?
"Are the people to swallow and believe all that medical men say without judging for themselves? Verily, Mr. Editor, I never yet met with more extreme selfishness, ignorance, and bigotry, nor with a more cruel and wilful determination to crush all independence of mind and free thought with reference to this much agitated subject of vaccination.
"I could quote the names of large numbers of medical men who after twenty or thirty years' experience have come to the conclusion that vaccination is a delusion, and ought to be abandoned from the statute books as compulsory."
The exploits of Dr Livingstone fascinated people with the explorer currently on a mission to find the source of the Nile.
There had been all kinds of reports on Livingstone that we might call fake news that had been published in the St Helens Newspaper.
The latest article was on the 12th and described Livingstone's reported death by burning.
These days speculation about events on social media is rife because communication is so easy.
However 150 years speculation was rampant through poor communication, especially from places like Africa, where letters could take weeks or months to reach their destination.
I recently wrote of a scheme to improve the lighting in St Helens.
A letter published in the Newspaper commented how much of this had now been completed, although there was one big problem. The correspondent wrote:
"The posts are good, the lamps, although not made in St. Helens, appear suitable – even the gas is certified as of excellent illuminating power, and yet we have a poor, miserable, and what is worse, a dirty light."
The letter writer used the pseudonym "A. Ratepayer" added that the "gross blundering" was through using the wrong type of burner.
A tale of severe poverty was told in the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 14th when Mary Ryan was charged with stealing coal from Groves Colliery.
This was situated in Burtonhead Road and was also known as Ravenhead Colliery.
Mary told the Bench that she had picked up a few "dirty bits" of coal in order to make a fire to warm her children.
Her husband was out of work and her family was in a "state of great destitution" and to reduce the pangs of hunger she had wanted to provide some heat for the children.
Mary's explanation did not impress the magistrates who sent her to Kirkdale prison in Liverpool for seven days.
In contrast Patrick Tighe and Michael Fanning were only fined five shillings each for assaulting Terence Dolan.
The latter had been drinking in the Globe Inn when Tighe and Fanning removed his cap and knocked him to the ground.
The Newspaper wrote: "In order that both the defendants with some others might kick and beat him in undisturbed security, the door of the room was closed to prevent ingress."
There used to be two Globe Inns in St Helens in Hardshaw Street and Ormskirk Street and the Newspaper did not specify which it was.
The men's defence was that Dolan had walked off with a man's hat while he'd been in the Victoria Inn in Market Street.
When they met him in the Globe they taxed him with taking the hat and he denied it in very insulting language "for which he got a few knocks".
The Prescot Harmonic Society held a concert during the evening of the 14th in the New Court Room in Prescot.
Tickets cost from 6d in the back of the hall to 1 shilling in the main body. With no amplification it would be hard to hear much at the rear, so it would have been well worth paying the extra tanner.
Four boys aged 14 to 15 appeared in the Prescot Petty Sessions on the 15th accused of stealing a dead rabbit worth 1s 6d.
John Hockenhull kept a butcher's shop in Eccleston Street and his niece Ann gave evidence of seeing Michael Hora take a rabbit from the shop with the help of John Hickey.
The two boys – along with James Carney and John Cunningham – then ran off in the direction of Mill Brow.
Constable Berry arrested John Hickey on the same evening and he immediately confessed and incriminated the others.
As the evidence against Carney and Cunningham was not considered strong, the magistrates decided to acquit them both.
However Hora had four previous convictions and he was sent to prison for a month and Hickey was sentenced to Kirkdale Gaol for a week.
John Hickey would also receive a flogging and the Chairman of the Bench said he hoped that when he came out of prison he'd tell the others how he’d liked the flogging, so it might serve as a warning to them.
Ann Crosby was also sentenced to a month in prison for stealing a leather legging (as it was described) from a Rainhill schoolboy called William Anderson.
The St Helens Newspaper's Tuesday edition was published on the 15th and commented on the recent weather:
"For about a week past we have had unusually severe weather, even for this season. The heavy snow which fell last week, and whitened our highways and byeways, is gradually disappearing, but we are still troubled with a slight frost and a strong wind of great keenness.
"It was expected that we would have another interval of skating, but the frost has not been sufficiently strong to make that pastime a really safe one.
"The neighbouring dams were skated over on Saturday and Sunday, but the ice was not of a thickness to give confidence to the lovers of the sport, and the feats which make it most enjoyable were not indulged in to any extent."
On the 16th what was described as the annual soiree of Pilkington's employees and their wives was held in the Volunteer Hall. The St Helens Newspaper wrote:
"The good feeling which ought in every case to exist between employer and employed is here annually exemplified. A very large number assembled in the hall for tea, every sitting being occupied, and a more respectable looking gathering of the artisan class it would be difficult to find.
"The tea was of the description usually provided on these occasions, and the hardy workmen and their blooming and healthful companions kept the presiding ladies as busy as they cared to be, until their appetites were appeased.
"A stage had been erected at the northern end of the room, as it was intended to have a farce performed by a number of amateurs.
"On each of the longitudinal walls was hung an immense sheet of canvas, on which were executed, in old English characters, the inscriptions:- “The Gas, Coal, Brick, and Chemical trades, may they flourish in the future,” and “May the St. Helens Crown Glassworks always flourish”.
"Beneath the gallery was another, bearing the inscription:- “Continued success to the Pilkington family”. The lettering was done with exceeding taste, in various colours."
The report also mentioned that Pilkington's workers had their own Recreation Club, which contained a library with newspapers available in a reading room.
Next week's stories will include the Welsh woman from Moss Nook who was kicked unconscious, criticism of the Prescot Board of Guardians for slinking off to the pub, the "backwardation" of smoky gas lamps in St Helens and the distinguished St Helens Catholic Charity Ball.