150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (26th JULY - 1st AUG. 1871)
This week's stories include the men covered with blood on Croppers Hill, a Sutton Glassworks outing ends in tragedy, the Cowley Hill boys charged with pigeon stealing, the overlaying of babies, the real Wild West and the dead cousins who were left down a Haydock coal mine.
We begin on the 26th when what was claimed to be the largest mirror ever turned out in Lancashire was silvered in Peasley Cross. Pratt and Co undertook the work, with the silvering of the 100 ft. mirror accomplished by a new process in forty hours, instead of lasting ten days.
In the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 29th, two lads from Cowley Hill were charged with stealing two pigeons from the cote of Joseph Large of Windle City. One was Daniel Coleman, a 14-year-old deaf and dumb boy from Cowley Court, near College Street, and the other was 13-year-old William Rock from Union Street. The pigeons were said to be worth 3 shillings but the boys had sold them to a pigeon dealer in Water Street called George Davenport for 1s 3d. The 13-year-old was sent to prison for three weeks but the older deaf and dumb lad was let off because of his infirmity.
James Pattison, a picture framer from Raglan Street (pictured above), was charged with stealing frames, mounts, prints, skin of leather and an oil painting off Henry Lowe. The 28-year-old printer, stationer and picture framer had premises in Liverpool Road and was Pattison's employer. The man pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for three months with hard labour.
Every year some St Helens employers – mainly glass firms – paid for their employees to have a day trip to the Lake District. The excursion cost the companies very little – just the cost of chartering a train for around 500 people. In 1869 when the Ravenhead Plate Glass Works went to Windermere they took a reporter from the St Helens Newspaper with them who was obsessed with the weather. His descriptive powers went a bit over the top, saying the "heavy mist hung like an impalpable curtain between the excursionists and all distant views." Before adding, the "teardrops of the sky" fell with "mizzling continuity" as "damping upon the spirits as upon the clothing".
The Sutton Glassworks in Lancots Lane would also take their workforce to the Lakes – but this year's excursion on the 29th ended in tragedy. A man named Costello was a little late in arriving at Windermere railway station for the return journey. He attempted get into a carriage while the train was moving but slipped and was crushed to death.
A not entirely dissimilar accident occurred during the same evening back in St Helens. As a train of waggons was passing through Sutton on its way to Liverpool, a platelayer named Robert Prescott, who was walking along the line, attempted to hitch a lift. He ran to a waggon and tried to climb in but his foot slipped and he fell under the wheels. Prescott was described as having been "literally crushed to pieces".
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Liverpool, Dr Alexander Goss, paid a visit to St Helens every three years. On the 30th Dr Goss confirmed 600 persons at Lowe House and Holy Cross churches and preached a hard-hitting sermon. He criticised the fact that during the last quarter 1,100 Catholic women were committed to gaol in Liverpool – a number far higher than the other denominations, adding:
"The returns showed that infants were overlain every night in the week, and the proportion on Saturday and Sunday was threefold." What Dr Goss was alluding to was the common practice of mothers sleeping in the same bed with their baby (often through necessity) and either they – or the baby's father – accidentally smothering their child during the night. Drunkenness was behind many of these cases, which was underlined by the weekend increase.
This article has so far discussed examples of recklessness on the railway – and even in bed. However it happened regularly below ground too. On the 31st Henry Rigby and Benjamin Dykes were summoned to the St Helens Petty Sessions for working with naked lamps in a section of Rainford Colliery where there was a risk of an explosion. The magistrates imposed a fine of 40 shillings and costs upon each man.
In May I wrote that: "…a need for a simple system of knowing who was down a coalmine was shown by an incident on the 27th at Bickershaw Colliery". That was after two men working underground had failed to surface – and nobody noticed. That was apart from the men's families when they didn't return home from work and it took until the following morning before a search took place down the pit. Their bodies were found near their working place in what was described as a "shockingly mutilated condition" after a ten cwt stone had dropped on them.
It wasn't until a few years later that a system of tallies or checks was introduced (and made mandatory in 1913) so that colliery management could see who was still underground. During the evening of the 31st a replica of that incident occurred which involved the deaths of two Haydock cousins called Twist. The Leigh Chronicle wrote:
"The men worked together in Messrs. Evans' colliery, and on Monday night, as they did not return home at the usual time, their wives went to the colliery to make inquiries about them, and receiving no satisfaction they begged of one of the underlookers to examine the part of the mine in which they were known to have been working. The underlooker, on the earnest importunities of the women, descended the mine, and on reaching the particular part of the workings where the men had been employed found that the roof had given way and the two unfortunate men were buried in the debris."
On the 31st in the St Helens Petty Sessions, what the St Helens Newspaper described as "three-well marked individuals" appeared facing breach of the peace and drunkenness charges. Patrick Kirby, Samuel Walker and Thomas Conroy had been fighting in the latter's home on Combshop Brow, aka Croppers Hill. A police officer said that when he arrived he had found them all "covered with blood" with Walker beating some women and Kirby "stripped and striking all about him". Walker appeared in court with a broken nose and claimed Conroy's wife had given it to him! They were each fined 5 shillings and ordered to find sureties to keep the peace.
Also bound over was John Cooney. PC Robinson said he had seen the man in the St Helens market place "shouting, screaming, throwing up his arms, gesticulating, and rushing up and down in the most frantic manner". The 1871 census has the 29-year-old labourer living in Vernon Street in Parr.
William Woodier was charged with assaulting and beating Jeremiah Chadwick. The Newspaper said it arisen out of a "shindy" in Carr Mill in which stones had been thrown and two of Chadwick's teeth knocked out. Woodier was told to pay 18s 6d or go to gaol for 14 days.
Shawls had more uses than just clothing. Last year I reported how a young woman had stolen boots from a Napier Street shop in St Helens by hiding them under her shawl. They could also be used as an aid to violence. On the 1st in Prescot Petty Sessions, it was revealed that Ann Marr had carried out an assault on Bridget Oates in Prescot's High Street by grabbing hold of her shawl and dragging her to the ground. The woman was fined 10 shillings.
I am devoting the rest of the article to extracts from a fascinating account that was published this week in the Hampshire Telegraph. The 1870s was, of course, the era of the "Wild West" in the United States. Historians say that the 20th century Hollywood films fictionalised and exaggerated many aspects of life. So to read someone's contemporaneous experience is likely to prove a much more authentic record of the developing West. The extraordinary article was written by an employee of the North Missouri Railroad and describes a long train journey from St Louis to the Rocky Mountains:
"On the 23rd June I left for Kansas City, Denver, and Cheyenne, and returned on the morning of the 1st inst., having made a trip of 2,040 miles. I left Kansas City at nearly eleven o'clock on Saturday night, the 24th ult. I slept about 150 miles, got up before six next morning, washed, dressed, and was ready for breakfast at Salina, 184 miles west of Kansas City. Small, very small, villages now dot the country at long intervals. Small patches of trees still more rarely meet the eye. Cultivated land form but small spots in the great uncultivated expanse. Herds of cattle graze. Herdsmen, mounted and armed, guard them.
"At Brookville, 200 miles west of Kansas City, we strike the plains proper. We see the smoky hills, which do not smoke, and are not imposing, but on which Indians have raised small columns of loose stones, for landmarks perhaps. We pass numerous villages of prairie dogs. How human they look, as they sit bolt upright on the little mounds at the mouth of their holes. Some of them bow to us gracefully, as it would seem. They are barking at us, only the train renders their bark inaudible. Some of them run to their mounds, on which the moment they reach them, they sit bolt upright.
The owl and the snake – the rattlesnake – dwell with them. The latter is said by some to be an intruder and to feed on young prairie dog. By others the snake is said to be a staunch friend of the prairie dog and to defend it when attacked. The prairie dog is the hole-digger, and provides a house for himself, the owl, and the snake. As we passed the villages of prairie dogs, some fool, who had escaped, or been let loose with firearms, popped at the dogs, from the train, with a pistol. There are always wicked fools about, and this was one, taking pleasure in simply destroying life without any result to be obtained.
"Whitened bones and partially destroyed carcases of buffalo sand the prairies. Rarely is the team of the settler to be seen. It is a covered waggon, called “a prairie schooner.” Camps of soldiers, many miles apart, are passed. At stations and water-tanks there are always three or four soldiers, who have a small wooden house, in the midst of or near a “dug out.” This is a large hole in the ground, covered with a heavy roof of sods which rises a foot or two above the level of the plain. At the sides are holes from which to pop away at the enemy.
"We see four buffalos far distant. Farther on, we come in sight of one quite near. He runs parallel to the train for a long distance. Fool, with pistol, pops at him with not the remotest chance of hitting him. Scarcely a tree and not a house to be seen for miles. The prairie stretches away on all sides to the horizon. Forests in the distance are not forests, only the mirage of trees. Cactus, small but plentiful, grow on the plains. The prairie is on fire in the distance.
"Occasional forts appear. These are only large “dugouts.” There are no houses, only small “dug outs” near forts, people live in these, and build them near the forts for protection. “Dug outs" are almost impregnable to Indians. The rocky mountains are in view long before we reach Denver. Denver is a place of seven thousand inhabitants. Utes are about the street lounging, shooting for small change, stealing, or begging. At nightfall they mount their horses and ride to the camp outside the city. Forty thousand of this Indian tribe are on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.
"We drive past the camp of the Utes, towards the mountains, just to see if they are not as near as they seem. After eight miles I am convinced, and turn city-ward. The Utes are painted red and fiery. As we drive to a Lager-Beer garden, amid a clump of trees, we pass half a dozen little Utes catching young birds. They handle the young birds cruelly; as cruelly as they will handle white and red enemies some day, if ever they get a good chance.
"It is scorchingly hot till about five, when it becomes cool. At night I passed through the Chinese quarter, where the celestial women, painted and powdered, tempt unwary sinners to more sin. No virtuous Chinese women ever land on these shores. There is no demand for them. Denver is not very rough. Its streets are quiet. One man was stabbed last night in a Mexican house. Stabbing and killing occur only in low haunts. It is not apparently worse than Kansas City and other Western cities, which are not so much of border cities as Denver.
"Abilene, 162 miles West from Kansas City, is said to be a rough place. There were four murders there one night last week. The marshall there is one “Wild Bill,” who was obliged to flee from Texas. He has killed a fabulous number of men, according to reports. Hatless, with his long hair floating over his shoulder, his pistols stuck in his belt, he paces the sacred soil of Abilene, the representative of law and order. “He is quiet, but when roused is mad.” That is what is said of him. In Denver and all over.
"As we came out of Denver in the morning, we ran over a boot-black, aged 18, who was stealing a ride under the sleeping car. He was frightfully mangled. We carried him to Evans [town 45 miles away]. When we returned at night his wounds had not been dressed, as the doctor at Evans had not the necessary instruments. It occurred to me that the chances of surviving a calamity out here were lessened as much as possible. Fire-crackers and pistols are noising everywhere to-day. The racket is distressing. The Fourth of July is a nuisance, and ought to be abolished by law."
Next week's stories will include the first ever August Bank Holiday, the mayor of St Helens sues again for libel, St Anne's church in Sutton has a special visitor and the Parr rapists are handed tough sentences.
We begin on the 26th when what was claimed to be the largest mirror ever turned out in Lancashire was silvered in Peasley Cross. Pratt and Co undertook the work, with the silvering of the 100 ft. mirror accomplished by a new process in forty hours, instead of lasting ten days.
In the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 29th, two lads from Cowley Hill were charged with stealing two pigeons from the cote of Joseph Large of Windle City. One was Daniel Coleman, a 14-year-old deaf and dumb boy from Cowley Court, near College Street, and the other was 13-year-old William Rock from Union Street. The pigeons were said to be worth 3 shillings but the boys had sold them to a pigeon dealer in Water Street called George Davenport for 1s 3d. The 13-year-old was sent to prison for three weeks but the older deaf and dumb lad was let off because of his infirmity.
Every year some St Helens employers – mainly glass firms – paid for their employees to have a day trip to the Lake District. The excursion cost the companies very little – just the cost of chartering a train for around 500 people. In 1869 when the Ravenhead Plate Glass Works went to Windermere they took a reporter from the St Helens Newspaper with them who was obsessed with the weather. His descriptive powers went a bit over the top, saying the "heavy mist hung like an impalpable curtain between the excursionists and all distant views." Before adding, the "teardrops of the sky" fell with "mizzling continuity" as "damping upon the spirits as upon the clothing".
The Sutton Glassworks in Lancots Lane would also take their workforce to the Lakes – but this year's excursion on the 29th ended in tragedy. A man named Costello was a little late in arriving at Windermere railway station for the return journey. He attempted get into a carriage while the train was moving but slipped and was crushed to death.
A not entirely dissimilar accident occurred during the same evening back in St Helens. As a train of waggons was passing through Sutton on its way to Liverpool, a platelayer named Robert Prescott, who was walking along the line, attempted to hitch a lift. He ran to a waggon and tried to climb in but his foot slipped and he fell under the wheels. Prescott was described as having been "literally crushed to pieces".
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Liverpool, Dr Alexander Goss, paid a visit to St Helens every three years. On the 30th Dr Goss confirmed 600 persons at Lowe House and Holy Cross churches and preached a hard-hitting sermon. He criticised the fact that during the last quarter 1,100 Catholic women were committed to gaol in Liverpool – a number far higher than the other denominations, adding:
"The returns showed that infants were overlain every night in the week, and the proportion on Saturday and Sunday was threefold." What Dr Goss was alluding to was the common practice of mothers sleeping in the same bed with their baby (often through necessity) and either they – or the baby's father – accidentally smothering their child during the night. Drunkenness was behind many of these cases, which was underlined by the weekend increase.
This article has so far discussed examples of recklessness on the railway – and even in bed. However it happened regularly below ground too. On the 31st Henry Rigby and Benjamin Dykes were summoned to the St Helens Petty Sessions for working with naked lamps in a section of Rainford Colliery where there was a risk of an explosion. The magistrates imposed a fine of 40 shillings and costs upon each man.
In May I wrote that: "…a need for a simple system of knowing who was down a coalmine was shown by an incident on the 27th at Bickershaw Colliery". That was after two men working underground had failed to surface – and nobody noticed. That was apart from the men's families when they didn't return home from work and it took until the following morning before a search took place down the pit. Their bodies were found near their working place in what was described as a "shockingly mutilated condition" after a ten cwt stone had dropped on them.
It wasn't until a few years later that a system of tallies or checks was introduced (and made mandatory in 1913) so that colliery management could see who was still underground. During the evening of the 31st a replica of that incident occurred which involved the deaths of two Haydock cousins called Twist. The Leigh Chronicle wrote:
"The men worked together in Messrs. Evans' colliery, and on Monday night, as they did not return home at the usual time, their wives went to the colliery to make inquiries about them, and receiving no satisfaction they begged of one of the underlookers to examine the part of the mine in which they were known to have been working. The underlooker, on the earnest importunities of the women, descended the mine, and on reaching the particular part of the workings where the men had been employed found that the roof had given way and the two unfortunate men were buried in the debris."
On the 31st in the St Helens Petty Sessions, what the St Helens Newspaper described as "three-well marked individuals" appeared facing breach of the peace and drunkenness charges. Patrick Kirby, Samuel Walker and Thomas Conroy had been fighting in the latter's home on Combshop Brow, aka Croppers Hill. A police officer said that when he arrived he had found them all "covered with blood" with Walker beating some women and Kirby "stripped and striking all about him". Walker appeared in court with a broken nose and claimed Conroy's wife had given it to him! They were each fined 5 shillings and ordered to find sureties to keep the peace.
Also bound over was John Cooney. PC Robinson said he had seen the man in the St Helens market place "shouting, screaming, throwing up his arms, gesticulating, and rushing up and down in the most frantic manner". The 1871 census has the 29-year-old labourer living in Vernon Street in Parr.
William Woodier was charged with assaulting and beating Jeremiah Chadwick. The Newspaper said it arisen out of a "shindy" in Carr Mill in which stones had been thrown and two of Chadwick's teeth knocked out. Woodier was told to pay 18s 6d or go to gaol for 14 days.
Shawls had more uses than just clothing. Last year I reported how a young woman had stolen boots from a Napier Street shop in St Helens by hiding them under her shawl. They could also be used as an aid to violence. On the 1st in Prescot Petty Sessions, it was revealed that Ann Marr had carried out an assault on Bridget Oates in Prescot's High Street by grabbing hold of her shawl and dragging her to the ground. The woman was fined 10 shillings.
I am devoting the rest of the article to extracts from a fascinating account that was published this week in the Hampshire Telegraph. The 1870s was, of course, the era of the "Wild West" in the United States. Historians say that the 20th century Hollywood films fictionalised and exaggerated many aspects of life. So to read someone's contemporaneous experience is likely to prove a much more authentic record of the developing West. The extraordinary article was written by an employee of the North Missouri Railroad and describes a long train journey from St Louis to the Rocky Mountains:
"On the 23rd June I left for Kansas City, Denver, and Cheyenne, and returned on the morning of the 1st inst., having made a trip of 2,040 miles. I left Kansas City at nearly eleven o'clock on Saturday night, the 24th ult. I slept about 150 miles, got up before six next morning, washed, dressed, and was ready for breakfast at Salina, 184 miles west of Kansas City. Small, very small, villages now dot the country at long intervals. Small patches of trees still more rarely meet the eye. Cultivated land form but small spots in the great uncultivated expanse. Herds of cattle graze. Herdsmen, mounted and armed, guard them.
"At Brookville, 200 miles west of Kansas City, we strike the plains proper. We see the smoky hills, which do not smoke, and are not imposing, but on which Indians have raised small columns of loose stones, for landmarks perhaps. We pass numerous villages of prairie dogs. How human they look, as they sit bolt upright on the little mounds at the mouth of their holes. Some of them bow to us gracefully, as it would seem. They are barking at us, only the train renders their bark inaudible. Some of them run to their mounds, on which the moment they reach them, they sit bolt upright.
The owl and the snake – the rattlesnake – dwell with them. The latter is said by some to be an intruder and to feed on young prairie dog. By others the snake is said to be a staunch friend of the prairie dog and to defend it when attacked. The prairie dog is the hole-digger, and provides a house for himself, the owl, and the snake. As we passed the villages of prairie dogs, some fool, who had escaped, or been let loose with firearms, popped at the dogs, from the train, with a pistol. There are always wicked fools about, and this was one, taking pleasure in simply destroying life without any result to be obtained.
"Whitened bones and partially destroyed carcases of buffalo sand the prairies. Rarely is the team of the settler to be seen. It is a covered waggon, called “a prairie schooner.” Camps of soldiers, many miles apart, are passed. At stations and water-tanks there are always three or four soldiers, who have a small wooden house, in the midst of or near a “dug out.” This is a large hole in the ground, covered with a heavy roof of sods which rises a foot or two above the level of the plain. At the sides are holes from which to pop away at the enemy.
"We see four buffalos far distant. Farther on, we come in sight of one quite near. He runs parallel to the train for a long distance. Fool, with pistol, pops at him with not the remotest chance of hitting him. Scarcely a tree and not a house to be seen for miles. The prairie stretches away on all sides to the horizon. Forests in the distance are not forests, only the mirage of trees. Cactus, small but plentiful, grow on the plains. The prairie is on fire in the distance.
"Occasional forts appear. These are only large “dugouts.” There are no houses, only small “dug outs” near forts, people live in these, and build them near the forts for protection. “Dug outs" are almost impregnable to Indians. The rocky mountains are in view long before we reach Denver. Denver is a place of seven thousand inhabitants. Utes are about the street lounging, shooting for small change, stealing, or begging. At nightfall they mount their horses and ride to the camp outside the city. Forty thousand of this Indian tribe are on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.
"We drive past the camp of the Utes, towards the mountains, just to see if they are not as near as they seem. After eight miles I am convinced, and turn city-ward. The Utes are painted red and fiery. As we drive to a Lager-Beer garden, amid a clump of trees, we pass half a dozen little Utes catching young birds. They handle the young birds cruelly; as cruelly as they will handle white and red enemies some day, if ever they get a good chance.
"It is scorchingly hot till about five, when it becomes cool. At night I passed through the Chinese quarter, where the celestial women, painted and powdered, tempt unwary sinners to more sin. No virtuous Chinese women ever land on these shores. There is no demand for them. Denver is not very rough. Its streets are quiet. One man was stabbed last night in a Mexican house. Stabbing and killing occur only in low haunts. It is not apparently worse than Kansas City and other Western cities, which are not so much of border cities as Denver.
"Abilene, 162 miles West from Kansas City, is said to be a rough place. There were four murders there one night last week. The marshall there is one “Wild Bill,” who was obliged to flee from Texas. He has killed a fabulous number of men, according to reports. Hatless, with his long hair floating over his shoulder, his pistols stuck in his belt, he paces the sacred soil of Abilene, the representative of law and order. “He is quiet, but when roused is mad.” That is what is said of him. In Denver and all over.
"As we came out of Denver in the morning, we ran over a boot-black, aged 18, who was stealing a ride under the sleeping car. He was frightfully mangled. We carried him to Evans [town 45 miles away]. When we returned at night his wounds had not been dressed, as the doctor at Evans had not the necessary instruments. It occurred to me that the chances of surviving a calamity out here were lessened as much as possible. Fire-crackers and pistols are noising everywhere to-day. The racket is distressing. The Fourth of July is a nuisance, and ought to be abolished by law."
Next week's stories will include the first ever August Bank Holiday, the mayor of St Helens sues again for libel, St Anne's church in Sutton has a special visitor and the Parr rapists are handed tough sentences.
This week's many stories include the men covered with blood on Croppers Hill, a Sutton Glassworks outing ends in tragedy, the Cowley Hill boys charged with pigeon stealing, the overlaying of babies, the real Wild West and the dead cousins who were left down a Haydock coal mine.
We begin on the 26th when what was claimed to be the largest mirror ever turned out in Lancashire was silvered in Peasley Cross.
Pratt and Co undertook the work, with the silvering of the 100 ft. mirror accomplished by a new process in forty hours, instead of lasting ten days.
In the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 29th, two lads from Cowley Hill were charged with stealing two pigeons from the cote of Joseph Large of Windle City.
One was Daniel Coleman, a 14-year-old deaf and dumb boy from Cowley Court, near College Street, and the other was 13-year-old William Rock from Union Street.
The pigeons were said to be worth 3 shillings but the boys had sold them to a pigeon dealer in Water Street called George Davenport for 1s 3d.
The 13-year-old was sent to prison for three weeks but the older deaf and dumb lad was let off because of his infirmity.
James Pattison, a picture framer from Raglan Street (pictured above), was charged with stealing frames, mounts, prints, skin of leather and an oil painting off Henry Lowe.
The 28-year-old printer, stationer and picture framer had premises in Liverpool Road and was Pattison's employer.
The man pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for three months with hard labour.
Every year some St Helens employers – mainly glass firms – paid for their employees to have a day trip to the Lake District.
The excursion cost the companies very little – just the cost of chartering a train for around 500 people.
In 1869 when the Ravenhead Plate Glass Works went to Windermere they took a reporter from the St Helens Newspaper with them who was obsessed with the weather.
His descriptive powers went a bit over the top, saying the "heavy mist hung like an impalpable curtain between the excursionists and all distant views."
Before adding, the "teardrops of the sky" fell with "mizzling continuity" as "damping upon the spirits as upon the clothing".
The Sutton Glassworks in Lancots Lane would also take their workforce to the Lakes – but this year's excursion on the 29th ended in tragedy.
A man named Costello was a little late in arriving at Windermere railway station for the return journey.
He attempted get into a carriage while the train was moving but slipped and was crushed to death.
A not entirely dissimilar accident occurred during the same evening back in St Helens.
As a train of waggons was passing through Sutton on its way to Liverpool, a platelayer named Robert Prescott, who was walking along the line, attempted to hitch a lift.
He ran to a waggon and tried to climb in but his foot slipped and he fell under the wheels. Prescott was described as having been "literally crushed to pieces".
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Liverpool, Dr Alexander Goss, paid a visit to St Helens every three years.
On the 30th Dr Goss confirmed 600 persons at Lowe House and Holy Cross churches and preached a hard-hitting sermon.
He criticised the fact that during the last quarter 1,100 Catholic women were committed to gaol in Liverpool – a number far higher than the other denominations, adding:
"The returns showed that infants were overlain every night in the week, and the proportion on Saturday and Sunday was threefold."
What Dr Goss was alluding to was the common practice of mothers sleeping in the same bed with their baby (often through necessity) and either they – or the baby's father – accidentally smothering their child during the night.
Drunkenness was behind many of these cases, which was underlined by the weekend increase.
This article has so far discussed examples of recklessness on the railway – and even in bed. However it happened regularly below ground too.
On the 31st Henry Rigby and Benjamin Dykes were summoned to the St Helens Petty Sessions for working with naked lamps in a section of Rainford Colliery where there was a risk of an explosion.
The magistrates imposed a fine of 40 shillings and costs upon each man.
In May I wrote that: "…a need for a simple system of knowing who was down a coal mine was shown by an incident on the 27th at Bickershaw Colliery".
That was after two men working underground had failed to surface – and nobody noticed.
That was apart from the men's families when they didn't return home from work and it took until the following morning before a search took place down the pit.
Their bodies were found near their working place in what was described as a "shockingly mutilated condition" after a ten cwt stone had dropped on them.
It wasn't until a few years later that a system of tallies or checks was introduced (and made mandatory in 1913) so that colliery management could see who was still underground.
During the evening of the 31st a replica of that incident occurred which involved the deaths of two Haydock cousins called Twist. The Leigh Chronicle wrote:
"The men worked together in Messrs. Evans' colliery, and on Monday night, as they did not return home at the usual time, their wives went to the colliery to make inquiries about them, and receiving no satisfaction they begged of one of the underlookers to examine the part of the mine in which they were known to have been working.
"The underlooker, on the earnest importunities of the women, descended the mine, and on reaching the particular part of the workings where the men had been employed found that the roof had given way and the two unfortunate men were buried in the debris."
On the 31st in the St Helens Petty Sessions, what the St Helens Newspaper described as "three-well marked individuals" appeared facing breach of the peace and drunkenness charges.
Patrick Kirby, Samuel Walker and Thomas Conroy had been fighting in the latter's home on Combshop Brow, aka Croppers Hill.
A police officer said that when he arrived he had found them all "covered with blood" with Walker beating some women and Kirby "stripped and striking all about him".
Walker appeared in court with a broken nose and claimed Conroy's wife had given it to him!
They were each fined 5 shillings and ordered to find sureties to keep the peace.
Also bound over was John Cooney. PC Robinson said he had seen the man in the St Helens market place "shouting, screaming, throwing up his arms, gesticulating, and rushing up and down in the most frantic manner".
The 1871 census has the 29-year-old labourer living in Vernon Street in Parr.
William Woodier was charged with assaulting and beating Jeremiah Chadwick.
The Newspaper said it arisen out of a "shindy" in Carr Mill in which stones had been thrown and two of Chadwick's teeth knocked out.
Woodier was told to pay 18s 6d or go to gaol for 14 days.
Shawls had more uses than just clothing.
Last year I reported how a young woman had stolen boots from a Napier Street shop in St Helens by hiding them under her shawl.
They could also be used as an aid to violence.
On the 1st in Prescot Petty Sessions, it was revealed that Ann Marr had carried out an assault on Bridget Oates in Prescot's High Street by grabbing hold of her shawl and dragging her to the ground. The woman was fined 10 shillings.
I am devoting the rest of the article to extracts from a fascinating account that was published this week in the Hampshire Telegraph.
The 1870s was, of course, the era of the "Wild West" in the United States.
Historians say that the 20th century Hollywood films fictionalised and exaggerated many aspects of life.
So to read someone's contemporaneous experience is likely to prove a much more authentic record of the developing West.
The extraordinary article was written by an employee of the North Missouri Railroad and describes a long train journey from St Louis to the Rocky Mountains:
"On the 23rd June I left for Kansas City, Denver, and Cheyenne, and returned on the morning of the 1st inst., having made a trip of 2,040 miles.
"I left Kansas City at nearly eleven o'clock on Saturday night, the 24th ult. I slept about 150 miles, got up before six next morning, washed, dressed, and was ready for breakfast at Salina, 184 miles west of Kansas City.
"Small, very small, villages now dot the country at long intervals. Small patches of trees still more rarely meet the eye.
"Cultivated land form but small spots in the great uncultivated expanse. Herds of cattle graze. Herdsmen, mounted and armed, guard them.
"At Brookville, 200 miles west of Kansas City, we strike the plains proper. We see the smoky hills, which do not smoke, and are not imposing, but on which Indians have raised small columns of loose stones, for landmarks perhaps.
"We pass numerous villages of prairie dogs. How human they look, as they sit bolt upright on the little mounds at the mouth of their holes.
"Some of them bow to us gracefully, as it would seem. They are barking at us, only the train renders their bark inaudible.
"Some of them run to their mounds, on which the moment they reach them, they sit bolt upright. The owl and the snake – the rattlesnake – dwell with them.
"The latter is said by some to be an intruder and to feed on young prairie dog. By others the snake is said to be a staunch friend of the prairie dog and to defend it when attacked.
"The prairie dog is the hole-digger, and provides a house for himself, the owl, and the snake.
"As we passed the villages of prairie dogs, some fool, who had escaped, or been let loose with firearms, popped at the dogs, from the train, with a pistol.
"There are always wicked fools about, and this was one, taking pleasure in simply destroying life without any result to be obtained.
"Whitened bones and partially destroyed carcases of buffalo sand the prairies. Rarely is the team of the settler to be seen. It is a covered waggon, called “a prairie schooner.”
"Camps of soldiers, many miles apart, are passed. At stations and water-tanks there are always three or four soldiers, who have a small wooden house, in the midst of or near a “dug out.”
"This is a large hole in the ground, covered with a heavy roof of sods which rises a foot or two above the level of the plain. At the sides are holes from which to pop away at the enemy.
"We see four buffalos far distant. Farther on, we come in sight of one quite near. He runs parallel to the train for a long distance. Fool, with pistol, pops at him with not the remotest chance of hitting him.
"Scarcely a tree and not a house to be seen for miles. The prairie stretches away on all sides to the horizon. Forests in the distance are not forests, only the mirage of trees.
"Cactus, small but plentiful, grow on the plains. The prairie is on fire in the distance.
"Occasional forts appear. These are only large “dugouts.” There are no houses, only small “dug outs” near forts, people live in these, and build them near the forts for protection. “Dug outs" are almost impregnable to Indians.
"The rocky mountains are in view long before we reach Denver. Denver is a place of seven thousand inhabitants. Utes are about the street lounging, shooting for small change, stealing, or begging.
"At nightfall they mount their horses and ride to the camp outside the city. Forty thousand of this Indian tribe are on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.
"We drive past the camp of the Utes, towards the mountains, just to see if they are not as near as they seem. After eight miles I am convinced, and turn city-ward. The Utes are painted red and fiery.
"As we drive to a Lager-Beer garden, amid a clump of trees, we pass half a dozen little Utes catching young birds.
"They handle the young birds cruelly; as cruelly as they will handle white and red enemies some day, if ever they get a good chance.
"It is scorchingly hot till about five, when it becomes cool. At night I passed through the Chinese quarter, where the celestial women, painted and powdered, tempt unwary sinners to more sin.
"No virtuous Chinese women ever land on these shores. There is no demand for them.
"Denver is not very rough. Its streets are quiet. One man was stabbed last night in a Mexican house. Stabbing and killing occur only in low haunts.
"It is not apparently worse than Kansas City and other Western cities, which are not so much of border cities as Denver.
"Abilene, 162 miles West from Kansas City, is said to be a rough place. There were four murders there one night last week. The marshall there is one “Wild Bill,” who was obliged to flee from Texas.
"He has killed a fabulous number of men, according to reports. Hatless, with his long hair floating over his shoulder, his pistols stuck in his belt, he paces the sacred soil of Abilene, the representative of law and order.
"“He is quiet, but when roused is mad.” That is what is said of him. In Denver and all over.
"As we came out of Denver in the morning, we ran over a boot-black, aged 18, who was stealing a ride under the sleeping car. He was frightfully mangled.
"We carried him to Evans [town 45 miles away]. When we returned at night his wounds had not been dressed, as the doctor at Evans had not the necessary instruments.
"It occurred to me that the chances of surviving a calamity out here were lessened as much as possible.
"Fire-crackers and pistols are noising everywhere to-day. The racket is distressing. The Fourth of July is a nuisance, and ought to be abolished by law."
Next week's stories will include the first ever August Bank Holiday, the mayor of St Helens sues again for libel, St Anne's church in Sutton has a special visitor and the Parr rapists are handed tough sentences.
We begin on the 26th when what was claimed to be the largest mirror ever turned out in Lancashire was silvered in Peasley Cross.
Pratt and Co undertook the work, with the silvering of the 100 ft. mirror accomplished by a new process in forty hours, instead of lasting ten days.
In the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 29th, two lads from Cowley Hill were charged with stealing two pigeons from the cote of Joseph Large of Windle City.
One was Daniel Coleman, a 14-year-old deaf and dumb boy from Cowley Court, near College Street, and the other was 13-year-old William Rock from Union Street.
The pigeons were said to be worth 3 shillings but the boys had sold them to a pigeon dealer in Water Street called George Davenport for 1s 3d.
The 13-year-old was sent to prison for three weeks but the older deaf and dumb lad was let off because of his infirmity.
The 28-year-old printer, stationer and picture framer had premises in Liverpool Road and was Pattison's employer.
The man pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for three months with hard labour.
Every year some St Helens employers – mainly glass firms – paid for their employees to have a day trip to the Lake District.
The excursion cost the companies very little – just the cost of chartering a train for around 500 people.
In 1869 when the Ravenhead Plate Glass Works went to Windermere they took a reporter from the St Helens Newspaper with them who was obsessed with the weather.
His descriptive powers went a bit over the top, saying the "heavy mist hung like an impalpable curtain between the excursionists and all distant views."
Before adding, the "teardrops of the sky" fell with "mizzling continuity" as "damping upon the spirits as upon the clothing".
The Sutton Glassworks in Lancots Lane would also take their workforce to the Lakes – but this year's excursion on the 29th ended in tragedy.
A man named Costello was a little late in arriving at Windermere railway station for the return journey.
He attempted get into a carriage while the train was moving but slipped and was crushed to death.
A not entirely dissimilar accident occurred during the same evening back in St Helens.
As a train of waggons was passing through Sutton on its way to Liverpool, a platelayer named Robert Prescott, who was walking along the line, attempted to hitch a lift.
He ran to a waggon and tried to climb in but his foot slipped and he fell under the wheels. Prescott was described as having been "literally crushed to pieces".
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Liverpool, Dr Alexander Goss, paid a visit to St Helens every three years.
On the 30th Dr Goss confirmed 600 persons at Lowe House and Holy Cross churches and preached a hard-hitting sermon.
He criticised the fact that during the last quarter 1,100 Catholic women were committed to gaol in Liverpool – a number far higher than the other denominations, adding:
"The returns showed that infants were overlain every night in the week, and the proportion on Saturday and Sunday was threefold."
What Dr Goss was alluding to was the common practice of mothers sleeping in the same bed with their baby (often through necessity) and either they – or the baby's father – accidentally smothering their child during the night.
Drunkenness was behind many of these cases, which was underlined by the weekend increase.
This article has so far discussed examples of recklessness on the railway – and even in bed. However it happened regularly below ground too.
On the 31st Henry Rigby and Benjamin Dykes were summoned to the St Helens Petty Sessions for working with naked lamps in a section of Rainford Colliery where there was a risk of an explosion.
The magistrates imposed a fine of 40 shillings and costs upon each man.
In May I wrote that: "…a need for a simple system of knowing who was down a coal mine was shown by an incident on the 27th at Bickershaw Colliery".
That was after two men working underground had failed to surface – and nobody noticed.
That was apart from the men's families when they didn't return home from work and it took until the following morning before a search took place down the pit.
Their bodies were found near their working place in what was described as a "shockingly mutilated condition" after a ten cwt stone had dropped on them.
It wasn't until a few years later that a system of tallies or checks was introduced (and made mandatory in 1913) so that colliery management could see who was still underground.
During the evening of the 31st a replica of that incident occurred which involved the deaths of two Haydock cousins called Twist. The Leigh Chronicle wrote:
"The men worked together in Messrs. Evans' colliery, and on Monday night, as they did not return home at the usual time, their wives went to the colliery to make inquiries about them, and receiving no satisfaction they begged of one of the underlookers to examine the part of the mine in which they were known to have been working.
"The underlooker, on the earnest importunities of the women, descended the mine, and on reaching the particular part of the workings where the men had been employed found that the roof had given way and the two unfortunate men were buried in the debris."
On the 31st in the St Helens Petty Sessions, what the St Helens Newspaper described as "three-well marked individuals" appeared facing breach of the peace and drunkenness charges.
Patrick Kirby, Samuel Walker and Thomas Conroy had been fighting in the latter's home on Combshop Brow, aka Croppers Hill.
A police officer said that when he arrived he had found them all "covered with blood" with Walker beating some women and Kirby "stripped and striking all about him".
Walker appeared in court with a broken nose and claimed Conroy's wife had given it to him!
They were each fined 5 shillings and ordered to find sureties to keep the peace.
Also bound over was John Cooney. PC Robinson said he had seen the man in the St Helens market place "shouting, screaming, throwing up his arms, gesticulating, and rushing up and down in the most frantic manner".
The 1871 census has the 29-year-old labourer living in Vernon Street in Parr.
William Woodier was charged with assaulting and beating Jeremiah Chadwick.
The Newspaper said it arisen out of a "shindy" in Carr Mill in which stones had been thrown and two of Chadwick's teeth knocked out.
Woodier was told to pay 18s 6d or go to gaol for 14 days.
Shawls had more uses than just clothing.
Last year I reported how a young woman had stolen boots from a Napier Street shop in St Helens by hiding them under her shawl.
They could also be used as an aid to violence.
On the 1st in Prescot Petty Sessions, it was revealed that Ann Marr had carried out an assault on Bridget Oates in Prescot's High Street by grabbing hold of her shawl and dragging her to the ground. The woman was fined 10 shillings.
I am devoting the rest of the article to extracts from a fascinating account that was published this week in the Hampshire Telegraph.
The 1870s was, of course, the era of the "Wild West" in the United States.
Historians say that the 20th century Hollywood films fictionalised and exaggerated many aspects of life.
So to read someone's contemporaneous experience is likely to prove a much more authentic record of the developing West.
The extraordinary article was written by an employee of the North Missouri Railroad and describes a long train journey from St Louis to the Rocky Mountains:
"On the 23rd June I left for Kansas City, Denver, and Cheyenne, and returned on the morning of the 1st inst., having made a trip of 2,040 miles.
"I left Kansas City at nearly eleven o'clock on Saturday night, the 24th ult. I slept about 150 miles, got up before six next morning, washed, dressed, and was ready for breakfast at Salina, 184 miles west of Kansas City.
"Small, very small, villages now dot the country at long intervals. Small patches of trees still more rarely meet the eye.
"Cultivated land form but small spots in the great uncultivated expanse. Herds of cattle graze. Herdsmen, mounted and armed, guard them.
"At Brookville, 200 miles west of Kansas City, we strike the plains proper. We see the smoky hills, which do not smoke, and are not imposing, but on which Indians have raised small columns of loose stones, for landmarks perhaps.
"We pass numerous villages of prairie dogs. How human they look, as they sit bolt upright on the little mounds at the mouth of their holes.
"Some of them bow to us gracefully, as it would seem. They are barking at us, only the train renders their bark inaudible.
"Some of them run to their mounds, on which the moment they reach them, they sit bolt upright. The owl and the snake – the rattlesnake – dwell with them.
"The latter is said by some to be an intruder and to feed on young prairie dog. By others the snake is said to be a staunch friend of the prairie dog and to defend it when attacked.
"The prairie dog is the hole-digger, and provides a house for himself, the owl, and the snake.
"As we passed the villages of prairie dogs, some fool, who had escaped, or been let loose with firearms, popped at the dogs, from the train, with a pistol.
"There are always wicked fools about, and this was one, taking pleasure in simply destroying life without any result to be obtained.
"Whitened bones and partially destroyed carcases of buffalo sand the prairies. Rarely is the team of the settler to be seen. It is a covered waggon, called “a prairie schooner.”
"Camps of soldiers, many miles apart, are passed. At stations and water-tanks there are always three or four soldiers, who have a small wooden house, in the midst of or near a “dug out.”
"This is a large hole in the ground, covered with a heavy roof of sods which rises a foot or two above the level of the plain. At the sides are holes from which to pop away at the enemy.
"We see four buffalos far distant. Farther on, we come in sight of one quite near. He runs parallel to the train for a long distance. Fool, with pistol, pops at him with not the remotest chance of hitting him.
"Scarcely a tree and not a house to be seen for miles. The prairie stretches away on all sides to the horizon. Forests in the distance are not forests, only the mirage of trees.
"Cactus, small but plentiful, grow on the plains. The prairie is on fire in the distance.
"Occasional forts appear. These are only large “dugouts.” There are no houses, only small “dug outs” near forts, people live in these, and build them near the forts for protection. “Dug outs" are almost impregnable to Indians.
"The rocky mountains are in view long before we reach Denver. Denver is a place of seven thousand inhabitants. Utes are about the street lounging, shooting for small change, stealing, or begging.
"At nightfall they mount their horses and ride to the camp outside the city. Forty thousand of this Indian tribe are on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.
"We drive past the camp of the Utes, towards the mountains, just to see if they are not as near as they seem. After eight miles I am convinced, and turn city-ward. The Utes are painted red and fiery.
"As we drive to a Lager-Beer garden, amid a clump of trees, we pass half a dozen little Utes catching young birds.
"They handle the young birds cruelly; as cruelly as they will handle white and red enemies some day, if ever they get a good chance.
"It is scorchingly hot till about five, when it becomes cool. At night I passed through the Chinese quarter, where the celestial women, painted and powdered, tempt unwary sinners to more sin.
"No virtuous Chinese women ever land on these shores. There is no demand for them.
"Denver is not very rough. Its streets are quiet. One man was stabbed last night in a Mexican house. Stabbing and killing occur only in low haunts.
"It is not apparently worse than Kansas City and other Western cities, which are not so much of border cities as Denver.
"Abilene, 162 miles West from Kansas City, is said to be a rough place. There were four murders there one night last week. The marshall there is one “Wild Bill,” who was obliged to flee from Texas.
"He has killed a fabulous number of men, according to reports. Hatless, with his long hair floating over his shoulder, his pistols stuck in his belt, he paces the sacred soil of Abilene, the representative of law and order.
"“He is quiet, but when roused is mad.” That is what is said of him. In Denver and all over.
"As we came out of Denver in the morning, we ran over a boot-black, aged 18, who was stealing a ride under the sleeping car. He was frightfully mangled.
"We carried him to Evans [town 45 miles away]. When we returned at night his wounds had not been dressed, as the doctor at Evans had not the necessary instruments.
"It occurred to me that the chances of surviving a calamity out here were lessened as much as possible.
"Fire-crackers and pistols are noising everywhere to-day. The racket is distressing. The Fourth of July is a nuisance, and ought to be abolished by law."
Next week's stories will include the first ever August Bank Holiday, the mayor of St Helens sues again for libel, St Anne's church in Sutton has a special visitor and the Parr rapists are handed tough sentences.