150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 1 - 7 JANUARY 1874
This week's many stories include the drunkenness on New Year's Day, the cowardly runaway husband from Rainhill, the neighbourly row that led to nine summonses being issued, how stealing a plank of wood was considered more serious than giving a policeman a black eye and how an attempt to steal a charity box from the Globe Hotel in Ormskirk Street left a man with burnt fingers.
We begin on New Year's Day when many people had a holiday and the St Helens Newspaper was unimpressed with the drunkenness that took place, writing: "The amount of intemperance on Thursday was painful to witness, and was the more observable in the absence of usual business bustle. Young men of the working classes turned the day into a saturnalia, drinking jovially while light lasted, and singing through the streets at night."
The annual treat to "the aged poor" belonging to the congregation of the Parish Church took place in the infants' schoolroom on the 1st. A total of 120 guests enjoyed a dinner, with the St Helens Newspaper commenting how some of the old people had manifested "all the vigour of youth in doing justice to the hospitable spread".
However, the courts sat as normal on New Year's Day and there was another example of how the justice system of the 1870s considered theft more serious than violence. That occurred when John Mawson was imprisoned for a month for stealing a plank of wood from a Parr farmer. At the same hearing of the St Helens Petty Sessions, a "rough looking fellow" named Moses Middlehurst was charged with assaulting PC Callister at Moss Bank. The Newspaper said:
"The officer saw the prisoner at half past eleven o’clock, and apprehended him for drunkenness. Middlehurst refused to go, and resisted the arrest by force, and it was only after a severe struggle, as he is a stout man, that the officer conquered him. He then adopted the policy of passive resistance, lying down and refusing to move; and it was not until three o’clock in the morning that he was conveyed to the police station. The officer had a black eye, and his helmet was slightly damaged. His Worship inflicted a fine of 20s. and costs, allowing the charge of drunkenness to be withdrawn."
James Kennedy from Rainhill had some months earlier deserted his pregnant wife and children and left them penniless. In order to survive Mrs Kennedy needed to rely on meagre hand-outs from the Prescot Union. However, the body that implemented the Poor Law within the St Helens and Prescot districts wanted their money back and they eventually traced Kennedy and had him arrested. But the man said he had no cash and so this week the gardener was sent to prison for two months.
Typically, Kennedy laid the blame on his wife, claiming she had been violent to him and had driven him away. A witness agreed that the couple had regularly quarrelled but said that was through the man's drunken habits. It was also stated that when Kennedy was in full work, his wife had received so little cash from her husband that she was better off when in receipt of the so-called parish relief from the Prescot Union. In sentencing Kennedy to prison the magistrate expressed his contempt for him and described his behaviour as cowardly.
The Bench also did not buy Thomas Greener's unlikely excuse when charged with poaching. The police had collared him at 1:20am on Christmas morning near the Bird i’ th’ Hand (pictured above) while carrying a bag of rabbits. Greener claimed he had been out enjoying the Christmas festivities and had found the bag dumped on Prescot Road. He said he had no idea that there had also been a net inside until the police pulled it out. The magistrates fined him £5.
Also in court was Joseph Phillips, who was charged with stealing a quantity of flannel from Edward Greenwood's draper's shop in Smithy Brow (Parr Street area). The man had gone into the shop and asked the proprietor to take a glass of ale with him. Greenwood had declined the offer and as Joseph Phillips left he helped himself to a roll of fabric. The draper told the court that he then saw the man "careering down the brow with the bundle held securely under his arm." As stated earlier, stealing property was taken very seriously in the 1870s and Phillips was sentenced to a month in Kirkdale Prison.
It was very common for neighbourly rows in St Helens to end up in court, as the cost of obtaining a summons was only five or six shillings. When a policeman delivered the summons to the prospective defendant, the outraged recipient would likely toddle off to the Town Hall to get theirs and counter sue. And so multiple summonses concerning the same daft incident often had to be dealt with in court. But never before have I come across nine being considered as took place in one case this week!
It concerned three sets of families – the Cullens, Jones and Willetts – with the latter in the 1871 census living in Waterloo Street. The magistrates not looking forward to the prospect of a long, drawn-out case suggested a settlement between the warring families might be reached and the Newspaper wrote: "After some little paralysing, the parties agreed to the suggestion, and promised to be better neighbours in future. They left the court like a happy family of considerable size." Just how long that neighbourly bliss lasted, I cannot say!
Father James Nugent – the pioneering child welfare reformer of which the Nugent Care charity is named – came to St Helens from time to time. He ran a Refuge and Night Asylum in St Anne Street in Liverpool and his boys' choir would perform in St Helens. Donation boxes for his charity were located in several public houses in the town and on the 3rd a miner named John Yates was charged in St Helens Petty Sessions with attempting to rob one from the Globe Hotel. That was located on the corner of Barrow Street and Ormskirk Street.
Yates had entered a room and taken the collection box off the mantelpiece and after unsuccessfully attempting to open it, had tried to force the box open by placing it on the fire. As soon as Yates saw the joints of the box opening, he snatched it up very hastily, forgetting that it would be mad hot, which resulted in him dropping it loudly on the floor. That brought a barmaid to the scene and Yates was arrested and in court was remanded in custody. Later he would be sentenced to 14 days in prison.
The St Helens Newspaper on the 3rd reviewed the pantomime that had been performed at the Theatre Royal (in the premises we know as the Citadel) over Christmas. The paper described 'Sinbad the Sailor or the Wicked Ogre and the Fairies of the Ocean Deep' as "the most complete and gorgeous entertainment of the kind that has ever been offered to the public of St. Helens."
Each performance had been crammed to capacity and some people had, at times, been turned away at the door. Local references had been inserted into the script, such as this verse about the small St Helens Cottage Hospital and the recently installed illuminated clock on the parish church tower:
"Church street a short time back was graced.
With a town clock, by Alderman Radley placed.
It is a great boon – that no one will gainsay.
Would that others would only act in the same way;
Instead of an hospital, for which a cottage was selected.
A spacious infirmary by the rich might be erected."
And finally, a meeting of 300 miners was held on the 7th at the Wagon and Horses in Haydock. The men were currently locked out of their mines as a result of a dispute over the weighing of coal and how many hundredweight comprised a ton. Some of them complained that their concessionary coal supplies had been stopped and there was concern the dispute would spread to other pits.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the abominable water in Robins Lane, the man that died in Parr after his dog ran onto chemical waste, the mayoral gifts of blankets for the deserving poor and the plans to build a post office in Church Street.
We begin on New Year's Day when many people had a holiday and the St Helens Newspaper was unimpressed with the drunkenness that took place, writing: "The amount of intemperance on Thursday was painful to witness, and was the more observable in the absence of usual business bustle. Young men of the working classes turned the day into a saturnalia, drinking jovially while light lasted, and singing through the streets at night."
The annual treat to "the aged poor" belonging to the congregation of the Parish Church took place in the infants' schoolroom on the 1st. A total of 120 guests enjoyed a dinner, with the St Helens Newspaper commenting how some of the old people had manifested "all the vigour of youth in doing justice to the hospitable spread".
However, the courts sat as normal on New Year's Day and there was another example of how the justice system of the 1870s considered theft more serious than violence. That occurred when John Mawson was imprisoned for a month for stealing a plank of wood from a Parr farmer. At the same hearing of the St Helens Petty Sessions, a "rough looking fellow" named Moses Middlehurst was charged with assaulting PC Callister at Moss Bank. The Newspaper said:
"The officer saw the prisoner at half past eleven o’clock, and apprehended him for drunkenness. Middlehurst refused to go, and resisted the arrest by force, and it was only after a severe struggle, as he is a stout man, that the officer conquered him. He then adopted the policy of passive resistance, lying down and refusing to move; and it was not until three o’clock in the morning that he was conveyed to the police station. The officer had a black eye, and his helmet was slightly damaged. His Worship inflicted a fine of 20s. and costs, allowing the charge of drunkenness to be withdrawn."
James Kennedy from Rainhill had some months earlier deserted his pregnant wife and children and left them penniless. In order to survive Mrs Kennedy needed to rely on meagre hand-outs from the Prescot Union. However, the body that implemented the Poor Law within the St Helens and Prescot districts wanted their money back and they eventually traced Kennedy and had him arrested. But the man said he had no cash and so this week the gardener was sent to prison for two months.
Typically, Kennedy laid the blame on his wife, claiming she had been violent to him and had driven him away. A witness agreed that the couple had regularly quarrelled but said that was through the man's drunken habits. It was also stated that when Kennedy was in full work, his wife had received so little cash from her husband that she was better off when in receipt of the so-called parish relief from the Prescot Union. In sentencing Kennedy to prison the magistrate expressed his contempt for him and described his behaviour as cowardly.
Also in court was Joseph Phillips, who was charged with stealing a quantity of flannel from Edward Greenwood's draper's shop in Smithy Brow (Parr Street area). The man had gone into the shop and asked the proprietor to take a glass of ale with him. Greenwood had declined the offer and as Joseph Phillips left he helped himself to a roll of fabric. The draper told the court that he then saw the man "careering down the brow with the bundle held securely under his arm." As stated earlier, stealing property was taken very seriously in the 1870s and Phillips was sentenced to a month in Kirkdale Prison.
It was very common for neighbourly rows in St Helens to end up in court, as the cost of obtaining a summons was only five or six shillings. When a policeman delivered the summons to the prospective defendant, the outraged recipient would likely toddle off to the Town Hall to get theirs and counter sue. And so multiple summonses concerning the same daft incident often had to be dealt with in court. But never before have I come across nine being considered as took place in one case this week!
It concerned three sets of families – the Cullens, Jones and Willetts – with the latter in the 1871 census living in Waterloo Street. The magistrates not looking forward to the prospect of a long, drawn-out case suggested a settlement between the warring families might be reached and the Newspaper wrote: "After some little paralysing, the parties agreed to the suggestion, and promised to be better neighbours in future. They left the court like a happy family of considerable size." Just how long that neighbourly bliss lasted, I cannot say!
Father James Nugent – the pioneering child welfare reformer of which the Nugent Care charity is named – came to St Helens from time to time. He ran a Refuge and Night Asylum in St Anne Street in Liverpool and his boys' choir would perform in St Helens. Donation boxes for his charity were located in several public houses in the town and on the 3rd a miner named John Yates was charged in St Helens Petty Sessions with attempting to rob one from the Globe Hotel. That was located on the corner of Barrow Street and Ormskirk Street.
Yates had entered a room and taken the collection box off the mantelpiece and after unsuccessfully attempting to open it, had tried to force the box open by placing it on the fire. As soon as Yates saw the joints of the box opening, he snatched it up very hastily, forgetting that it would be mad hot, which resulted in him dropping it loudly on the floor. That brought a barmaid to the scene and Yates was arrested and in court was remanded in custody. Later he would be sentenced to 14 days in prison.
The St Helens Newspaper on the 3rd reviewed the pantomime that had been performed at the Theatre Royal (in the premises we know as the Citadel) over Christmas. The paper described 'Sinbad the Sailor or the Wicked Ogre and the Fairies of the Ocean Deep' as "the most complete and gorgeous entertainment of the kind that has ever been offered to the public of St. Helens."
Each performance had been crammed to capacity and some people had, at times, been turned away at the door. Local references had been inserted into the script, such as this verse about the small St Helens Cottage Hospital and the recently installed illuminated clock on the parish church tower:
"Church street a short time back was graced.
With a town clock, by Alderman Radley placed.
It is a great boon – that no one will gainsay.
Would that others would only act in the same way;
Instead of an hospital, for which a cottage was selected.
A spacious infirmary by the rich might be erected."
And finally, a meeting of 300 miners was held on the 7th at the Wagon and Horses in Haydock. The men were currently locked out of their mines as a result of a dispute over the weighing of coal and how many hundredweight comprised a ton. Some of them complained that their concessionary coal supplies had been stopped and there was concern the dispute would spread to other pits.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the abominable water in Robins Lane, the man that died in Parr after his dog ran onto chemical waste, the mayoral gifts of blankets for the deserving poor and the plans to build a post office in Church Street.
This week's many stories include the drunkenness on New Year's Day, the cowardly runaway husband from Rainhill, the neighbourly row that led to nine summonses being issued, how stealing a plank of wood was considered more serious than giving a policeman a black eye and how an attempt to steal a charity box from the Globe Hotel in Ormskirk Street left a man with burnt fingers.
We begin on New Year's Day when many people had a holiday and the St Helens Newspaper was unimpressed with the drunkenness that took place, writing:
"The amount of intemperance on Thursday was painful to witness, and was the more observable in the absence of usual business bustle.
"Young men of the working classes turned the day into a saturnalia, drinking jovially while light lasted, and singing through the streets at night."
The annual treat to "the aged poor" belonging to the congregation of the Parish Church took place in the infants' schoolroom on the 1st.
A total of 120 guests enjoyed a dinner, with the St Helens Newspaper commenting how some of the old people had manifested "all the vigour of youth in doing justice to the hospitable spread".
However, the courts sat as normal on New Year's Day and there was another example of how the justice system of the 1870s considered theft more serious than violence.
That occurred when John Mawson was imprisoned for a month for stealing a plank of wood from a Parr farmer.
At the same hearing of the St Helens Petty Sessions, a "rough looking fellow" named Moses Middlehurst was charged with assaulting PC Callister at Moss Bank. The Newspaper said:
"The officer saw the prisoner at half past eleven o’clock, and apprehended him for drunkenness. Middlehurst refused to go, and resisted the arrest by force, and it was only after a severe struggle, as he is a stout man, that the officer conquered him.
"He then adopted the policy of passive resistance, lying down and refusing to move; and it was not until three o’clock in the morning that he was conveyed to the police station.
"The officer had a black eye, and his helmet was slightly damaged. His Worship inflicted a fine of 20s. and costs, allowing the charge of drunkenness to be withdrawn."
James Kennedy from Rainhill had some months earlier deserted his pregnant wife and children and left them penniless. In order to survive Mrs Kennedy needed to rely on meagre hand-outs from the Prescot Union.
However, the body that implemented the Poor Law within the St Helens and Prescot districts wanted their money back and they eventually traced Kennedy and had him arrested.
But the man said he had no cash and so this week the gardener was sent to prison for two months.
Typically, Kennedy laid the blame on his wife, claiming she had been violent to him and had driven him away.
A witness agreed that the couple had regularly quarrelled but said that was through the man's drunken habits.
It was also stated that when Kennedy was in full work, his wife had received so little cash from her husband that she was better off when in receipt of the so-called parish relief from the Prescot Union.
In sentencing Kennedy to prison the magistrate expressed his contempt for him and described his behaviour as cowardly.
The Bench also did not buy Thomas Greener's unlikely excuse when charged with poaching.
The police had collared him at 1:20am on Christmas morning near the Bird i’ th’ Hand (pictured above) while carrying a bag of rabbits.
Greener claimed he had been out enjoying the Christmas festivities and had found the bag dumped on Prescot Road.
He said he had no idea that there had also been a net inside until the police pulled it out. The magistrates fined him £5.
Also in court was Joseph Phillips, who was charged with stealing a quantity of flannel from Edward Greenwood's draper's shop in Smithy Brow (Parr Street area).
The man had gone into the shop and asked the proprietor to take a glass of ale with him. Greenwood had declined the offer and as Joseph Phillips left he helped himself to a roll of fabric.
The draper told the court that he then saw the man "careering down the brow with the bundle held securely under his arm."
As stated earlier, stealing property was taken very seriously in the 1870s and Phillips was sentenced to a month in Kirkdale Prison.
It was very common for neighbourly rows in St Helens to end up in court, as the cost of obtaining a summons was only five or six shillings.
When a policeman delivered the summons to the prospective defendant, the outraged recipient would likely toddle off to the Town Hall to get theirs and counter sue.
And so multiple summonses concerning the same daft incident often had to be dealt with in court.
But never before have I come across nine being considered as took place in one case this week!
It concerned three sets of families – the Cullens, Jones and Willetts – with the latter in the 1871 census living in Waterloo Street.
The magistrates not looking forward to the prospect of a long, drawn-out case suggested a settlement between the warring families might be reached and the Newspaper wrote:
"After some little paralysing, the parties agreed to the suggestion, and promised to be better neighbours in future. They left the court like a happy family of considerable size."
Just how long that neighbourly bliss lasted, I cannot say!
Father James Nugent – the pioneering child welfare reformer of which the Nugent Care charity is named – came to St Helens from time to time.
He ran a Refuge and Night Asylum in St Anne Street in Liverpool and his boys' choir would perform in St Helens.
Donation boxes for his charity were located in several public houses in the town and on the 3rd a miner named John Yates was charged in St Helens Petty Sessions with attempting to rob one from the Globe Hotel.
That was located on the corner of Barrow Street and Ormskirk Street.
Yates had entered a room and taken the collection box off the mantelpiece and after unsuccessfully attempting to open it, had tried to force the box open by placing it on the fire.
As soon as Yates saw the joints of the box opening, he snatched it up very hastily, forgetting that it would be mad hot, which resulted in him dropping it loudly on the floor.
That brought a barmaid to the scene and Yates was arrested and in court was remanded in custody. Later he would be sentenced to 14 days in prison.
The St Helens Newspaper on the 3rd reviewed the pantomime that had been performed at the Theatre Royal (in the premises we know as the Citadel) over Christmas.
The paper described 'Sinbad the Sailor or the Wicked Ogre and the Fairies of the Ocean Deep' as "the most complete and gorgeous entertainment of the kind that has ever been offered to the public of St. Helens."
Each performance had been crammed to capacity and some people had, at times, been turned away at the door.
Local references had been inserted into the script, such as this verse about the small St Helens Cottage Hospital and the recently installed illuminated clock on the parish church tower:
"Church street a short time back was graced.
With a town clock, by Alderman Radley placed.
It is a great boon – that no one will gainsay.
Would that others would only act in the same way;
Instead of an hospital, for which a cottage was selected.
A spacious infirmary by the rich might be erected."
And finally, a meeting of 300 miners was held on the 7th at the Wagon and Horses in Haydock.
The men were currently locked out of their mines as a result of a dispute over the weighing of coal and how many hundredweight comprised a ton.
Some of them complained that their concessionary coal supplies had been stopped and there was concern the dispute would spread to other pits.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the abominable water in Robins Lane, the man that died in Parr after his dog ran onto chemical waste, the mayoral gifts of blankets for the deserving poor and the plans to build a post office in Church Street.
We begin on New Year's Day when many people had a holiday and the St Helens Newspaper was unimpressed with the drunkenness that took place, writing:
"The amount of intemperance on Thursday was painful to witness, and was the more observable in the absence of usual business bustle.
"Young men of the working classes turned the day into a saturnalia, drinking jovially while light lasted, and singing through the streets at night."
The annual treat to "the aged poor" belonging to the congregation of the Parish Church took place in the infants' schoolroom on the 1st.
A total of 120 guests enjoyed a dinner, with the St Helens Newspaper commenting how some of the old people had manifested "all the vigour of youth in doing justice to the hospitable spread".
However, the courts sat as normal on New Year's Day and there was another example of how the justice system of the 1870s considered theft more serious than violence.
That occurred when John Mawson was imprisoned for a month for stealing a plank of wood from a Parr farmer.
At the same hearing of the St Helens Petty Sessions, a "rough looking fellow" named Moses Middlehurst was charged with assaulting PC Callister at Moss Bank. The Newspaper said:
"The officer saw the prisoner at half past eleven o’clock, and apprehended him for drunkenness. Middlehurst refused to go, and resisted the arrest by force, and it was only after a severe struggle, as he is a stout man, that the officer conquered him.
"He then adopted the policy of passive resistance, lying down and refusing to move; and it was not until three o’clock in the morning that he was conveyed to the police station.
"The officer had a black eye, and his helmet was slightly damaged. His Worship inflicted a fine of 20s. and costs, allowing the charge of drunkenness to be withdrawn."
James Kennedy from Rainhill had some months earlier deserted his pregnant wife and children and left them penniless. In order to survive Mrs Kennedy needed to rely on meagre hand-outs from the Prescot Union.
However, the body that implemented the Poor Law within the St Helens and Prescot districts wanted their money back and they eventually traced Kennedy and had him arrested.
But the man said he had no cash and so this week the gardener was sent to prison for two months.
Typically, Kennedy laid the blame on his wife, claiming she had been violent to him and had driven him away.
A witness agreed that the couple had regularly quarrelled but said that was through the man's drunken habits.
It was also stated that when Kennedy was in full work, his wife had received so little cash from her husband that she was better off when in receipt of the so-called parish relief from the Prescot Union.
In sentencing Kennedy to prison the magistrate expressed his contempt for him and described his behaviour as cowardly.
The Bench also did not buy Thomas Greener's unlikely excuse when charged with poaching.
Greener claimed he had been out enjoying the Christmas festivities and had found the bag dumped on Prescot Road.
He said he had no idea that there had also been a net inside until the police pulled it out. The magistrates fined him £5.
Also in court was Joseph Phillips, who was charged with stealing a quantity of flannel from Edward Greenwood's draper's shop in Smithy Brow (Parr Street area).
The man had gone into the shop and asked the proprietor to take a glass of ale with him. Greenwood had declined the offer and as Joseph Phillips left he helped himself to a roll of fabric.
The draper told the court that he then saw the man "careering down the brow with the bundle held securely under his arm."
As stated earlier, stealing property was taken very seriously in the 1870s and Phillips was sentenced to a month in Kirkdale Prison.
It was very common for neighbourly rows in St Helens to end up in court, as the cost of obtaining a summons was only five or six shillings.
When a policeman delivered the summons to the prospective defendant, the outraged recipient would likely toddle off to the Town Hall to get theirs and counter sue.
And so multiple summonses concerning the same daft incident often had to be dealt with in court.
But never before have I come across nine being considered as took place in one case this week!
It concerned three sets of families – the Cullens, Jones and Willetts – with the latter in the 1871 census living in Waterloo Street.
The magistrates not looking forward to the prospect of a long, drawn-out case suggested a settlement between the warring families might be reached and the Newspaper wrote:
"After some little paralysing, the parties agreed to the suggestion, and promised to be better neighbours in future. They left the court like a happy family of considerable size."
Just how long that neighbourly bliss lasted, I cannot say!
Father James Nugent – the pioneering child welfare reformer of which the Nugent Care charity is named – came to St Helens from time to time.
He ran a Refuge and Night Asylum in St Anne Street in Liverpool and his boys' choir would perform in St Helens.
Donation boxes for his charity were located in several public houses in the town and on the 3rd a miner named John Yates was charged in St Helens Petty Sessions with attempting to rob one from the Globe Hotel.
That was located on the corner of Barrow Street and Ormskirk Street.
Yates had entered a room and taken the collection box off the mantelpiece and after unsuccessfully attempting to open it, had tried to force the box open by placing it on the fire.
As soon as Yates saw the joints of the box opening, he snatched it up very hastily, forgetting that it would be mad hot, which resulted in him dropping it loudly on the floor.
That brought a barmaid to the scene and Yates was arrested and in court was remanded in custody. Later he would be sentenced to 14 days in prison.
The St Helens Newspaper on the 3rd reviewed the pantomime that had been performed at the Theatre Royal (in the premises we know as the Citadel) over Christmas.
The paper described 'Sinbad the Sailor or the Wicked Ogre and the Fairies of the Ocean Deep' as "the most complete and gorgeous entertainment of the kind that has ever been offered to the public of St. Helens."
Each performance had been crammed to capacity and some people had, at times, been turned away at the door.
Local references had been inserted into the script, such as this verse about the small St Helens Cottage Hospital and the recently installed illuminated clock on the parish church tower:
"Church street a short time back was graced.
With a town clock, by Alderman Radley placed.
It is a great boon – that no one will gainsay.
Would that others would only act in the same way;
Instead of an hospital, for which a cottage was selected.
A spacious infirmary by the rich might be erected."
And finally, a meeting of 300 miners was held on the 7th at the Wagon and Horses in Haydock.
The men were currently locked out of their mines as a result of a dispute over the weighing of coal and how many hundredweight comprised a ton.
Some of them complained that their concessionary coal supplies had been stopped and there was concern the dispute would spread to other pits.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the abominable water in Robins Lane, the man that died in Parr after his dog ran onto chemical waste, the mayoral gifts of blankets for the deserving poor and the plans to build a post office in Church Street.