150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 2 - 8 SEPTEMBER 1874
This week's many stories include the claim of murder in Parr Flat, the indecent assault on a 12-year-old girl in Moss Bank, there is more stinging criticism of the court system in St Helens, the St Helens magistrates reject applications by beerhouses to sell spirits, the exiled German Fathers perform at Lowe House Church and the cricket match in Dentons Green in which only the captains knew how to play the game.
Last month's barbaric attack on an elderly man called McGrath in Parr in which his attackers had blinded him in one eye and then filled the empty eye socket with lime was still being talked about. The thugs responsible were going through the legal system and would appear in the Liverpool Assizes later in the year.
Parr was a renowned hotbed of violence and this week the newspapers gave much coverage to another incident that initially was considered a murder. It was stated that Henry Twist had gone with two friends to Peter Leicester's house in Parr Flat to have a drink with him.
As it was late at night Mr Leicester had refused to admit the threesome and that had led to Twist punching the 42-year-old miner in the stomach. Peter Leicester was seen to spin round three times and fall to the ground and within seconds he was dead. However, Twist denied making the punch. Although Dr Martin's post-mortem found Leicester's heart had been diseased and his lungs and kidneys to have been in a bad state, he found neither internal nor external evidence of violence.
On September 2nd Henry Twist was committed to take his trial at Liverpool Assizes despite his solicitor telling the magistrates there was not the "smallest scintilla" of evidence against his client and claiming that the deceased had died through a "visitation of God". In December at the assizes in Kirkdale, the 25-year-old miner was cleared of a charge of manslaughter. However, the case's huge publicity in numerous newspapers nationwide did nothing to diminish Parr's reputation for violence.
Also in the Petty Sessions was Thomas Gleave from Moss Bank who was accused of indecently assaulting 12-year-old Mary Webster. This was another case considered unsuitable for women's ears and so all females were cleared from the courtroom. The men who were left heard that Gleave had assaulted the girl in her mother's absence and while Mary had been looking after two smaller children.
The 30-year-old labourer was committed for trial at Liverpool Assizes where in November, Gleave was convicted of unlawfully assaulting the girl "with intent to ravish her" and he was sentenced to six months in prison.
There used to be some curious games of cricket played in St Helens in the 19th century. In 1868 on the cricket ground in Dentons Green a team of eleven current St Helens players took on eighteen past players. Or as the St Helens Newspaper put it: "Eighteen of those who have long since resigned the willow to younger and more supple hands." Lack of experience at playing the game and dodgy pitches led to low scores with innings' totals of 30 or 40 quite common. Sometimes four innings took place in a single afternoon!
But on the 5th the Newspaper described a match in which the participants did not even know how to play cricket, which had made the game into a comedy of errors. The paper said:
"When we say that, excepting the captains, not one of the gentlemen playing had any notion of the game, our readers will have some idea as to the amount of fun and amusement created by their vagaries and the eccentric conception of the various duties required from the respective positions. For the first over or two, we felt very sorry for the amount of labour that the captain in charge of the fielding team, had to go through to get his men anything like placed. There was any amount of banter and chaff, as some extra absurd feature presented itself."
In an editorial the Newspaper once again criticised the inconveniences of the court system in St Helens. These were caused by there only being a handful of magistrates who were also very busy businessmen unable to devote much time to their judicial duties. The paper wrote:
"Nor is it merely inconvenience alone, but in many cases the delay and obstruction caused by the utter impossibility of procuring the attendance of magistrates to attend to the business of the police court and petty sessions, amounts to an absolute failure of justice."
The old Town Hall in New Market Place had a courtroom inside. But since the building had suffered a couple of fires in the early 1870s, criminal cases were being heard in the County Court in East Street (pictured above). Monday was the busiest day of the lot in court with the many arrests from the previous weekend having to be dealt with. That led to huge delays, which worsened when magistrates did not show up. The Newspaper continued its critique:
"If a tradesman has a case to bring before the magistrates, he hesitates to come before the bench on a Monday – the only date upon which two magistrates can be obtained – to be jostled and sweltered for hours in the crowd of roughs who occupy the approaches, the steps, and every available space within the court. The language and scenes which take place in East street, and in the two public houses in the neighbourhood – perfect “Hell-holes” on these days – is not only disgusting, but a disgrace to any community, deserving to be considered civilised or christian."
The Newspaper also reported how two prisoners in unconnected murder cases had this week been executed together at Kirkdale Gaol. Right up until the last, Mary Williams continued to insist that the gunshot that killed a man called Nicholas Manning had been fired by her husband and not by her. But despite the man's disappearance, she was still hung alongside Henry Flanagan. That was in spite of the latter's continued denial that he had intentionally caused the death of his aunt for which he had been found guilty of murdering.
Converting your beerhouse into an inn through the addition of a spirit licence was far from easy in St Helens. The Newspaper reported that at the recent licensing hearings numerous applications from beerhouse keepers had been refused. Ellen Richardson had kept a beerhouse called The Plough in Duke Street for between 30 and 40 years but her application to have a spirit licence was rejected. That was in spite of her claim to have enlarged and improved her house at a cost of several hundred pounds.
John Barrett ran a beerhouse on the Canal Bank (i.e. Canal Street) and despite having what was described as an excellent character and spending £500 on improvements his application was similarly turned down. The magistrates had a policy of not giving any reason for refusing such applications. But in the case of Catherine Makin of Taylors Row in Sutton they did not need to explain their refusal.
Catherine had failed to inform her solicitor who was making the application on her behalf that she had been fined during the previous year for drunkenness and Sgt. Bee told the Bench that her house was badly conducted, saying: "There are so many loose characters about the house, that it is nearly impossible to catch [out] the landlady."
And farmer Abraham Simm – whose address was given as Workhouse Bridge in Sutton – had his application for a licence to sell beer off the premises refused. Workhouse Bridge is the old name for the bridge that still exists in New Street by St Nicholas Church, as that short road from the bridge up to Mill Lane used to be known as Workhouse Lane after the poor house that until the 1840s had been located opposite.
Last week I wrote how Lowe House Church had held a solemn high mass to mark the opening of what they described as their "grand new organ". I had assumed that you could only open something once. But on the 6th Lowe House held what they described as its new organ's "second opening day" with choir music provided by twenty of the German Fathers and Students of Ditton.
At the beginning of 1871 the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had announced the formation of the German Empire and he began a programme of religious discrimination. As a result many German Catholics chose – or felt forced – to leave the country and a number of exiled priests settled in Ditton and they became known as the German Fathers and often performed within the St Helens district.
On the 8th popular local singer Mrs J. H. Maccabe gave a ballad concert – as it was advertised – in the Volunteer Hall in St Helens to the piano accompaniment of Mozart Barton. I cannot find Mr Barton listed in the 1871 census, although a dozen others living in Britain bore that same Christian name.
You often had a good idea when 19th century concerts would end if the better class of patron were expected to attend. That was because they had to arrange in advance their collection from the hall by a servant or cab driver. So adverts for such events would state: "Carriages may be ordered for such-a-time", which in the case of the ballad concert was 10pm.
Mrs Maccabe had a number of performers from Liverpool also on the bill, which led to this statement in the show's ad: "For the convenience of the Artistes the Concert will commence at 8 precisely." Whether they were going home by train or by horse and carriage, the singers did not want their return to be too late considering how dark most places were then.
Admission was only a tanner in the rear seats. But with no amplification for artistes in the 19th century, the poor at the back of the hall (especially the deaf poor) had to hope the vocalists knew how to sing really loud and to take their ear trumpets to the concert with them!
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the formation of a workhouse band, the blackguard market traders that passed blasphemous remarks, the Water Street fight that became a pointless court case and the doomed Sutton Alkali Co-operative Society.
Last month's barbaric attack on an elderly man called McGrath in Parr in which his attackers had blinded him in one eye and then filled the empty eye socket with lime was still being talked about. The thugs responsible were going through the legal system and would appear in the Liverpool Assizes later in the year.
Parr was a renowned hotbed of violence and this week the newspapers gave much coverage to another incident that initially was considered a murder. It was stated that Henry Twist had gone with two friends to Peter Leicester's house in Parr Flat to have a drink with him.
As it was late at night Mr Leicester had refused to admit the threesome and that had led to Twist punching the 42-year-old miner in the stomach. Peter Leicester was seen to spin round three times and fall to the ground and within seconds he was dead. However, Twist denied making the punch. Although Dr Martin's post-mortem found Leicester's heart had been diseased and his lungs and kidneys to have been in a bad state, he found neither internal nor external evidence of violence.
On September 2nd Henry Twist was committed to take his trial at Liverpool Assizes despite his solicitor telling the magistrates there was not the "smallest scintilla" of evidence against his client and claiming that the deceased had died through a "visitation of God". In December at the assizes in Kirkdale, the 25-year-old miner was cleared of a charge of manslaughter. However, the case's huge publicity in numerous newspapers nationwide did nothing to diminish Parr's reputation for violence.
Also in the Petty Sessions was Thomas Gleave from Moss Bank who was accused of indecently assaulting 12-year-old Mary Webster. This was another case considered unsuitable for women's ears and so all females were cleared from the courtroom. The men who were left heard that Gleave had assaulted the girl in her mother's absence and while Mary had been looking after two smaller children.
The 30-year-old labourer was committed for trial at Liverpool Assizes where in November, Gleave was convicted of unlawfully assaulting the girl "with intent to ravish her" and he was sentenced to six months in prison.
There used to be some curious games of cricket played in St Helens in the 19th century. In 1868 on the cricket ground in Dentons Green a team of eleven current St Helens players took on eighteen past players. Or as the St Helens Newspaper put it: "Eighteen of those who have long since resigned the willow to younger and more supple hands." Lack of experience at playing the game and dodgy pitches led to low scores with innings' totals of 30 or 40 quite common. Sometimes four innings took place in a single afternoon!
But on the 5th the Newspaper described a match in which the participants did not even know how to play cricket, which had made the game into a comedy of errors. The paper said:
"When we say that, excepting the captains, not one of the gentlemen playing had any notion of the game, our readers will have some idea as to the amount of fun and amusement created by their vagaries and the eccentric conception of the various duties required from the respective positions. For the first over or two, we felt very sorry for the amount of labour that the captain in charge of the fielding team, had to go through to get his men anything like placed. There was any amount of banter and chaff, as some extra absurd feature presented itself."
In an editorial the Newspaper once again criticised the inconveniences of the court system in St Helens. These were caused by there only being a handful of magistrates who were also very busy businessmen unable to devote much time to their judicial duties. The paper wrote:
"Nor is it merely inconvenience alone, but in many cases the delay and obstruction caused by the utter impossibility of procuring the attendance of magistrates to attend to the business of the police court and petty sessions, amounts to an absolute failure of justice."
"If a tradesman has a case to bring before the magistrates, he hesitates to come before the bench on a Monday – the only date upon which two magistrates can be obtained – to be jostled and sweltered for hours in the crowd of roughs who occupy the approaches, the steps, and every available space within the court. The language and scenes which take place in East street, and in the two public houses in the neighbourhood – perfect “Hell-holes” on these days – is not only disgusting, but a disgrace to any community, deserving to be considered civilised or christian."
The Newspaper also reported how two prisoners in unconnected murder cases had this week been executed together at Kirkdale Gaol. Right up until the last, Mary Williams continued to insist that the gunshot that killed a man called Nicholas Manning had been fired by her husband and not by her. But despite the man's disappearance, she was still hung alongside Henry Flanagan. That was in spite of the latter's continued denial that he had intentionally caused the death of his aunt for which he had been found guilty of murdering.
Converting your beerhouse into an inn through the addition of a spirit licence was far from easy in St Helens. The Newspaper reported that at the recent licensing hearings numerous applications from beerhouse keepers had been refused. Ellen Richardson had kept a beerhouse called The Plough in Duke Street for between 30 and 40 years but her application to have a spirit licence was rejected. That was in spite of her claim to have enlarged and improved her house at a cost of several hundred pounds.
John Barrett ran a beerhouse on the Canal Bank (i.e. Canal Street) and despite having what was described as an excellent character and spending £500 on improvements his application was similarly turned down. The magistrates had a policy of not giving any reason for refusing such applications. But in the case of Catherine Makin of Taylors Row in Sutton they did not need to explain their refusal.
Catherine had failed to inform her solicitor who was making the application on her behalf that she had been fined during the previous year for drunkenness and Sgt. Bee told the Bench that her house was badly conducted, saying: "There are so many loose characters about the house, that it is nearly impossible to catch [out] the landlady."
And farmer Abraham Simm – whose address was given as Workhouse Bridge in Sutton – had his application for a licence to sell beer off the premises refused. Workhouse Bridge is the old name for the bridge that still exists in New Street by St Nicholas Church, as that short road from the bridge up to Mill Lane used to be known as Workhouse Lane after the poor house that until the 1840s had been located opposite.
Last week I wrote how Lowe House Church had held a solemn high mass to mark the opening of what they described as their "grand new organ". I had assumed that you could only open something once. But on the 6th Lowe House held what they described as its new organ's "second opening day" with choir music provided by twenty of the German Fathers and Students of Ditton.
At the beginning of 1871 the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had announced the formation of the German Empire and he began a programme of religious discrimination. As a result many German Catholics chose – or felt forced – to leave the country and a number of exiled priests settled in Ditton and they became known as the German Fathers and often performed within the St Helens district.
On the 8th popular local singer Mrs J. H. Maccabe gave a ballad concert – as it was advertised – in the Volunteer Hall in St Helens to the piano accompaniment of Mozart Barton. I cannot find Mr Barton listed in the 1871 census, although a dozen others living in Britain bore that same Christian name.
You often had a good idea when 19th century concerts would end if the better class of patron were expected to attend. That was because they had to arrange in advance their collection from the hall by a servant or cab driver. So adverts for such events would state: "Carriages may be ordered for such-a-time", which in the case of the ballad concert was 10pm.
Mrs Maccabe had a number of performers from Liverpool also on the bill, which led to this statement in the show's ad: "For the convenience of the Artistes the Concert will commence at 8 precisely." Whether they were going home by train or by horse and carriage, the singers did not want their return to be too late considering how dark most places were then.
Admission was only a tanner in the rear seats. But with no amplification for artistes in the 19th century, the poor at the back of the hall (especially the deaf poor) had to hope the vocalists knew how to sing really loud and to take their ear trumpets to the concert with them!
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the formation of a workhouse band, the blackguard market traders that passed blasphemous remarks, the Water Street fight that became a pointless court case and the doomed Sutton Alkali Co-operative Society.
This week's many stories include the claim of murder in Parr Flat, the indecent assault on a 12-year-old girl in Moss Bank, there is more stinging criticism of the court system in St Helens, the St Helens magistrates reject applications by beerhouses to sell spirits, the exiled German Fathers perform at Lowe House Church and the cricket match in Dentons Green in which only the captains knew how to play the game.
Last month's barbaric attack on an elderly man called McGrath in Parr in which his attackers had blinded him in one eye and then filled the empty eye socket with lime was still being talked about.
The thugs responsible were going through the legal system and would appear in the Liverpool Assizes later in the year.
Parr was a renowned hotbed of violence and this week the newspapers gave much coverage to another incident that initially was considered a murder.
It was stated that Henry Twist had gone with two friends to Peter Leicester's house in Parr Flat to have a drink with him.
As it was late at night Mr Leicester had refused to admit the threesome and that was said to have led to Twist punching the 42-year-old miner in the stomach.
Peter Leicester was seen to spin round three times and fall to the ground and within seconds he was dead. However, Twist denied making the punch.
Although Dr Martin's post-mortem found Leicester's heart had been diseased and his lungs and kidneys to have been in a bad state, he found neither internal nor external evidence of violence.
On September 2nd Henry Twist was committed to take his trial at Liverpool Assizes despite his solicitor telling the magistrates there was not the "smallest scintilla" of evidence against his client and claiming that the deceased had died through a "visitation of God".
In December at the assizes in Kirkdale, the 25-year-old miner was cleared of a charge of manslaughter.
However, the case's huge publicity in numerous newspapers nationwide did nothing to diminish Parr's reputation for violence.
Also in the Petty Sessions was Thomas Gleave from Moss Bank who was accused of indecently assaulting 12-year-old Mary Webster.
This was another case considered unsuitable for women's ears and so all females were cleared from the courtroom.
The men who were left heard that Gleave had assaulted the girl in her mother's absence and while Mary had been looking after two smaller children.
The 30-year-old labourer was committed for trial at Liverpool Assizes where in November, Gleave was convicted of unlawfully assaulting the girl "with intent to ravish her" and he was sentenced to six months in prison.
There used to be some curious games of cricket played in St Helens in the 19th century.
In 1868 on the cricket ground in Dentons Green a team of eleven current St Helens players took on eighteen past players. Or as the St Helens Newspaper put it:
"Eighteen of those who have long since resigned the willow to younger and more supple hands."
Lack of experience at playing the game and dodgy pitches led to low scores with innings' totals of 30 or 40 quite common. Sometimes four innings took place in a single afternoon!
But on the 5th the Newspaper described a match in which the participants did not even know how to play cricket, which had made the game into a comedy of errors. The paper said:
"When we say that, excepting the captains, not one of the gentlemen playing had any notion of the game, our readers will have some idea as to the amount of fun and amusement created by their vagaries and the eccentric conception of the various duties required from the respective positions.
"For the first over or two, we felt very sorry for the amount of labour that the captain in charge of the fielding team, had to go through to get his men anything like placed. There was any amount of banter and chaff, as some extra absurd feature presented itself."
In an editorial the Newspaper once again criticised the inconveniences of the court system in St Helens.
These were caused by there only being a handful of magistrates who were also very busy businessmen unable to devote much time to their judicial duties. The paper wrote:
"Nor is it merely inconvenience alone, but in many cases the delay and obstruction caused by the utter impossibility of procuring the attendance of magistrates to attend to the business of the police court and petty sessions, amounts to an absolute failure of justice."
The old Town Hall in New Market Place had a courtroom inside. But since the building had suffered a couple of fires in the early 1870s, criminal cases were being heard in the County Court in East Street (pictured above).
Monday was the busiest day of the lot in court with the many arrests from the previous weekend having to be dealt with.
That led to huge delays, which worsened when magistrates did not show up. The Newspaper continued its critique:
"If a tradesman has a case to bring before the magistrates, he hesitates to come before the bench on a Monday – the only date upon which two magistrates can be obtained – to be jostled and sweltered for hours in the crowd of roughs who occupy the approaches, the steps, and every available space within the court.
"The language and scenes which take place in East street, and in the two public houses in the neighbourhood – perfect “Hell-holes” on these days – is not only disgusting, but a disgrace to any community, deserving to be considered civilised or christian."
The Newspaper also reported how two prisoners in unconnected murder cases had this week been executed together at Kirkdale Gaol.
Right up until the last, Mary Williams continued to insist that the gunshot that killed a man called Nicholas Manning had been fired by her husband and not by her.
But despite the man's disappearance, she was still hung alongside Henry Flanagan.
That was in spite of the latter's continued denial that he had intentionally caused the death of his aunt for which he had been found guilty of murdering.
Converting your beerhouse into an inn through the addition of a spirit licence was far from easy in St Helens.
The Newspaper reported that at the recent licensing hearings numerous applications from beerhouse keepers had been refused.
Ellen Richardson had kept a beerhouse called The Plough in Duke Street for between 30 and 40 years but her application to have a spirit licence was rejected.
That was in spite of her claim to have enlarged and improved her house at a cost of several hundred pounds.
John Barrett ran a beerhouse on the Canal Bank (i.e. Canal Street) and despite having what was described as an excellent character and spending £500 on improvements his application was similarly turned down.
The magistrates had a policy of not giving any reason for refusing such applications.
But in the case of Catherine Makin of Taylors Row in Sutton they did not need to explain their refusal.
Catherine had failed to inform her solicitor who was making the application on her behalf that she had been fined during the previous year for drunkenness and Sgt. Bee told the Bench that her house was badly conducted, saying:
"There are so many loose characters about the house, that it is nearly impossible to catch [out] the landlady."
And farmer Abraham Simm – whose address was given as Workhouse Bridge in Sutton – had his application for a licence to sell beer off the premises refused.
Workhouse Bridge is the old name for the bridge that still exists in New Street by St Nicholas Church, as that short road from the bridge up to Mill Lane used to be known as Workhouse Lane after the poor house that until the 1840s had been located opposite.
Last week I wrote how Lowe House Church had held a solemn high mass to mark the opening of what they described as their "grand new organ".
I had assumed that you could only open something once. But on the 6th Lowe House held what they described as its new organ's "second opening day" with choir music provided by twenty of the German Fathers and Students of Ditton.
At the beginning of 1871 the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had announced the formation of the German Empire and he began a programme of religious discrimination.
As a result many German Catholics chose – or felt forced – to leave the country and a number of exiled priests settled in Ditton and they became known as the German Fathers and often performed within the St Helens district.
On the 8th popular local singer Mrs J. H. Maccabe gave a ballad concert – as it was advertised – in the Volunteer Hall in St Helens to the piano accompaniment of Mozart Barton.
I cannot find Mr Barton listed in the 1871 census, although a dozen others living in Britain bore that same Christian name.
You often had a good idea when 19th century concerts would end if the better class of patron were expected to attend.
That was because they had to arrange in advance their collection from the hall by a servant or cab driver.
So adverts for such events would state: "Carriages may be ordered for such-a-time", which in the case of the ballad concert was 10pm.
Mrs Maccabe had a number of performers from Liverpool also on the bill, which led to this statement in the show's ad: "For the convenience of the Artistes the Concert will commence at 8 precisely."
Whether they were going home by train or by horse and carriage, the singers did not want their return to be too late considering how dark most places were then.
Admission was only a tanner in the rear seats. But with no amplification for artistes in the 19th century, the poor at the back of the hall (especially the deaf poor) had to hope the vocalists knew how to sing really loud and to take their ear trumpets to the concert with them!
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the formation of a workhouse band, the blackguard market traders that passed blasphemous remarks, the Water Street fight that became a pointless court case and the doomed Sutton Alkali Co-operative Society.
Last month's barbaric attack on an elderly man called McGrath in Parr in which his attackers had blinded him in one eye and then filled the empty eye socket with lime was still being talked about.
The thugs responsible were going through the legal system and would appear in the Liverpool Assizes later in the year.
Parr was a renowned hotbed of violence and this week the newspapers gave much coverage to another incident that initially was considered a murder.
It was stated that Henry Twist had gone with two friends to Peter Leicester's house in Parr Flat to have a drink with him.
As it was late at night Mr Leicester had refused to admit the threesome and that was said to have led to Twist punching the 42-year-old miner in the stomach.
Peter Leicester was seen to spin round three times and fall to the ground and within seconds he was dead. However, Twist denied making the punch.
Although Dr Martin's post-mortem found Leicester's heart had been diseased and his lungs and kidneys to have been in a bad state, he found neither internal nor external evidence of violence.
On September 2nd Henry Twist was committed to take his trial at Liverpool Assizes despite his solicitor telling the magistrates there was not the "smallest scintilla" of evidence against his client and claiming that the deceased had died through a "visitation of God".
In December at the assizes in Kirkdale, the 25-year-old miner was cleared of a charge of manslaughter.
However, the case's huge publicity in numerous newspapers nationwide did nothing to diminish Parr's reputation for violence.
Also in the Petty Sessions was Thomas Gleave from Moss Bank who was accused of indecently assaulting 12-year-old Mary Webster.
This was another case considered unsuitable for women's ears and so all females were cleared from the courtroom.
The men who were left heard that Gleave had assaulted the girl in her mother's absence and while Mary had been looking after two smaller children.
The 30-year-old labourer was committed for trial at Liverpool Assizes where in November, Gleave was convicted of unlawfully assaulting the girl "with intent to ravish her" and he was sentenced to six months in prison.
There used to be some curious games of cricket played in St Helens in the 19th century.
In 1868 on the cricket ground in Dentons Green a team of eleven current St Helens players took on eighteen past players. Or as the St Helens Newspaper put it:
"Eighteen of those who have long since resigned the willow to younger and more supple hands."
Lack of experience at playing the game and dodgy pitches led to low scores with innings' totals of 30 or 40 quite common. Sometimes four innings took place in a single afternoon!
But on the 5th the Newspaper described a match in which the participants did not even know how to play cricket, which had made the game into a comedy of errors. The paper said:
"When we say that, excepting the captains, not one of the gentlemen playing had any notion of the game, our readers will have some idea as to the amount of fun and amusement created by their vagaries and the eccentric conception of the various duties required from the respective positions.
"For the first over or two, we felt very sorry for the amount of labour that the captain in charge of the fielding team, had to go through to get his men anything like placed. There was any amount of banter and chaff, as some extra absurd feature presented itself."
In an editorial the Newspaper once again criticised the inconveniences of the court system in St Helens.
These were caused by there only being a handful of magistrates who were also very busy businessmen unable to devote much time to their judicial duties. The paper wrote:
"Nor is it merely inconvenience alone, but in many cases the delay and obstruction caused by the utter impossibility of procuring the attendance of magistrates to attend to the business of the police court and petty sessions, amounts to an absolute failure of justice."
Monday was the busiest day of the lot in court with the many arrests from the previous weekend having to be dealt with.
That led to huge delays, which worsened when magistrates did not show up. The Newspaper continued its critique:
"If a tradesman has a case to bring before the magistrates, he hesitates to come before the bench on a Monday – the only date upon which two magistrates can be obtained – to be jostled and sweltered for hours in the crowd of roughs who occupy the approaches, the steps, and every available space within the court.
"The language and scenes which take place in East street, and in the two public houses in the neighbourhood – perfect “Hell-holes” on these days – is not only disgusting, but a disgrace to any community, deserving to be considered civilised or christian."
The Newspaper also reported how two prisoners in unconnected murder cases had this week been executed together at Kirkdale Gaol.
Right up until the last, Mary Williams continued to insist that the gunshot that killed a man called Nicholas Manning had been fired by her husband and not by her.
But despite the man's disappearance, she was still hung alongside Henry Flanagan.
That was in spite of the latter's continued denial that he had intentionally caused the death of his aunt for which he had been found guilty of murdering.
Converting your beerhouse into an inn through the addition of a spirit licence was far from easy in St Helens.
The Newspaper reported that at the recent licensing hearings numerous applications from beerhouse keepers had been refused.
Ellen Richardson had kept a beerhouse called The Plough in Duke Street for between 30 and 40 years but her application to have a spirit licence was rejected.
That was in spite of her claim to have enlarged and improved her house at a cost of several hundred pounds.
John Barrett ran a beerhouse on the Canal Bank (i.e. Canal Street) and despite having what was described as an excellent character and spending £500 on improvements his application was similarly turned down.
The magistrates had a policy of not giving any reason for refusing such applications.
But in the case of Catherine Makin of Taylors Row in Sutton they did not need to explain their refusal.
Catherine had failed to inform her solicitor who was making the application on her behalf that she had been fined during the previous year for drunkenness and Sgt. Bee told the Bench that her house was badly conducted, saying:
"There are so many loose characters about the house, that it is nearly impossible to catch [out] the landlady."
And farmer Abraham Simm – whose address was given as Workhouse Bridge in Sutton – had his application for a licence to sell beer off the premises refused.
Workhouse Bridge is the old name for the bridge that still exists in New Street by St Nicholas Church, as that short road from the bridge up to Mill Lane used to be known as Workhouse Lane after the poor house that until the 1840s had been located opposite.
Last week I wrote how Lowe House Church had held a solemn high mass to mark the opening of what they described as their "grand new organ".
I had assumed that you could only open something once. But on the 6th Lowe House held what they described as its new organ's "second opening day" with choir music provided by twenty of the German Fathers and Students of Ditton.
At the beginning of 1871 the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had announced the formation of the German Empire and he began a programme of religious discrimination.
As a result many German Catholics chose – or felt forced – to leave the country and a number of exiled priests settled in Ditton and they became known as the German Fathers and often performed within the St Helens district.
On the 8th popular local singer Mrs J. H. Maccabe gave a ballad concert – as it was advertised – in the Volunteer Hall in St Helens to the piano accompaniment of Mozart Barton.
I cannot find Mr Barton listed in the 1871 census, although a dozen others living in Britain bore that same Christian name.
You often had a good idea when 19th century concerts would end if the better class of patron were expected to attend.
That was because they had to arrange in advance their collection from the hall by a servant or cab driver.
So adverts for such events would state: "Carriages may be ordered for such-a-time", which in the case of the ballad concert was 10pm.
Mrs Maccabe had a number of performers from Liverpool also on the bill, which led to this statement in the show's ad: "For the convenience of the Artistes the Concert will commence at 8 precisely."
Whether they were going home by train or by horse and carriage, the singers did not want their return to be too late considering how dark most places were then.
Admission was only a tanner in the rear seats. But with no amplification for artistes in the 19th century, the poor at the back of the hall (especially the deaf poor) had to hope the vocalists knew how to sing really loud and to take their ear trumpets to the concert with them!
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the formation of a workhouse band, the blackguard market traders that passed blasphemous remarks, the Water Street fight that became a pointless court case and the doomed Sutton Alkali Co-operative Society.