150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (8th - 14th AUGUST 1872)
This week's stories include the Good Friday fight in Parr Street in which a man bled to death, the boys who could work up to 54 hours a week down a coal mine, a shocking story of wife beating is told in court, the thieving Nutgrove domestic servant and the Baldwin Street butcher theft.
The exploits of Dr Livingstone fascinated people back in Britain with the explorer and missionary still searching for the source of the Nile. Many speakers presented lectures in St Helens on Livingstone and the St Helens Newspaper regularly published the latest news on the explorer's whereabouts.
However, Livingstone's letters could take months to reach home and in reprinting a number of them on the 10th, the Newspaper's most recent missive was almost six months old. In that letter Dr Livingstone expressed his concern that a tribe of protected British subjects in Zanzibar called the Bantans had become the chief propagators of the slave trade in central Africa.
A shocking story of wife beating was told in the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 12th when Matthew Tunstall was charged with assaulting his wife Ann, along with Police Constable Geddes. The Newspaper wrote: "Mr. Swift appeared for the complainant, a respectable looking young woman. He said they were married fourteen months. When a fortnight together he thrashed her and he thrashed her continually. She had to leave him because whenever he got near her, he gave her brutal ill usage. Last Monday, he struck her savagely for trying to save his mother from his violence, and she then summoned him [to court], as her life was miserable and in danger."
Matthew Tunstall had even followed his wife into the office of her solicitor and grabbed hold of her. He refused to let go and it took two police officers to eventually prise the man off. When Ann Tunstall gave evidence she said: "My life is awful. Once he knocked me down in Liverpool and dragged me along the street with my face covered in blood. One time he professed to love me, and the next moment he tried to kill me. That was his habit."
Tunstall was sentenced to two months hard labour and upon being released he was to be bound over for three months to keep the peace. The stiff sentence was a little surprising, but what clearly made the difference was the number of witnesses, including police officers, who were able to testify to the man's violence. As always in these cases I wonder what happened to the woman after her husband was released from prison and the three months of paying sureties to guarantee his good behaviour had expired – as divorce was almost certainly out of the question.
On Good Friday a quarrel had taken place between two lodgers in Parr Street in St Helens (pictured above) that turned into a fight. Only a few blows were exchanged before John Keefe was heard to say: "I am stabbed". The man subsequently bled to death and medical testimony at his inquest at the Fleece Hotel stated that a wound measuring 1½ inch long and 3 inches deep had been inflicted on the deceased's right thigh. Matthew Reynolds strenuously denied inflicting the wound, telling the coroner: "We were too good mates to use a knife to each other".
Supporting that statement, no knife or similar instrument was found upon Reynolds, nor was he seen by others present in the house to have used one. Reynolds was committed for trial at the next assizes hearing on a charge of manslaughter, which took place on the 13th of this week. The 21-year-old's defence was that they were both drunk and John Keefe might have accidentally stabbed himself after picking up a knife that was lying on the chimneypiece.
It seems an unlikely tale but the newspapers reported that the defendant expressed "great sorrow for the occurrence", although he still denied guilt. Remorse tended to go down well with juries and so they acquitted him of the charge. However, the labourer had served over four months in custody waiting for his trial and so did not completely escape punishment.
There was another sad drowning on the 12th, this time involving a child. The victim was 6-year-old Ann Harrison of Ditch Hillock (later Waterdale Crescent) in Sutton, who had been playing with other kids near a stretch of water belonging to the Sutton Glassworks. The girl had climbed onto a floating plank and in trying to propel it, had slipped off into the water and drowned.
The owners of the coalmines were always known as the "masters" and they had their own body, known as the West Lancashire Coal Association. At their meeting on the 13th, the masters decided to give their workers a conditional pay rise. This was the resolution that the employers passed: "That colliers' wages in the Wigan and West Lancashire districts be advanced 15 per cent. from the first making-up day after the 1st Sept. next, and that the master coal owners expect that the men will from that date work at least 54 hours a week, the time they insisted on as a maximum for boys in the Coal Mines Bill just passed, and that the present restriction on the output of coal shall be removed."
Yes, a new Act of Parliament was limiting the employment down coal mines of boys aged between 12 and 16 to no more than 54 hours a week. How kind! In return for granting the pay increase, the masters wanted adult mineworkers to commit to working at least 54 hours every week. That was because the daywagemen – who were mainly labourers paid on a daily basis – were often choosing to work just 2 or 3 days a week. That was creating a staffing problem and affecting output in the mines.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 14th a domestic servant called Maria Pickavance was charged with stealing from her mistress. The latter was Emma Johnson from Nutgrove and it was another case in which temptation had got the better of a poorly paid domestic who probably wasn't too bright. Did she not realise that the £2 16 shillings (a fortnight’s wages at least for most men) that she stole from a purse in the pantry would be missed and she immediately become the number 1 suspect?
And then on the following day upon acquiring lots of new clothes, did she not understand that more suspicion would be raised? In spite of claiming that her parents had bought her the clothing it soon transpired that she had paid cash for them at Christopher Sharples' draper's shop in Raven Street (off Church Street). Emma learnt a hard lesson as she was sent to prison for six weeks with hard labour.
There had been many complaints in Lancashire of late about the high price of meat and in some places so-called "anti-beef associations" had been formed. Not that the members were vegetarians – they simply wanted the price of meat coming down with some undertaking butcher boycotts. Whether the high price had influenced the actions of John Watkinson, I cannot say.
But the 35-year-old appeared in the Petty Sessions accused of meat-thieving from Thomas Houlton's butchers in Baldwin Street, after taking advantage of the practice of meat being displayed outside of shops. The St Helens Newspaper wrote: "He stopped opposite the shop, and after feasting his eyes on the cuts exposed for sale, he seized one, put it under his coat, and vanished. A lad called William Proctor saw the act, and gave information to Mrs. Houlton, who pursued and caught the rogue. He pleaded guilty, and was sent to prison for a month."
Next week's stories will include the drunken death of Thomas Beecham's wife, how the offer of marriage halted a domestic abuse case, the fighting women of Parr and the Crank woman at the centre of a child manslaughter case returns to court.
The exploits of Dr Livingstone fascinated people back in Britain with the explorer and missionary still searching for the source of the Nile. Many speakers presented lectures in St Helens on Livingstone and the St Helens Newspaper regularly published the latest news on the explorer's whereabouts.
However, Livingstone's letters could take months to reach home and in reprinting a number of them on the 10th, the Newspaper's most recent missive was almost six months old. In that letter Dr Livingstone expressed his concern that a tribe of protected British subjects in Zanzibar called the Bantans had become the chief propagators of the slave trade in central Africa.
A shocking story of wife beating was told in the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 12th when Matthew Tunstall was charged with assaulting his wife Ann, along with Police Constable Geddes. The Newspaper wrote: "Mr. Swift appeared for the complainant, a respectable looking young woman. He said they were married fourteen months. When a fortnight together he thrashed her and he thrashed her continually. She had to leave him because whenever he got near her, he gave her brutal ill usage. Last Monday, he struck her savagely for trying to save his mother from his violence, and she then summoned him [to court], as her life was miserable and in danger."
Matthew Tunstall had even followed his wife into the office of her solicitor and grabbed hold of her. He refused to let go and it took two police officers to eventually prise the man off. When Ann Tunstall gave evidence she said: "My life is awful. Once he knocked me down in Liverpool and dragged me along the street with my face covered in blood. One time he professed to love me, and the next moment he tried to kill me. That was his habit."
Tunstall was sentenced to two months hard labour and upon being released he was to be bound over for three months to keep the peace. The stiff sentence was a little surprising, but what clearly made the difference was the number of witnesses, including police officers, who were able to testify to the man's violence. As always in these cases I wonder what happened to the woman after her husband was released from prison and the three months of paying sureties to guarantee his good behaviour had expired – as divorce was almost certainly out of the question.
Supporting that statement, no knife or similar instrument was found upon Reynolds, nor was he seen by others present in the house to have used one. Reynolds was committed for trial at the next assizes hearing on a charge of manslaughter, which took place on the 13th of this week. The 21-year-old's defence was that they were both drunk and John Keefe might have accidentally stabbed himself after picking up a knife that was lying on the chimneypiece.
It seems an unlikely tale but the newspapers reported that the defendant expressed "great sorrow for the occurrence", although he still denied guilt. Remorse tended to go down well with juries and so they acquitted him of the charge. However, the labourer had served over four months in custody waiting for his trial and so did not completely escape punishment.
There was another sad drowning on the 12th, this time involving a child. The victim was 6-year-old Ann Harrison of Ditch Hillock (later Waterdale Crescent) in Sutton, who had been playing with other kids near a stretch of water belonging to the Sutton Glassworks. The girl had climbed onto a floating plank and in trying to propel it, had slipped off into the water and drowned.
The owners of the coalmines were always known as the "masters" and they had their own body, known as the West Lancashire Coal Association. At their meeting on the 13th, the masters decided to give their workers a conditional pay rise. This was the resolution that the employers passed: "That colliers' wages in the Wigan and West Lancashire districts be advanced 15 per cent. from the first making-up day after the 1st Sept. next, and that the master coal owners expect that the men will from that date work at least 54 hours a week, the time they insisted on as a maximum for boys in the Coal Mines Bill just passed, and that the present restriction on the output of coal shall be removed."
Yes, a new Act of Parliament was limiting the employment down coal mines of boys aged between 12 and 16 to no more than 54 hours a week. How kind! In return for granting the pay increase, the masters wanted adult mineworkers to commit to working at least 54 hours every week. That was because the daywagemen – who were mainly labourers paid on a daily basis – were often choosing to work just 2 or 3 days a week. That was creating a staffing problem and affecting output in the mines.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 14th a domestic servant called Maria Pickavance was charged with stealing from her mistress. The latter was Emma Johnson from Nutgrove and it was another case in which temptation had got the better of a poorly paid domestic who probably wasn't too bright. Did she not realise that the £2 16 shillings (a fortnight’s wages at least for most men) that she stole from a purse in the pantry would be missed and she immediately become the number 1 suspect?
And then on the following day upon acquiring lots of new clothes, did she not understand that more suspicion would be raised? In spite of claiming that her parents had bought her the clothing it soon transpired that she had paid cash for them at Christopher Sharples' draper's shop in Raven Street (off Church Street). Emma learnt a hard lesson as she was sent to prison for six weeks with hard labour.
There had been many complaints in Lancashire of late about the high price of meat and in some places so-called "anti-beef associations" had been formed. Not that the members were vegetarians – they simply wanted the price of meat coming down with some undertaking butcher boycotts. Whether the high price had influenced the actions of John Watkinson, I cannot say.
But the 35-year-old appeared in the Petty Sessions accused of meat-thieving from Thomas Houlton's butchers in Baldwin Street, after taking advantage of the practice of meat being displayed outside of shops. The St Helens Newspaper wrote: "He stopped opposite the shop, and after feasting his eyes on the cuts exposed for sale, he seized one, put it under his coat, and vanished. A lad called William Proctor saw the act, and gave information to Mrs. Houlton, who pursued and caught the rogue. He pleaded guilty, and was sent to prison for a month."
Next week's stories will include the drunken death of Thomas Beecham's wife, how the offer of marriage halted a domestic abuse case, the fighting women of Parr and the Crank woman at the centre of a child manslaughter case returns to court.
This week's stories include the Good Friday fight in Parr Street in which a man bled to death, the boys who could work up to 54 hours a week down a coal mine, a shocking story of wife beating is told in court, the thieving Nutgrove domestic servant and the Baldwin Street butcher theft.
The exploits of Dr Livingstone fascinated people back in Britain with the explorer and missionary still searching for the source of the Nile.
Many speakers presented lectures in St Helens on Livingstone and the St Helens Newspaper regularly published the latest news on the explorer's whereabouts.
However, Livingstone's letters could take months to reach home and in reprinting a number of them on the 10th, the Newspaper's most recent missive was almost six months old.
In that letter Dr Livingstone expressed his concern that a tribe of protected British subjects in Zanzibar called the Bantans had become the chief propagators of the slave trade in central Africa.
A shocking story of wife beating was told in the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 12th when Matthew Tunstall was charged with assaulting his wife Ann, along with Police Constable Geddes. The Newspaper wrote:
"Mr. Swift appeared for the complainant, a respectable looking young woman. He said they were married fourteen months. When a fortnight together he thrashed her and he thrashed her continually.
"She had to leave him because whenever he got near her, he gave her brutal ill usage. Last Monday, he struck her savagely for trying to save his mother from his violence, and she then summoned him [to court], as her life was miserable and in danger."
Matthew Tunstall had even followed his wife into the office of her solicitor and grabbed hold of her.
He refused to let go and it took two police officers to eventually prise the man off. When Ann Tunstall gave evidence she said:
"My life is awful. Once he knocked me down in Liverpool and dragged me along the street with my face covered in blood. One time he professed to love me, and the next moment he tried to kill me. That was his habit."
Matthew Tunstall was sentenced to two months hard labour and upon being released he was to be bound over for three months to keep the peace.
The stiff sentence was a little surprising, but what clearly made the difference was the number of witnesses, including police officers, who were able to testify to the man's violence.
As always in these cases I wonder what happened to the woman after her husband was released from prison and the three months of paying sureties to guarantee his good behaviour had expired – as divorce was almost certainly out of the question.
On Good Friday a quarrel had taken place between two lodgers in Parr Street in St Helens (pictured above) that turned into a fight. Only a few blows were exchanged before John Keefe was heard to say: "I am stabbed".
The man subsequently bled to death and medical testimony at his inquest at the Fleece Hotel stated that a wound measuring 1½ inch long and 3 inches deep had been inflicted on the deceased's right thigh.
Matthew Reynolds strenuously denied inflicting the wound, telling the coroner: "We were too good mates to use a knife to each other".
Supporting that statement, no knife or similar instrument was found upon Reynolds, nor was he seen by others present in the house to have used one.
Reynolds was committed for trial at the next assizes hearing on a charge of manslaughter, which took place on the 13th of this week.
The 21-year-old's defence was that they were both drunk and John Keefe might have accidentally stabbed himself after picking up a knife that was lying on the chimneypiece.
It seems an unlikely tale but the newspapers reported that the defendant expressed "great sorrow for the occurrence", although he still denied guilt.
Remorse tended to go down well with juries and so they acquitted him of the charge. However, the labourer had served over four months in custody waiting for his trial and so did not completely escape punishment.
There was another sad drowning on the 12th, this time involving a child.
The victim was 6-year-old Ann Harrison of Ditch Hillock (later Waterdale Crescent) in Sutton, who had been playing with other kids near a stretch of water belonging to the Sutton Glassworks.
The girl had climbed onto a floating plank and in trying to propel it, had slipped off into the water and drowned.
The owners of the coalmines were always known as the "masters" and they had their own body, known as the West Lancashire Coal Association.
At their meeting on the 13th, the masters decided to give their workers a conditional pay rise. This was the resolution that the employers passed:
"That colliers' wages in the Wigan and West Lancashire districts be advanced 15 per cent. from the first making-up day after the 1st Sept. next, and that the master coal owners expect that the men will from that date work at least 54 hours a week, the time they insisted on as a maximum for boys in the Coal Mines Bill just passed, and that the present restriction on the output of coal shall be removed."
Yes, a new Act of Parliament was limiting the employment down coal mines of boys aged between 12 and 16 to no more than 54 hours a week. How kind!
In return for granting the pay increase, the masters wanted adult mineworkers to commit to working at least 54 hours every week.
That was because the daywagemen – who were mainly labourers paid on a daily basis – were often choosing to work just 2 or 3 days a week. That was creating a staffing problem and affecting output in the mines.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 14th a domestic servant called Maria Pickavance was charged with stealing from her mistress.
The latter was Emma Johnson from Nutgrove and it was another case in which temptation had got the better of a poorly paid domestic who probably wasn't too bright.
Did she not realise that the £2 16 shillings (a fortnight’s wages at least for most men) that she stole from a purse in the pantry would be missed and she immediately become the number 1 suspect?
And then on the following day upon acquiring lots of new clothes, did she not understand that more suspicion would be raised?
In spite of claiming that her parents had bought her the clothing it soon transpired that she had paid cash for them at Christopher Sharples' draper's shop in Raven Street (off Church Street).
Emma learnt a hard lesson as she was sent to prison for six weeks with hard labour.
There had been many complaints in Lancashire of late about the high price of meat and in some places so-called "anti-beef associations" had been formed.
Not that the members were vegetarians – they simply wanted the price of meat coming down with some undertaking butcher boycotts.
Whether the high price had influenced the actions of John Watkinson, I cannot say.
But the 35-year-old appeared in the Petty Sessions accused of meat-thieving from Thomas Houlton's butchers in Baldwin Street, after taking advantage of the practice of meat being displayed outside of shops. The St Helens Newspaper wrote:
"He stopped opposite the shop, and after feasting his eyes on the cuts exposed for sale, he seized one, put it under his coat, and vanished. A lad called William Proctor saw the act, and gave information to Mrs. Houlton, who pursued and caught the rogue. He pleaded guilty, and was sent to prison for a month."
Next week's stories will include the drunken death of Thomas Beecham's wife, how the offer of marriage halted a domestic abuse case, the fighting women of Parr and the Crank woman at the centre of a child manslaughter case returns to court.
The exploits of Dr Livingstone fascinated people back in Britain with the explorer and missionary still searching for the source of the Nile.
Many speakers presented lectures in St Helens on Livingstone and the St Helens Newspaper regularly published the latest news on the explorer's whereabouts.
However, Livingstone's letters could take months to reach home and in reprinting a number of them on the 10th, the Newspaper's most recent missive was almost six months old.
In that letter Dr Livingstone expressed his concern that a tribe of protected British subjects in Zanzibar called the Bantans had become the chief propagators of the slave trade in central Africa.
A shocking story of wife beating was told in the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 12th when Matthew Tunstall was charged with assaulting his wife Ann, along with Police Constable Geddes. The Newspaper wrote:
"Mr. Swift appeared for the complainant, a respectable looking young woman. He said they were married fourteen months. When a fortnight together he thrashed her and he thrashed her continually.
"She had to leave him because whenever he got near her, he gave her brutal ill usage. Last Monday, he struck her savagely for trying to save his mother from his violence, and she then summoned him [to court], as her life was miserable and in danger."
Matthew Tunstall had even followed his wife into the office of her solicitor and grabbed hold of her.
He refused to let go and it took two police officers to eventually prise the man off. When Ann Tunstall gave evidence she said:
"My life is awful. Once he knocked me down in Liverpool and dragged me along the street with my face covered in blood. One time he professed to love me, and the next moment he tried to kill me. That was his habit."
Matthew Tunstall was sentenced to two months hard labour and upon being released he was to be bound over for three months to keep the peace.
The stiff sentence was a little surprising, but what clearly made the difference was the number of witnesses, including police officers, who were able to testify to the man's violence.
As always in these cases I wonder what happened to the woman after her husband was released from prison and the three months of paying sureties to guarantee his good behaviour had expired – as divorce was almost certainly out of the question.
The man subsequently bled to death and medical testimony at his inquest at the Fleece Hotel stated that a wound measuring 1½ inch long and 3 inches deep had been inflicted on the deceased's right thigh.
Matthew Reynolds strenuously denied inflicting the wound, telling the coroner: "We were too good mates to use a knife to each other".
Supporting that statement, no knife or similar instrument was found upon Reynolds, nor was he seen by others present in the house to have used one.
Reynolds was committed for trial at the next assizes hearing on a charge of manslaughter, which took place on the 13th of this week.
The 21-year-old's defence was that they were both drunk and John Keefe might have accidentally stabbed himself after picking up a knife that was lying on the chimneypiece.
It seems an unlikely tale but the newspapers reported that the defendant expressed "great sorrow for the occurrence", although he still denied guilt.
Remorse tended to go down well with juries and so they acquitted him of the charge. However, the labourer had served over four months in custody waiting for his trial and so did not completely escape punishment.
There was another sad drowning on the 12th, this time involving a child.
The victim was 6-year-old Ann Harrison of Ditch Hillock (later Waterdale Crescent) in Sutton, who had been playing with other kids near a stretch of water belonging to the Sutton Glassworks.
The girl had climbed onto a floating plank and in trying to propel it, had slipped off into the water and drowned.
The owners of the coalmines were always known as the "masters" and they had their own body, known as the West Lancashire Coal Association.
At their meeting on the 13th, the masters decided to give their workers a conditional pay rise. This was the resolution that the employers passed:
"That colliers' wages in the Wigan and West Lancashire districts be advanced 15 per cent. from the first making-up day after the 1st Sept. next, and that the master coal owners expect that the men will from that date work at least 54 hours a week, the time they insisted on as a maximum for boys in the Coal Mines Bill just passed, and that the present restriction on the output of coal shall be removed."
Yes, a new Act of Parliament was limiting the employment down coal mines of boys aged between 12 and 16 to no more than 54 hours a week. How kind!
In return for granting the pay increase, the masters wanted adult mineworkers to commit to working at least 54 hours every week.
That was because the daywagemen – who were mainly labourers paid on a daily basis – were often choosing to work just 2 or 3 days a week. That was creating a staffing problem and affecting output in the mines.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 14th a domestic servant called Maria Pickavance was charged with stealing from her mistress.
The latter was Emma Johnson from Nutgrove and it was another case in which temptation had got the better of a poorly paid domestic who probably wasn't too bright.
Did she not realise that the £2 16 shillings (a fortnight’s wages at least for most men) that she stole from a purse in the pantry would be missed and she immediately become the number 1 suspect?
And then on the following day upon acquiring lots of new clothes, did she not understand that more suspicion would be raised?
In spite of claiming that her parents had bought her the clothing it soon transpired that she had paid cash for them at Christopher Sharples' draper's shop in Raven Street (off Church Street).
Emma learnt a hard lesson as she was sent to prison for six weeks with hard labour.
There had been many complaints in Lancashire of late about the high price of meat and in some places so-called "anti-beef associations" had been formed.
Not that the members were vegetarians – they simply wanted the price of meat coming down with some undertaking butcher boycotts.
Whether the high price had influenced the actions of John Watkinson, I cannot say.
But the 35-year-old appeared in the Petty Sessions accused of meat-thieving from Thomas Houlton's butchers in Baldwin Street, after taking advantage of the practice of meat being displayed outside of shops. The St Helens Newspaper wrote:
"He stopped opposite the shop, and after feasting his eyes on the cuts exposed for sale, he seized one, put it under his coat, and vanished. A lad called William Proctor saw the act, and gave information to Mrs. Houlton, who pursued and caught the rogue. He pleaded guilty, and was sent to prison for a month."
Next week's stories will include the drunken death of Thomas Beecham's wife, how the offer of marriage halted a domestic abuse case, the fighting women of Parr and the Crank woman at the centre of a child manslaughter case returns to court.