150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (9th - 15th JANUARY 1873)
This week's many stories include the poacher in Windle Park that turned violent, a lodger's brainless theft from his Eccleston home, the slag in Lowe Street that injured a horse, the New Year's Day family fight in Rainford and the Parr pony boy who refused to pay his parents for his keep.
We begin on the 11th when the St Helens Newspaper reported that a Rainford labourer called William Harvey had appeared in St Helens Petty Sessions charged with assaulting and maltreating PC Neary. The trouble had begun when Ann McCrone, the landlady of the Wheatsheaf Inn, had refused to serve the man because he was drunk.
Infuriated by the refusal, Harvey began smashing glasses until PC Neary managed to get him outside. Then he and another man turned on the officer and the Newspaper said: "the policeman was used very brutally". William Harvey offered no defence and was sent to prison for a month with hard labour.
A surprisingly high number of defendants appeared in court in the 1870s after suddenly quitting their lodgings and taking other people's stuff or money with them. Did they not realise that they'd immediately become the number one suspect? William Johnson was one such brainless individual. In fact he was dafter than the norm as he returned to his lodgings at Edward Brownbill's home (seemingly in Sandy Lane, off Eccleston Hill) as if butter wouldn't melt.
He'd been left alone in the house for a while after Mrs Brownbill had gone out. When she returned her lodger was gone and so had 34 shillings from a drawer, the equivalent of almost a fortnight's wages for many. That night Johnson returned to the house drunk and when accused of the theft admitted it. He paid a high price for his night's boozing as he was sent to prison for three months.
Do you remember the story of the Cottingley fairy photos that two young girls crudely faked in 1917? Their photographs were seen at the time as the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies and in the 1990s their story was made into a film. Well, the St Helens Newspaper this week carried a not dissimilar tale from 1811 about a boy's activities in Vermont. This is the article:
"Sixty years ago, considerable excitement was caused at Brattleboro, Vermont, in the United States, by a strange meteor, which appeared one dark night, and, after hovering in the sky for about 20 minutes, suddenly vanished with a loud explosion. Many persons considered the phenomenon to be a supernatural omen, and so mysterious and striking was the occurrence that it has never been forgotten in the district, and the story of this wonderful light in the heavens has been handed down from one generation to another as one of the most remarkable events of the present century.
"The mystery has at last been solved. An old gentleman has lately died at Brattleboro, and, according to a Vermont paper, on his death-bed he confessed that when a boy in 1811 he made a kite and attached a paper lantern to it, in which he put a candle, arranging the contrivance so that when the candle had burnt out it would explode some powder in the bottom of the lantern.
"He kept the secret entirely to himself, and, choosing a dark night when nothing but the coloured lantern was visible, managed unobserved to get his kite into the air, thus producing the sensation which so profoundly affected the district. Having made this confession, without which he could not die comfortably, the old gentleman turned his face to the wall and expired in perfect peace."
The Newspaper also carried a report on John Bolton who had been poaching on land at Windle Park, near Windle Hall, that belonged to Col. David Gamble. A gamekeeper called Henderson had caught Bolton ferreting for rabbits but he refused to accompany him to the police station.
Instead, a blistering assault was launched which included striking Henderson over an eye with a stone and causing a very severe wound. Bolton denied being responsible but had told a policeman that the gamekeeper during the attack "had not got enough". He was fined 25 shillings for trespassing on Col. Gamble's land and sent to prison for a month for the assault.
Ann McManus was certainly a fast worker for a thief. Bessy Doherty told the court that while she was in the Albion Hotel in Parr, her shawl had fallen from her shoulders. Upon turning round to pick it up, the shawl had disappeared. And Ann McManus had also been in the pub and, at the same time as the shawl went missing, had also performed a vanishing act. It didn't take PC Robinson much detective work to link the two things and he discovered the shawl inside the woman's house.
She claimed that it had somehow got into the bundle that she was carrying. The magistrates did not believe that story and as clothes stealing was then considered a serious crime, Ann was sent to prison to undertake a week's hard labour. The shawl, incidentally, was stated in the hearing as being the property of Cornelius Doherty, as married men technically owned their wives' belongings.
It was expected that children that worked would give their weekly earnings to their mother to pay for their keep with, perhaps, a few coppers returned to them as pocket money. However, young Thomas Duffy did not seem to think that the principle should extend to sick pay. In the 1871 census Duffy was aged 14 and living with his parents in Moss Bank Street near Merton Bank in Parr with his occupation stated as a pony-boy in a coalmine.
He had enrolled in the mine's sickness insurance policy and had recently received a pay out of 12s 9d. His mother demanded most of that cash for her son's keep but he refused to give it to her and made threats. The Newspaper wrote: "When he was overcome by the father he ran out of the house threatening his parents with violence, and used the most shocking curses. There was no doing any good with him, as he was out night after night, and often kept the whole of his wages." The lad was ordered to find a surety to keep the peace for three months.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 13th, PC Leary described a New Year's Day party in Rainford. The officer had been patrolling in Bushey Lane when he heard a row coming from the home of the Corbetts. Upon entering the house he found William Corbett, Margaret Corbett and James Kenny all fighting together. In the 1871 census James is recorded as 15 and one of five Kennys living in the house. They were the children of Margaret who had married William Corbett, presumably after the death of her first husband.
That fatality may have been in a coalmine, as the actually address of the warring family was Hardings Lane. That was a row of cottages near Bushey Lane occupied by miners from Rainford Colliery. The threesome had been charged with breaching the peace but their solicitor told the Bench that they had been celebrating the New Year with the three parties all being members of the same family. As a result the Bench took a lenient view and ordered them to only pay the court costs.
Robert Goldthorpe Brook ran a hardware business from premises at Wolverhampton House, near the Raven Inn in St Helens. The business boasted that it stocked "anything from a needle to an anchor" and Brook became a councillor and president of the town's Association for the Pursuit of Science, Literature and Art. At a council committee meeting on the 15th this letter of complaint from R. G. Brook was read out:
"To Mr. Ross, Surveyor. Dec. 28th, 1872. Dear Sir, – Yesterday evening, about seven o’clock, as my boy was driving the horse and cart down Lowe street, the horse fell and cut one knee open, through several loads of slag being left in the middle of the street, in very large lumps, and not covered; and as there was no lamp, or light, or rails, to indicate that the street was in a state of repair. I shall hold the Corporation responsible for all the expense and damage sustained. – I am, respectfully, R. G. Brook."
However, the surveyor told the meeting that Lowe Street was a private street that the Corporation had yet to adopt. So those who drove through it did so at their own risk. Of course, R. G. Brook's "boy" was not his son but a lad that probably worked very long hours for him for very little pay. And that would have to be given to his mother!
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the opening of the St Helens Cottage Hospital, the respectable Rainford coal thieves, the Liverpool Road man who beat his wife for drinking and a court takes pity on a dissipated old Clock Face man in his fifties.
Infuriated by the refusal, Harvey began smashing glasses until PC Neary managed to get him outside. Then he and another man turned on the officer and the Newspaper said: "the policeman was used very brutally". William Harvey offered no defence and was sent to prison for a month with hard labour.
A surprisingly high number of defendants appeared in court in the 1870s after suddenly quitting their lodgings and taking other people's stuff or money with them. Did they not realise that they'd immediately become the number one suspect? William Johnson was one such brainless individual. In fact he was dafter than the norm as he returned to his lodgings at Edward Brownbill's home (seemingly in Sandy Lane, off Eccleston Hill) as if butter wouldn't melt.
He'd been left alone in the house for a while after Mrs Brownbill had gone out. When she returned her lodger was gone and so had 34 shillings from a drawer, the equivalent of almost a fortnight's wages for many. That night Johnson returned to the house drunk and when accused of the theft admitted it. He paid a high price for his night's boozing as he was sent to prison for three months.
Do you remember the story of the Cottingley fairy photos that two young girls crudely faked in 1917? Their photographs were seen at the time as the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies and in the 1990s their story was made into a film. Well, the St Helens Newspaper this week carried a not dissimilar tale from 1811 about a boy's activities in Vermont. This is the article:
"Sixty years ago, considerable excitement was caused at Brattleboro, Vermont, in the United States, by a strange meteor, which appeared one dark night, and, after hovering in the sky for about 20 minutes, suddenly vanished with a loud explosion. Many persons considered the phenomenon to be a supernatural omen, and so mysterious and striking was the occurrence that it has never been forgotten in the district, and the story of this wonderful light in the heavens has been handed down from one generation to another as one of the most remarkable events of the present century.
"The mystery has at last been solved. An old gentleman has lately died at Brattleboro, and, according to a Vermont paper, on his death-bed he confessed that when a boy in 1811 he made a kite and attached a paper lantern to it, in which he put a candle, arranging the contrivance so that when the candle had burnt out it would explode some powder in the bottom of the lantern.
"He kept the secret entirely to himself, and, choosing a dark night when nothing but the coloured lantern was visible, managed unobserved to get his kite into the air, thus producing the sensation which so profoundly affected the district. Having made this confession, without which he could not die comfortably, the old gentleman turned his face to the wall and expired in perfect peace."
The Newspaper also carried a report on John Bolton who had been poaching on land at Windle Park, near Windle Hall, that belonged to Col. David Gamble. A gamekeeper called Henderson had caught Bolton ferreting for rabbits but he refused to accompany him to the police station.
Instead, a blistering assault was launched which included striking Henderson over an eye with a stone and causing a very severe wound. Bolton denied being responsible but had told a policeman that the gamekeeper during the attack "had not got enough". He was fined 25 shillings for trespassing on Col. Gamble's land and sent to prison for a month for the assault.
Ann McManus was certainly a fast worker for a thief. Bessy Doherty told the court that while she was in the Albion Hotel in Parr, her shawl had fallen from her shoulders. Upon turning round to pick it up, the shawl had disappeared. And Ann McManus had also been in the pub and, at the same time as the shawl went missing, had also performed a vanishing act. It didn't take PC Robinson much detective work to link the two things and he discovered the shawl inside the woman's house.
She claimed that it had somehow got into the bundle that she was carrying. The magistrates did not believe that story and as clothes stealing was then considered a serious crime, Ann was sent to prison to undertake a week's hard labour. The shawl, incidentally, was stated in the hearing as being the property of Cornelius Doherty, as married men technically owned their wives' belongings.
It was expected that children that worked would give their weekly earnings to their mother to pay for their keep with, perhaps, a few coppers returned to them as pocket money. However, young Thomas Duffy did not seem to think that the principle should extend to sick pay. In the 1871 census Duffy was aged 14 and living with his parents in Moss Bank Street near Merton Bank in Parr with his occupation stated as a pony-boy in a coalmine.
He had enrolled in the mine's sickness insurance policy and had recently received a pay out of 12s 9d. His mother demanded most of that cash for her son's keep but he refused to give it to her and made threats. The Newspaper wrote: "When he was overcome by the father he ran out of the house threatening his parents with violence, and used the most shocking curses. There was no doing any good with him, as he was out night after night, and often kept the whole of his wages." The lad was ordered to find a surety to keep the peace for three months.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 13th, PC Leary described a New Year's Day party in Rainford. The officer had been patrolling in Bushey Lane when he heard a row coming from the home of the Corbetts. Upon entering the house he found William Corbett, Margaret Corbett and James Kenny all fighting together. In the 1871 census James is recorded as 15 and one of five Kennys living in the house. They were the children of Margaret who had married William Corbett, presumably after the death of her first husband.
That fatality may have been in a coalmine, as the actually address of the warring family was Hardings Lane. That was a row of cottages near Bushey Lane occupied by miners from Rainford Colliery. The threesome had been charged with breaching the peace but their solicitor told the Bench that they had been celebrating the New Year with the three parties all being members of the same family. As a result the Bench took a lenient view and ordered them to only pay the court costs.
Robert Goldthorpe Brook ran a hardware business from premises at Wolverhampton House, near the Raven Inn in St Helens. The business boasted that it stocked "anything from a needle to an anchor" and Brook became a councillor and president of the town's Association for the Pursuit of Science, Literature and Art. At a council committee meeting on the 15th this letter of complaint from R. G. Brook was read out:
"To Mr. Ross, Surveyor. Dec. 28th, 1872. Dear Sir, – Yesterday evening, about seven o’clock, as my boy was driving the horse and cart down Lowe street, the horse fell and cut one knee open, through several loads of slag being left in the middle of the street, in very large lumps, and not covered; and as there was no lamp, or light, or rails, to indicate that the street was in a state of repair. I shall hold the Corporation responsible for all the expense and damage sustained. – I am, respectfully, R. G. Brook."
However, the surveyor told the meeting that Lowe Street was a private street that the Corporation had yet to adopt. So those who drove through it did so at their own risk. Of course, R. G. Brook's "boy" was not his son but a lad that probably worked very long hours for him for very little pay. And that would have to be given to his mother!
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the opening of the St Helens Cottage Hospital, the respectable Rainford coal thieves, the Liverpool Road man who beat his wife for drinking and a court takes pity on a dissipated old Clock Face man in his fifties.
This week's many stories include the poacher in Windle Park that turned violent, a lodger's brainless theft from his Eccleston home, the slag in Lowe Street that injured a horse, the New Year's Day family fight in Rainford and the Parr pony boy who refused to pay his parents for his keep.
We begin on the 11th when the St Helens Newspaper reported that a Rainford labourer called William Harvey had appeared in St Helens Petty Sessions charged with assaulting and maltreating PC Neary.
The trouble had begun when Ann McCrone, the landlady of the Wheatsheaf Inn, had refused to serve the man because he was drunk.
Infuriated by the refusal, Harvey began smashing glasses until PC Neary managed to get him outside.
Then he and another man turned on the officer and the Newspaper said: "the policeman was used very brutally".
William Harvey offered no defence and was sent to prison for a month with hard labour.
A surprisingly high number of defendants appeared in court in the 1870s after suddenly quitting their lodgings and taking other people's stuff or money with them. Did they not realise that they'd immediately become the number one suspect?
William Johnson was one such brainless individual. In fact he was dafter than the norm as he returned to his lodgings at Edward Brownbill's home (seemingly in Sandy Lane, off Eccleston Hill) as if butter wouldn't melt.
He'd been left alone in the house for a while after Mrs Brownbill had gone out. When she returned her lodger was gone and so had 34 shillings from a drawer, the equivalent of almost a fortnight's wages for many.
That night Johnson returned to the house drunk and when accused of the theft admitted it.
He paid a high price for his night's boozing as he was sent to prison for three months.
Do you remember the story of the Cottingley fairy photos that two young girls crudely faked in 1917?
Their photographs were seen at the time as the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies and in the 1990s their story was made into a film.
Well, the St Helens Newspaper this week carried a not dissimilar tale from 1811 about a boy's activities in Vermont. This is the article:
"Sixty years ago, considerable excitement was caused at Brattleboro, Vermont, in the United States, by a strange meteor, which appeared one dark night, and, after hovering in the sky for about 20 minutes, suddenly vanished with a loud explosion.
"Many persons considered the phenomenon to be a supernatural omen, and so mysterious and striking was the occurrence that it has never been forgotten in the district, and the story of this wonderful light in the heavens has been handed down from one generation to another as one of the most remarkable events of the present century.
"The mystery has at last been solved. An old gentleman has lately died at Brattleboro, and, according to a Vermont paper, on his death-bed he confessed that when a boy in 1811 he made a kite and attached a paper lantern to it, in which he put a candle, arranging the contrivance so that when the candle had burnt out it would explode some powder in the bottom of the lantern.
"He kept the secret entirely to himself, and, choosing a dark night when nothing but the coloured lantern was visible, managed unobserved to get his kite into the air, thus producing the sensation which so profoundly affected the district.
"Having made this confession, without which he could not die comfortably, the old gentleman turned his face to the wall and expired in perfect peace."
The Newspaper also carried a report on John Bolton who had been poaching on land at Windle Park, near Windle Hall, that belonged to Col. David Gamble.
A gamekeeper called Henderson had caught Bolton ferreting for rabbits but he refused to accompany him to the police station.
Instead, a blistering assault was launched which included striking Henderson over an eye with a stone and causing a very severe wound.
Bolton denied being responsible but had told a policeman that the gamekeeper during the attack "had not got enough".
He was fined 25 shillings for trespassing on Col. Gamble's land and sent to prison for a month for the assault.
Ann McManus was certainly a fast worker for a thief. Bessy Doherty told the court that while she was in the Albion Hotel in Parr, her shawl had fallen from her shoulders. Upon turning round to pick it up, the shawl had disappeared.
And Ann McManus had also been in the pub and, at the same time as the shawl went missing, had also performed a vanishing act.
It didn't take PC Robinson much detective work to link the two things and he discovered the shawl inside the woman's house.
She claimed that it had somehow got into the bundle that she was carrying. The magistrates did not believe that story and as clothes stealing was then considered a serious crime, Ann was sent to prison to undertake a week's hard labour.
The shawl, incidentally, was stated in the hearing as being the property of Cornelius Doherty, as married men technically owned their wives' belongings.
It was expected that children that worked would give their weekly earnings to their mother to pay for their keep with, perhaps, a few coppers returned to them as pocket money.
However, young Thomas Duffy did not seem to think that the principle should extend to sick pay.
In the 1871 census Duffy was aged 14 and living with his parents in Moss Bank Street near Merton Bank in Parr with his occupation stated as a pony-boy in a coalmine.
He had enrolled in the mine's sickness insurance policy and had recently received a pay out of 12s 9d.
His mother demanded most of that cash for her son's keep but he refused to give it to her and made threats.
The Newspaper wrote: "When he was overcome by the father he ran out of the house threatening his parents with violence, and used the most shocking curses. There was no doing any good with him, as he was out night after night, and often kept the whole of his wages."
The lad was ordered to find a surety to keep the peace for three months.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 13th, PC Leary described a New Year's Day party in Rainford.
The officer had been patrolling in Bushey Lane when he heard a row coming from the home of the Corbetts.
Upon entering the house he found William Corbett, Margaret Corbett and James Kenny all fighting together.
In the 1871 census James is recorded as 15 and one of five Kennys living in the house. They were the children of Margaret who had married William Corbett, presumably after the death of her first husband.
That fatality may have been in a coalmine, as the actually address of the warring family was Hardings Lane. That was a row of cottages near Bushey Lane occupied by miners from Rainford Colliery.
The threesome had been charged with breaching the peace but their solicitor told the Bench that they had been celebrating the New Year with the three parties all being members of the same family.
As a result the Bench took a lenient view and ordered them to only pay the court costs.
Robert Goldthorpe Brook ran a hardware business from premises at Wolverhampton House, near the Raven Inn in St Helens.
The business boasted that it stocked "anything from a needle to an anchor" and Brook became a councillor and president of the town's Association for the Pursuit of Science, Literature and Art.
At a council committee meeting on the 15th this letter of complaint from R. G. Brook was read out:
"To Mr. Ross, Surveyor. Dec. 28th, 1872. Dear Sir, – Yesterday evening, about seven o’clock, as my boy was driving the horse and cart down Lowe street, the horse fell and cut one knee open, through several loads of slag being left in the middle of the street, in very large lumps, and not covered; and as there was no lamp, or light, or rails, to indicate that the street was in a state of repair. I shall hold the Corporation responsible for all the expense and damage sustained. – I am, respectfully, R. G. Brook."
However, the surveyor told the meeting that Lowe Street was a private street that the Corporation had yet to adopt. So those who drove through it did so at their own risk.
Of course, R. G. Brook’s "boy" was not his son but a lad that probably worked very long hours for him for very little pay. And that would have to be given to his mother!
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the opening of the St Helens Cottage Hospital, the respectable Rainford coal thieves, the Liverpool Road man who beat his wife for drinking and a court takes pity on a dissipated old Clock Face man in his fifties.
The trouble had begun when Ann McCrone, the landlady of the Wheatsheaf Inn, had refused to serve the man because he was drunk.
Infuriated by the refusal, Harvey began smashing glasses until PC Neary managed to get him outside.
Then he and another man turned on the officer and the Newspaper said: "the policeman was used very brutally".
William Harvey offered no defence and was sent to prison for a month with hard labour.
A surprisingly high number of defendants appeared in court in the 1870s after suddenly quitting their lodgings and taking other people's stuff or money with them. Did they not realise that they'd immediately become the number one suspect?
William Johnson was one such brainless individual. In fact he was dafter than the norm as he returned to his lodgings at Edward Brownbill's home (seemingly in Sandy Lane, off Eccleston Hill) as if butter wouldn't melt.
He'd been left alone in the house for a while after Mrs Brownbill had gone out. When she returned her lodger was gone and so had 34 shillings from a drawer, the equivalent of almost a fortnight's wages for many.
That night Johnson returned to the house drunk and when accused of the theft admitted it.
He paid a high price for his night's boozing as he was sent to prison for three months.
Do you remember the story of the Cottingley fairy photos that two young girls crudely faked in 1917?
Their photographs were seen at the time as the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies and in the 1990s their story was made into a film.
Well, the St Helens Newspaper this week carried a not dissimilar tale from 1811 about a boy's activities in Vermont. This is the article:
"Sixty years ago, considerable excitement was caused at Brattleboro, Vermont, in the United States, by a strange meteor, which appeared one dark night, and, after hovering in the sky for about 20 minutes, suddenly vanished with a loud explosion.
"Many persons considered the phenomenon to be a supernatural omen, and so mysterious and striking was the occurrence that it has never been forgotten in the district, and the story of this wonderful light in the heavens has been handed down from one generation to another as one of the most remarkable events of the present century.
"The mystery has at last been solved. An old gentleman has lately died at Brattleboro, and, according to a Vermont paper, on his death-bed he confessed that when a boy in 1811 he made a kite and attached a paper lantern to it, in which he put a candle, arranging the contrivance so that when the candle had burnt out it would explode some powder in the bottom of the lantern.
"He kept the secret entirely to himself, and, choosing a dark night when nothing but the coloured lantern was visible, managed unobserved to get his kite into the air, thus producing the sensation which so profoundly affected the district.
"Having made this confession, without which he could not die comfortably, the old gentleman turned his face to the wall and expired in perfect peace."
The Newspaper also carried a report on John Bolton who had been poaching on land at Windle Park, near Windle Hall, that belonged to Col. David Gamble.
A gamekeeper called Henderson had caught Bolton ferreting for rabbits but he refused to accompany him to the police station.
Instead, a blistering assault was launched which included striking Henderson over an eye with a stone and causing a very severe wound.
Bolton denied being responsible but had told a policeman that the gamekeeper during the attack "had not got enough".
He was fined 25 shillings for trespassing on Col. Gamble's land and sent to prison for a month for the assault.
Ann McManus was certainly a fast worker for a thief. Bessy Doherty told the court that while she was in the Albion Hotel in Parr, her shawl had fallen from her shoulders. Upon turning round to pick it up, the shawl had disappeared.
And Ann McManus had also been in the pub and, at the same time as the shawl went missing, had also performed a vanishing act.
It didn't take PC Robinson much detective work to link the two things and he discovered the shawl inside the woman's house.
She claimed that it had somehow got into the bundle that she was carrying. The magistrates did not believe that story and as clothes stealing was then considered a serious crime, Ann was sent to prison to undertake a week's hard labour.
The shawl, incidentally, was stated in the hearing as being the property of Cornelius Doherty, as married men technically owned their wives' belongings.
It was expected that children that worked would give their weekly earnings to their mother to pay for their keep with, perhaps, a few coppers returned to them as pocket money.
However, young Thomas Duffy did not seem to think that the principle should extend to sick pay.
In the 1871 census Duffy was aged 14 and living with his parents in Moss Bank Street near Merton Bank in Parr with his occupation stated as a pony-boy in a coalmine.
He had enrolled in the mine's sickness insurance policy and had recently received a pay out of 12s 9d.
His mother demanded most of that cash for her son's keep but he refused to give it to her and made threats.
The Newspaper wrote: "When he was overcome by the father he ran out of the house threatening his parents with violence, and used the most shocking curses. There was no doing any good with him, as he was out night after night, and often kept the whole of his wages."
The lad was ordered to find a surety to keep the peace for three months.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 13th, PC Leary described a New Year's Day party in Rainford.
The officer had been patrolling in Bushey Lane when he heard a row coming from the home of the Corbetts.
Upon entering the house he found William Corbett, Margaret Corbett and James Kenny all fighting together.
In the 1871 census James is recorded as 15 and one of five Kennys living in the house. They were the children of Margaret who had married William Corbett, presumably after the death of her first husband.
That fatality may have been in a coalmine, as the actually address of the warring family was Hardings Lane. That was a row of cottages near Bushey Lane occupied by miners from Rainford Colliery.
The threesome had been charged with breaching the peace but their solicitor told the Bench that they had been celebrating the New Year with the three parties all being members of the same family.
As a result the Bench took a lenient view and ordered them to only pay the court costs.
Robert Goldthorpe Brook ran a hardware business from premises at Wolverhampton House, near the Raven Inn in St Helens.
The business boasted that it stocked "anything from a needle to an anchor" and Brook became a councillor and president of the town's Association for the Pursuit of Science, Literature and Art.
At a council committee meeting on the 15th this letter of complaint from R. G. Brook was read out:
"To Mr. Ross, Surveyor. Dec. 28th, 1872. Dear Sir, – Yesterday evening, about seven o’clock, as my boy was driving the horse and cart down Lowe street, the horse fell and cut one knee open, through several loads of slag being left in the middle of the street, in very large lumps, and not covered; and as there was no lamp, or light, or rails, to indicate that the street was in a state of repair. I shall hold the Corporation responsible for all the expense and damage sustained. – I am, respectfully, R. G. Brook."
However, the surveyor told the meeting that Lowe Street was a private street that the Corporation had yet to adopt. So those who drove through it did so at their own risk.
Of course, R. G. Brook’s "boy" was not his son but a lad that probably worked very long hours for him for very little pay. And that would have to be given to his mother!
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the opening of the St Helens Cottage Hospital, the respectable Rainford coal thieves, the Liverpool Road man who beat his wife for drinking and a court takes pity on a dissipated old Clock Face man in his fifties.