150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (10th - 16th APRIL 1873)
This week's many stories include the deranged sexton at St Helens Cemetery, the rigged school exams scandal, the coal miners that went on a bender, the lamp thieving from a Duke Street shop and the Haydock hair pulling squabble.
It was now three months since the St Helens Cottage Hospital (pictured above prior to alterations taking place) had opened its doors, and despite the many injured and sick persons in the town, the small infirmary was not exactly overrun with patients. The St Helens Newspaper on the 12th revealed that currently there were only six persons receiving treatment there.
Their complaints were two fractured thighs; a fractured spine; chronic bronchitis; a leg ulcer and another patient had been severely burnt. The majority of sick and injured persons in St Helens were still being treated at home by their local doctor, with the hospital's daily charge of a shilling one reason for the low take up.
A big story this week in the Newspaper bore the headline: "Lunacy of a Sexton". The article described how a young man named Thomas Webster, a deputy sexton at the St Helens Cemetery, had appeared in court charged with "being a dangerous lunatic requiring restraint". Complaints had been made of Webster's conduct during the previous week and his father – who was the cemetery's sexton – decided to relieve him from duty.
Despite Thomas's dismissal he went to the cemetery while a funeral service was taking place and attempted to prevent a burial by claiming the wrong grave had been opened. Webster then forced his way into a house and assaulted a woman before starting to smash the place up. The Newspaper wrote:
"The most terrible alarm seized upon the inmates of the house unless the unfortunate man should do some fatal act, seeing that he was labouring under a fit of ungovernable passion." However, Webster was overpowered and in court was ordered to be removed to Whiston Workhouse where there was a lunatic ward. The Newspaper added that Webster's "derangement" was believed to have been through his "indulgence in drink".
The paper also revealed details of a rigged exams scandal that had been uncovered in St Helens. In order to sit for an examination each child needed to have made 250 appearances at the same school. Some time ago the government's Schools Inspector had visited an unnamed St Helens school and been shown a boy who was sitting his exam.
However, just a few days before the same lad had been at another school that the inspector had visited where he'd also been taking the examination. As a result the inspector had impounded the registers of the schools and an investigation had revealed that more than one such rigging had been practised. More details of the scandal were expected.
The 'Wanted' section of the St Helens Newspaper had an advert for a mole catcher. The "Township of Rainford" was seeking such a person to work for them for 14 years.
A bulls-eye lamp was an oil-lamp that police officers carried during the Victorian era. In court this week three boys were charged with stealing such a lamp from the Duke Street shop of James Prest. His wife Alice Prest told the Bench that Joseph McMullen had entered their premises during one evening and asked to inspect a lamp. She said she showed the 15-year-old a bulls-eye lamp but McMullen said he wanted to look at a different one.
As the woman turned round to pick up another lamp, a second boy entered the shop and took the first bulls-eye lamp off McMullen and then ran away. The second lad had been 15-year-old William Parr and he was soon arrested, telling the police: "I will have them all in as we all went to steal it." And so Parr provided the names of the other two boys that were involved.
McMullen told the court that he needed the lamp to work down a coal pit but blamed Parr for the theft. However, the magistrates were unconvinced and decided that he had been the ringleader and sent McMullen to prison for three months. William Parr received 14 days in prison and the case against the third young defendant was dismissed.
In Newton Petty Sessions on the 12th a squabble between two women was described when Adina Jondrell was charged with assaulting Elizabeth Unsworth in Haydock. The latter said Mrs Jondrell had followed her into her mother's shop and they began to quarrel. Mrs Unsworth then claimed Mrs Jondrell had struck her several times and then pulled her out of the shop by the hair of her head.
However, the defendant's solicitor said his client had recently had a child and was too weak to have carried out the assault in the way it had been described. The Chairman of the Bench was George McCorquodale who had a huge printing works in Newton-le-Willows. He felt both women were equally to blame and dismissed the case.
The colliery owners paid their miners every 14 days for the coal that each had produced during that period. The pay-off day involved some arithmetic as calculations had to be made of the amount of coal that had been brought up to the surface multiplied by the set price. And so the fortnightly event was known as the "reckoning" and the miners then paid off the labourers employed by them.
Most wives would ask their husbands for their wages and even be waiting for them at the colliery gates once the reckoning had taken place. After relieving their husbands of their cash, some pocket money for drink, tobacco etc. would be returned. But not all men had such sensible wives capable of managing their money and large numbers of young mine workers were single. A fortnight's money burnt a hole in their pockets and some went on a bender.
On the 14th six men – who seemed to have all worked at Pilkington's Alexandra Colliery in Ravenhead (pictured above) – appeared in St Helens Petty Sessions. Most mines insisted on two weeks' notice before their workers could leave their employment. And John Hill, Richard Southward, John Southward, Martin Platt, John Roby and John White were all charged with leaving Pilkingtons without giving notice.
It was explained in court that the men had received their reckoning money on March 29th. Some had then failed to return to work for several days and others had not gone back at all. All six gave going on a drinking spree as their reason for not returning to work. The mine reckoned their absences had cost them money. In five of the cases the losses were stated as 10 shillings each but for Richard Southward's absence the amount was claimed as 40 shillings.
The Bench ordered that each man paid back Pilkingtons their alleged losses, along with court costs. In default of payment a 14-day prison sentence would be imposed. However, Richard Southward would have to go to prison for two months if he could not pay. Including costs Southward had to find the best part of £3, which was probably a similar amount to the wages he had received.
That money would probably all have been spent by now and so prison would have been a strong possibility. The Chairman of the Bench said it was a pity that men would not take advantage of the present condition of things when work was available to "lay their money by for a future day".
And finally, this curious article was in the St Helens Newspaper this week: "HENPECKED HUSBANDS – It has been frequently stated that there is no more contemptible object than a henpecked husband. Indeed, so far from receiving comfort from his friends, he is constantly twitted about his position, and urged to adopt a course to remedy his miserable condition; but which, he feels, if followed, would land him in a quagmire ten times worse than that from which he tried to escape.
"Men generally possess firmer wills than women; but it is indisputable that there are men who are infinitely inferior in firmness and general brain power than termagant [bad tempered] wives. Now, if two such persons are living together nominally as man and wife, the one possessing the strongest nature must carry the day. If it be the woman, and she be determined, selfish, vixenish, reckless and lewd, and the man vacillatory [sic] and weak, it is the most natural thing in the world that he should have rather a hot shop of it.
"It is under such circumstances, simply impossible for him to assert successfully what the world considers ought to be his proper position, certain it is that he cuts a very sorry and ridiculous figure. He is humiliated by being snubbed by his amiable spouse in the presence of his children, his friends, and people in general. He is forbidden to indulge in his favourite pastimes; and has to descend to petty deceits to act, with safety, in accordance with his inclinations."
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the respectable Thatto Heath vagrant, the corrupt practices at an election, the post office fraud by mistake, the severe beating of a wife for simply having a drink and the brainless Rainford pigeon thefts.
Their complaints were two fractured thighs; a fractured spine; chronic bronchitis; a leg ulcer and another patient had been severely burnt. The majority of sick and injured persons in St Helens were still being treated at home by their local doctor, with the hospital's daily charge of a shilling one reason for the low take up.
A big story this week in the Newspaper bore the headline: "Lunacy of a Sexton". The article described how a young man named Thomas Webster, a deputy sexton at the St Helens Cemetery, had appeared in court charged with "being a dangerous lunatic requiring restraint". Complaints had been made of Webster's conduct during the previous week and his father – who was the cemetery's sexton – decided to relieve him from duty.
Despite Thomas's dismissal he went to the cemetery while a funeral service was taking place and attempted to prevent a burial by claiming the wrong grave had been opened. Webster then forced his way into a house and assaulted a woman before starting to smash the place up. The Newspaper wrote:
"The most terrible alarm seized upon the inmates of the house unless the unfortunate man should do some fatal act, seeing that he was labouring under a fit of ungovernable passion." However, Webster was overpowered and in court was ordered to be removed to Whiston Workhouse where there was a lunatic ward. The Newspaper added that Webster's "derangement" was believed to have been through his "indulgence in drink".
The paper also revealed details of a rigged exams scandal that had been uncovered in St Helens. In order to sit for an examination each child needed to have made 250 appearances at the same school. Some time ago the government's Schools Inspector had visited an unnamed St Helens school and been shown a boy who was sitting his exam.
However, just a few days before the same lad had been at another school that the inspector had visited where he'd also been taking the examination. As a result the inspector had impounded the registers of the schools and an investigation had revealed that more than one such rigging had been practised. More details of the scandal were expected.
The 'Wanted' section of the St Helens Newspaper had an advert for a mole catcher. The "Township of Rainford" was seeking such a person to work for them for 14 years.
A bulls-eye lamp was an oil-lamp that police officers carried during the Victorian era. In court this week three boys were charged with stealing such a lamp from the Duke Street shop of James Prest. His wife Alice Prest told the Bench that Joseph McMullen had entered their premises during one evening and asked to inspect a lamp. She said she showed the 15-year-old a bulls-eye lamp but McMullen said he wanted to look at a different one.
As the woman turned round to pick up another lamp, a second boy entered the shop and took the first bulls-eye lamp off McMullen and then ran away. The second lad had been 15-year-old William Parr and he was soon arrested, telling the police: "I will have them all in as we all went to steal it." And so Parr provided the names of the other two boys that were involved.
McMullen told the court that he needed the lamp to work down a coal pit but blamed Parr for the theft. However, the magistrates were unconvinced and decided that he had been the ringleader and sent McMullen to prison for three months. William Parr received 14 days in prison and the case against the third young defendant was dismissed.
In Newton Petty Sessions on the 12th a squabble between two women was described when Adina Jondrell was charged with assaulting Elizabeth Unsworth in Haydock. The latter said Mrs Jondrell had followed her into her mother's shop and they began to quarrel. Mrs Unsworth then claimed Mrs Jondrell had struck her several times and then pulled her out of the shop by the hair of her head.
However, the defendant's solicitor said his client had recently had a child and was too weak to have carried out the assault in the way it had been described. The Chairman of the Bench was George McCorquodale who had a huge printing works in Newton-le-Willows. He felt both women were equally to blame and dismissed the case.
The colliery owners paid their miners every 14 days for the coal that each had produced during that period. The pay-off day involved some arithmetic as calculations had to be made of the amount of coal that had been brought up to the surface multiplied by the set price. And so the fortnightly event was known as the "reckoning" and the miners then paid off the labourers employed by them.
Most wives would ask their husbands for their wages and even be waiting for them at the colliery gates once the reckoning had taken place. After relieving their husbands of their cash, some pocket money for drink, tobacco etc. would be returned. But not all men had such sensible wives capable of managing their money and large numbers of young mine workers were single. A fortnight's money burnt a hole in their pockets and some went on a bender.
It was explained in court that the men had received their reckoning money on March 29th. Some had then failed to return to work for several days and others had not gone back at all. All six gave going on a drinking spree as their reason for not returning to work. The mine reckoned their absences had cost them money. In five of the cases the losses were stated as 10 shillings each but for Richard Southward's absence the amount was claimed as 40 shillings.
The Bench ordered that each man paid back Pilkingtons their alleged losses, along with court costs. In default of payment a 14-day prison sentence would be imposed. However, Richard Southward would have to go to prison for two months if he could not pay. Including costs Southward had to find the best part of £3, which was probably a similar amount to the wages he had received.
That money would probably all have been spent by now and so prison would have been a strong possibility. The Chairman of the Bench said it was a pity that men would not take advantage of the present condition of things when work was available to "lay their money by for a future day".
And finally, this curious article was in the St Helens Newspaper this week: "HENPECKED HUSBANDS – It has been frequently stated that there is no more contemptible object than a henpecked husband. Indeed, so far from receiving comfort from his friends, he is constantly twitted about his position, and urged to adopt a course to remedy his miserable condition; but which, he feels, if followed, would land him in a quagmire ten times worse than that from which he tried to escape.
"Men generally possess firmer wills than women; but it is indisputable that there are men who are infinitely inferior in firmness and general brain power than termagant [bad tempered] wives. Now, if two such persons are living together nominally as man and wife, the one possessing the strongest nature must carry the day. If it be the woman, and she be determined, selfish, vixenish, reckless and lewd, and the man vacillatory [sic] and weak, it is the most natural thing in the world that he should have rather a hot shop of it.
"It is under such circumstances, simply impossible for him to assert successfully what the world considers ought to be his proper position, certain it is that he cuts a very sorry and ridiculous figure. He is humiliated by being snubbed by his amiable spouse in the presence of his children, his friends, and people in general. He is forbidden to indulge in his favourite pastimes; and has to descend to petty deceits to act, with safety, in accordance with his inclinations."
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the respectable Thatto Heath vagrant, the corrupt practices at an election, the post office fraud by mistake, the severe beating of a wife for simply having a drink and the brainless Rainford pigeon thefts.
This week's many stories include the deranged sexton at St Helens Cemetery, the rigged school exams scandal, the coal miners that went on a bender, the lamp thieving from a Duke Street shop and the Haydock hair pulling squabble.
It was now three months since the St Helens Cottage Hospital (pictured above prior to alterations taking place) had opened its doors, and despite the many injured and sick persons in the town, the small infirmary was not exactly overrun with patients.
The St Helens Newspaper on the 12th revealed that currently there were only six persons receiving treatment there.
Their complaints were two fractured thighs; a fractured spine; chronic bronchitis; a leg ulcer and another patient had been severely burnt.
The majority of sick and injured persons in St Helens were still being treated at home by their local doctor, with the hospital's daily charge of a shilling one reason for the low take up.
A big story this week in the Newspaper bore the headline: "Lunacy of a Sexton".
The article described how a young man named Thomas Webster, a deputy sexton at the St Helens Cemetery, had appeared in court charged with "being a dangerous lunatic requiring restraint".
Complaints had been made of Webster's conduct during the previous week and his father – who was the cemetery's sexton – decided to relieve him from duty.
Despite Thomas's dismissal he went to the cemetery while a funeral service was taking place and attempted to prevent a burial by claiming the wrong grave had been opened.
Webster then forced his way into a house and assaulted a woman before starting to smash the place up. The Newspaper wrote:
"The most terrible alarm seized upon the inmates of the house unless the unfortunate man should do some fatal act, seeing that he was labouring under a fit of ungovernable passion."
However, Webster was overpowered and in court was ordered to be removed to Whiston Workhouse where there was a lunatic ward.
The Newspaper added that Webster's "derangement" was believed to have been through his "indulgence in drink".
The paper also revealed details of a rigged exams scandal that had been uncovered in St Helens.
In order to sit for an examination each child needed to have made 250 appearances at the same school.
Some time ago the government's Schools Inspector had visited an unnamed St Helens school and been shown a boy who was sitting his exam.
However, just a few days before the same lad had been at another school that the inspector had visited where he'd also been taking the examination.
As a result the inspector had impounded the registers of the schools and an investigation had revealed that more than one such rigging had been practised. More details of the scandal were expected.
The 'Wanted' section of the St Helens Newspaper had an advert for a mole catcher. The "Township of Rainford" was seeking such a person to work for them for 14 years.
A bulls-eye lamp was an oil-lamp that police officers carried during the Victorian era. In court this week three boys were charged with stealing such a lamp from the Duke Street shop of James Prest.
His wife Alice Prest told the Bench that Joseph McMullen had entered their premises during one evening and asked to inspect a lamp.
She said she showed the 15-year-old a bulls-eye lamp but McMullen said he wanted to look at a different one.
As the woman turned round to pick up another lamp, a second boy entered the shop and took the first bulls-eye lamp off McMullen and then ran away.
The second lad had been 15-year-old William Parr and he was soon arrested, telling the police:
"I will have them all in as we all went to steal it." And so Parr provided the names of the other two boys that were involved.
McMullen told the court that he needed the lamp to work down a coal pit but blamed Parr for the theft.
However, the magistrates were unconvinced and decided that he had been the ringleader and sent McMullen to prison for three months.
William Parr received 14 days in prison and the case against the third young defendant was dismissed.
In Newton Petty Sessions on the 12th a squabble between two women was described when Adina Jondrell was charged with assaulting Elizabeth Unsworth in Haydock.
The latter said Mrs Jondrell had followed her into her mother's shop and they began to quarrel.
Mrs Unsworth then claimed Mrs Jondrell had struck her several times and then pulled her out of the shop by the hair of her head.
However, the defendant's solicitor said his client had recently had a child and was too weak to have carried out the assault in the way it had been described.
The Chairman of the Bench was George McCorquodale who had a huge printing works in Newton-le-Willows. He felt both women were equally to blame and dismissed the case.
The colliery owners paid their miners every 14 days for the coal that each had produced during that period.
The pay-off day involved some arithmetic as calculations had to be made of the amount of coal that had been brought up to the surface multiplied by the set price.
And so the fortnightly event was known as the "reckoning" and the miners then paid off the labourers employed by them.
Most wives would ask their husbands for their wages and even be waiting for them at the colliery gates once the reckoning had taken place.
After relieving their husbands of their cash, some pocket money for drink, tobacco etc. would be returned.
But not all men had such sensible wives capable of managing their money and large numbers of young mine workers were single. A fortnight's money burnt a hole in their pockets and some went on a bender.
On the 14th six men – who seemed to have all worked at Pilkington's Alexandra Colliery in Ravenhead (pictured above) – appeared in St Helens Petty Sessions.
Most mines insisted on two weeks' notice before their workers could leave their employment.
And John Hill, Richard Southward, John Southward, Martin Platt, John Roby and John White were all charged with leaving Pilkingtons without giving notice.
It was explained in court that the men had received their reckoning money on March 29th.
Some had then failed to return to work for several days and others had not gone back at all. All six gave going on a drinking spree as their reason for not returning to work.
The mine reckoned their absences had cost them money. In five of the cases the losses were stated as 10 shillings each but for Richard Southward's absence the amount was claimed as 40 shillings.
The Bench ordered that each man paid back Pilkingtons their alleged losses, along with court costs. In default of payment a 14-day prison sentence would be imposed.
However, Richard Southward would have to go to prison for two months if he could not pay.
Including costs Southward had to find the best part of £3, which was probably a similar amount to the wages he had received.
That money would probably all have been spent by now and so prison would have been a strong possibility.
The Chairman of the Bench said it was a pity that men would not take advantage of the present condition of things when work was available to "lay their money by for a future day".
And finally, this curious article was in the St Helens Newspaper this week:
"HENPECKED HUSBANDS – It has been frequently stated that there is no more contemptible object than a henpecked husband.
"Indeed, so far from receiving comfort from his friends, he is constantly twitted about his position, and urged to adopt a course to remedy his miserable condition; but which, he feels, if followed, would land him in a quagmire ten times worse than that from which he tried to escape.
"Men generally possess firmer wills than women; but it is indisputable that there are men who are infinitely inferior in firmness and general brain power than termagant [bad tempered] wives.
"Now, if two such persons are living together nominally as man and wife, the one possessing the strongest nature must carry the day.
"If it be the woman, and she be determined, selfish, vixenish, reckless and lewd, and the man vacillatory [sic] and weak, it is the most natural thing in the world that he should have rather a hot shop of it.
"It is under such circumstances, simply impossible for him to assert successfully what the world considers ought to be his proper position, certain it is that he cuts a very sorry and ridiculous figure.
"He is humiliated by being snubbed by his amiable spouse in the presence of his children, his friends, and people in general.
"He is forbidden to indulge in his favourite pastimes; and has to descend to petty deceits to act, with safety, in accordance with his inclinations."
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the respectable Thatto Heath vagrant, the corrupt practices at an election, the post office fraud by mistake, the severe beating of a wife for simply having a drink and the brainless Rainford pigeon thefts.
The St Helens Newspaper on the 12th revealed that currently there were only six persons receiving treatment there.
Their complaints were two fractured thighs; a fractured spine; chronic bronchitis; a leg ulcer and another patient had been severely burnt.
The majority of sick and injured persons in St Helens were still being treated at home by their local doctor, with the hospital's daily charge of a shilling one reason for the low take up.
A big story this week in the Newspaper bore the headline: "Lunacy of a Sexton".
The article described how a young man named Thomas Webster, a deputy sexton at the St Helens Cemetery, had appeared in court charged with "being a dangerous lunatic requiring restraint".
Complaints had been made of Webster's conduct during the previous week and his father – who was the cemetery's sexton – decided to relieve him from duty.
Despite Thomas's dismissal he went to the cemetery while a funeral service was taking place and attempted to prevent a burial by claiming the wrong grave had been opened.
Webster then forced his way into a house and assaulted a woman before starting to smash the place up. The Newspaper wrote:
"The most terrible alarm seized upon the inmates of the house unless the unfortunate man should do some fatal act, seeing that he was labouring under a fit of ungovernable passion."
However, Webster was overpowered and in court was ordered to be removed to Whiston Workhouse where there was a lunatic ward.
The Newspaper added that Webster's "derangement" was believed to have been through his "indulgence in drink".
The paper also revealed details of a rigged exams scandal that had been uncovered in St Helens.
In order to sit for an examination each child needed to have made 250 appearances at the same school.
Some time ago the government's Schools Inspector had visited an unnamed St Helens school and been shown a boy who was sitting his exam.
However, just a few days before the same lad had been at another school that the inspector had visited where he'd also been taking the examination.
As a result the inspector had impounded the registers of the schools and an investigation had revealed that more than one such rigging had been practised. More details of the scandal were expected.
The 'Wanted' section of the St Helens Newspaper had an advert for a mole catcher. The "Township of Rainford" was seeking such a person to work for them for 14 years.
A bulls-eye lamp was an oil-lamp that police officers carried during the Victorian era. In court this week three boys were charged with stealing such a lamp from the Duke Street shop of James Prest.
His wife Alice Prest told the Bench that Joseph McMullen had entered their premises during one evening and asked to inspect a lamp.
She said she showed the 15-year-old a bulls-eye lamp but McMullen said he wanted to look at a different one.
As the woman turned round to pick up another lamp, a second boy entered the shop and took the first bulls-eye lamp off McMullen and then ran away.
The second lad had been 15-year-old William Parr and he was soon arrested, telling the police:
"I will have them all in as we all went to steal it." And so Parr provided the names of the other two boys that were involved.
McMullen told the court that he needed the lamp to work down a coal pit but blamed Parr for the theft.
However, the magistrates were unconvinced and decided that he had been the ringleader and sent McMullen to prison for three months.
William Parr received 14 days in prison and the case against the third young defendant was dismissed.
In Newton Petty Sessions on the 12th a squabble between two women was described when Adina Jondrell was charged with assaulting Elizabeth Unsworth in Haydock.
The latter said Mrs Jondrell had followed her into her mother's shop and they began to quarrel.
Mrs Unsworth then claimed Mrs Jondrell had struck her several times and then pulled her out of the shop by the hair of her head.
However, the defendant's solicitor said his client had recently had a child and was too weak to have carried out the assault in the way it had been described.
The Chairman of the Bench was George McCorquodale who had a huge printing works in Newton-le-Willows. He felt both women were equally to blame and dismissed the case.
The colliery owners paid their miners every 14 days for the coal that each had produced during that period.
The pay-off day involved some arithmetic as calculations had to be made of the amount of coal that had been brought up to the surface multiplied by the set price.
And so the fortnightly event was known as the "reckoning" and the miners then paid off the labourers employed by them.
Most wives would ask their husbands for their wages and even be waiting for them at the colliery gates once the reckoning had taken place.
After relieving their husbands of their cash, some pocket money for drink, tobacco etc. would be returned.
But not all men had such sensible wives capable of managing their money and large numbers of young mine workers were single. A fortnight's money burnt a hole in their pockets and some went on a bender.
Most mines insisted on two weeks' notice before their workers could leave their employment.
And John Hill, Richard Southward, John Southward, Martin Platt, John Roby and John White were all charged with leaving Pilkingtons without giving notice.
It was explained in court that the men had received their reckoning money on March 29th.
Some had then failed to return to work for several days and others had not gone back at all. All six gave going on a drinking spree as their reason for not returning to work.
The mine reckoned their absences had cost them money. In five of the cases the losses were stated as 10 shillings each but for Richard Southward's absence the amount was claimed as 40 shillings.
The Bench ordered that each man paid back Pilkingtons their alleged losses, along with court costs. In default of payment a 14-day prison sentence would be imposed.
However, Richard Southward would have to go to prison for two months if he could not pay.
Including costs Southward had to find the best part of £3, which was probably a similar amount to the wages he had received.
That money would probably all have been spent by now and so prison would have been a strong possibility.
The Chairman of the Bench said it was a pity that men would not take advantage of the present condition of things when work was available to "lay their money by for a future day".
And finally, this curious article was in the St Helens Newspaper this week:
"HENPECKED HUSBANDS – It has been frequently stated that there is no more contemptible object than a henpecked husband.
"Indeed, so far from receiving comfort from his friends, he is constantly twitted about his position, and urged to adopt a course to remedy his miserable condition; but which, he feels, if followed, would land him in a quagmire ten times worse than that from which he tried to escape.
"Men generally possess firmer wills than women; but it is indisputable that there are men who are infinitely inferior in firmness and general brain power than termagant [bad tempered] wives.
"Now, if two such persons are living together nominally as man and wife, the one possessing the strongest nature must carry the day.
"If it be the woman, and she be determined, selfish, vixenish, reckless and lewd, and the man vacillatory [sic] and weak, it is the most natural thing in the world that he should have rather a hot shop of it.
"It is under such circumstances, simply impossible for him to assert successfully what the world considers ought to be his proper position, certain it is that he cuts a very sorry and ridiculous figure.
"He is humiliated by being snubbed by his amiable spouse in the presence of his children, his friends, and people in general.
"He is forbidden to indulge in his favourite pastimes; and has to descend to petty deceits to act, with safety, in accordance with his inclinations."
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the respectable Thatto Heath vagrant, the corrupt practices at an election, the post office fraud by mistake, the severe beating of a wife for simply having a drink and the brainless Rainford pigeon thefts.