150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (11th - 17th JANUARY 1871)
This week's stories include the Bridge Street beggar's hard luck story, the man who went to prison for tearing his trousers, the dispute between the auctioneer and the butcher and the Parr landlord's silly sister who landed her brother in court!
We start on the 12th with the annual Parish Church tea party, which was held in the girls' schoolroom adjoining the church. The venues for such occasions were usually decorated with flags, floral garlands and mottoes – which we might call banners or slogans. The ones at the tea party said: "Long live our Pastor" and "Success to our Schools", with the St Helens Newspaper describing the decorations as having been of "an exceedingly elaborate description".
Thomas Waterworth was the agent for Singer sewing machines in St Helens with premises opposite the Raven Hotel. In the St Helens Newspaper on the 14th he was advertising treadle-powered machines for £6 10 shillings, which he claimed had been reduced from £9. "Good news to all who use the needle", he wrote, although it was a still an awful lot of money for most people.
The dangers of coal mining both above and below ground were underlined this week when a total of seven men were killed in separate accidents within the Wigan district. A fatality also occurred in St Helens with the death of Joseph Ellis at Groves Colliery (aka Ravenhead Colliery) on the 16th. The joiner from Liverpool Road left a wife and four children and was crushed to death on the surface between a wheel and a wall.
In the St Helens Petty Sessions on Monday the 16th, Dennis Fay (or Feigh) made his 50th appearance in court. This time he was charged with committing a breach of the peace by shouting and making a great noise in the market place on Saturday night. With people then getting paid on a Saturday, the shops and market stallholders would stay open until late (some till midnight) to try and relieve them of their cash. Drunks like Dennis would be attracted to the well-lit market and then find themselves stuck in the police lock-up until the court opened on Monday.
Often described in the newspapers as a "notorious character" or "old offender", Dennis was bound over by the Bench for one month. However he needed to find sureties to guarantee his good behaviour and so almost certainly would have served the 14-day alternative prison term. I think Dennis was the brother of Thomas Fay, who was mentioned last week and who had around 30 convictions to his name. However as surname spellings varied a lot in the newspapers, it can be hard to be certain.
Thomas Lewis was another who would have spent 36 hours lodged in a police cell. He appeared in the court charged with begging in Bridge Street on Saturday night. A policeman said he had seen the man going into houses (presumably public houses) along with his two children in order to beg. The constable told the court that he had found 1s. 1½d. on Lewis and his hands did not look as if he had worked for some time. However Lewis told the Bench that he was a mason's labourer but had been out of work for two months.
The little money that he had was all gone and not being able to get any work, he said he and his wife and two children had been forced to beg. "I am willing to work if I can get any to do", Lewis pleaded to the Bench. His story may well have been true but he received short shrift from the magistrates. "From your own statement you have been begging for two months", claimed the Chairman (although Lewis did not actually say that), before adding: "You must go to gaol for seven days hard labour". And hard labour in 1871 was very, very hard and involved pointlessly working on a treadmill in Kirkdale Gaol in Liverpool for at least six hours a day.
Roger Tansey would only have spent a single night in the police lock up. He had been arrested in Berrys Lane in Parr on the previous evening while quarrelling with another man. Constable 189 (as he was described) said Tansey behaved "almost like a madman" and threw the other man down and attempted to strike the officer. He was fined ten shillings and costs.
A case that would have been received a lot of public interest was the prosecution of William Gerrard for assault. The 51-year-old was a well-known auctioneer with premises in Bridge Street but who lived in Baldwin Street. Young butcher John Davies – who lived over his own Bridge Street shop – brought the case against Gerrard, accusing the man of punching him in the Globe Hotel. That was probably the one in Ormskirk Street, although there was also a Globe Inn in Hardshaw Street at some point.
We came across Davies last year when his wife accused her husband of threatening to assault her. Elizabeth Davies then told the Bench: "He has beaten me and made me black several times" and claimed he had threatened to cut out her heart with a knife. The unsympathetic Chairman of the Bench said there was insufficient evidence to bind over or fine John Davies, and so dismissed the case.
Now Davies was the complainant and he described calling into the Globe for a whisky on January 11th. The 27-year-old claimed that without any provocation, Gerrard had struck him in the face, tore some artificial flowers out of his hat, put them into his own pocket and then dragged him into another room. "I had a job to get away from him. My arms are all black", added the butcher.
To these comments William Gerrard bizarrely said to Davies: "Were you not dancing before the mirror and shaking hands [with] yourself, and saying “How do you do, Mr. John Davies? You will be a gentleman some day!”" Davies denied that claim, saying it was a falsehood and his shop boy who was with him in the pub corroborated his boss's evidence.
You will not be surprised that Gerrard had his own version of events and his own witnesses – three in fact – who told the court that the auctioneer had not touched the butcher. Martin Sutton was a barman at the Globe and talking about Davies said at one point in the hearing, "I took him to be either drunk or mad, and I think he is mad." With two people swearing in court that an assault had taken place and three swearing that it hadn't, the magistrates dismissed the case as not proved.
I've written a few times about the battle of wits between the police and beerhouse keepers over Sunday trading. The sale of alcohol was banned on the Sabbath until 12:30pm but many illegal sales still took place during the morning. Upon being summoned to court the licensees would normally plead not guilty and put the onus on the police to prove their case.
However when Owen Traynor from Parr appeared in court charged with allowing the sale of alcohol on a Sunday morning, he pleaded guilty. Well he had to really because of his daft sister! She had been positioned outside his beerhouse to keep watch and as soon as she saw a constable walking along the street, the silly woman ran towards the house shouting "Police!!!".
The constable would probably have carried on walking down the road but now his interest was awakened and he found two men inside the house supping beer. The beerhouse or pub was called the Cross Keys and appeared to be on, or near, Atlas Street. Owen Traynor was fined 40 shillings and costs, with the Chairman of the Bench saying Sunday trading had to be stopped, as it was "far more injurious, than the regular day business."
"Women's Squabbles" was a regular heading to reports of female disputes in the St Helens Newspaper. Oddly there was no equivalent for men! Usually it was the good – and not so good – ladies of Parr who had engaged in fisticuffs but in this case in the Petty Sessions it was the fighting women of Sutton. Unusually Ellen Bolan pleaded guilty to the charge of assaulting Mary Gordon in a Sutton pub but still accused the latter of telling lies in court.
She said Mrs Gordon had failed to mention in her evidence that she was drunk and had called her an "Irish ________" (redacted by the Newspaper). The magistrates said no matter what the other woman had said she had no right to take the law into her own hands and Ellen Bolan was fined 5 shillings and costs.
There was another train accident on the 16th – yes another one! They rarely proved fatal but passengers certainly could have done with safety belts in those days! This crash concerned a passenger train from St Helens to Wigan, which was scheduled to arrive in the latter place at 8:20pm. It didn't because the train ran into a load of coal trucks with considerable force. Half a dozen passengers were badly bruised and some had to be taken to their homes and doctors called.
And the final item this week occurred in the Prescot Petty Sessions on the 17th. That was when Thomas Carter was charged with destroying his clothes while in Whiston Workhouse. All new admissions had their own clothes taken away and they were instead given standard workhouse ones to wear – rather like a prison uniform.
Carter had been admitted into the vagrant's ward during one evening and on the following morning was found to have torn his workhouse trousers to pieces. The tramp was either super-strong or the garment was cheap and flimsy – I expect it was the latter! Although Carter might have wished that the fabric hadn't ripped quite so easily, as he was sent to gaol for 14 days.
Next week's stories will include the 47th LRV's glittering annual ball in the Volunteer Hall, the drunken tramp in Liverpool Street, the night soil man in Rainford, a shocking train accident at St Helens Junction and the body that spent a month in St Helens Canal.
We start on the 12th with the annual Parish Church tea party, which was held in the girls' schoolroom adjoining the church. The venues for such occasions were usually decorated with flags, floral garlands and mottoes – which we might call banners or slogans. The ones at the tea party said: "Long live our Pastor" and "Success to our Schools", with the St Helens Newspaper describing the decorations as having been of "an exceedingly elaborate description".
Thomas Waterworth was the agent for Singer sewing machines in St Helens with premises opposite the Raven Hotel. In the St Helens Newspaper on the 14th he was advertising treadle-powered machines for £6 10 shillings, which he claimed had been reduced from £9. "Good news to all who use the needle", he wrote, although it was a still an awful lot of money for most people.
The dangers of coal mining both above and below ground were underlined this week when a total of seven men were killed in separate accidents within the Wigan district. A fatality also occurred in St Helens with the death of Joseph Ellis at Groves Colliery (aka Ravenhead Colliery) on the 16th. The joiner from Liverpool Road left a wife and four children and was crushed to death on the surface between a wheel and a wall.
In the St Helens Petty Sessions on Monday the 16th, Dennis Fay (or Feigh) made his 50th appearance in court. This time he was charged with committing a breach of the peace by shouting and making a great noise in the market place on Saturday night. With people then getting paid on a Saturday, the shops and market stallholders would stay open until late (some till midnight) to try and relieve them of their cash. Drunks like Dennis would be attracted to the well-lit market and then find themselves stuck in the police lock-up until the court opened on Monday.
Often described in the newspapers as a "notorious character" or "old offender", Dennis was bound over by the Bench for one month. However he needed to find sureties to guarantee his good behaviour and so almost certainly would have served the 14-day alternative prison term. I think Dennis was the brother of Thomas Fay, who was mentioned last week and who had around 30 convictions to his name. However as surname spellings varied a lot in the newspapers, it can be hard to be certain.
Thomas Lewis was another who would have spent 36 hours lodged in a police cell. He appeared in the court charged with begging in Bridge Street on Saturday night. A policeman said he had seen the man going into houses (presumably public houses) along with his two children in order to beg. The constable told the court that he had found 1s. 1½d. on Lewis and his hands did not look as if he had worked for some time. However Lewis told the Bench that he was a mason's labourer but had been out of work for two months.
The little money that he had was all gone and not being able to get any work, he said he and his wife and two children had been forced to beg. "I am willing to work if I can get any to do", Lewis pleaded to the Bench. His story may well have been true but he received short shrift from the magistrates. "From your own statement you have been begging for two months", claimed the Chairman (although Lewis did not actually say that), before adding: "You must go to gaol for seven days hard labour". And hard labour in 1871 was very, very hard and involved pointlessly working on a treadmill in Kirkdale Gaol in Liverpool for at least six hours a day.
Roger Tansey would only have spent a single night in the police lock up. He had been arrested in Berrys Lane in Parr on the previous evening while quarrelling with another man. Constable 189 (as he was described) said Tansey behaved "almost like a madman" and threw the other man down and attempted to strike the officer. He was fined ten shillings and costs.
A case that would have been received a lot of public interest was the prosecution of William Gerrard for assault. The 51-year-old was a well-known auctioneer with premises in Bridge Street but who lived in Baldwin Street. Young butcher John Davies – who lived over his own Bridge Street shop – brought the case against Gerrard, accusing the man of punching him in the Globe Hotel. That was probably the one in Ormskirk Street, although there was also a Globe Inn in Hardshaw Street at some point.
We came across Davies last year when his wife accused her husband of threatening to assault her. Elizabeth Davies then told the Bench: "He has beaten me and made me black several times" and claimed he had threatened to cut out her heart with a knife. The unsympathetic Chairman of the Bench said there was insufficient evidence to bind over or fine John Davies, and so dismissed the case.
Now Davies was the complainant and he described calling into the Globe for a whisky on January 11th. The 27-year-old claimed that without any provocation, Gerrard had struck him in the face, tore some artificial flowers out of his hat, put them into his own pocket and then dragged him into another room. "I had a job to get away from him. My arms are all black", added the butcher.
To these comments William Gerrard bizarrely said to Davies: "Were you not dancing before the mirror and shaking hands [with] yourself, and saying “How do you do, Mr. John Davies? You will be a gentleman some day!”" Davies denied that claim, saying it was a falsehood and his shop boy who was with him in the pub corroborated his boss's evidence.
You will not be surprised that Gerrard had his own version of events and his own witnesses – three in fact – who told the court that the auctioneer had not touched the butcher. Martin Sutton was a barman at the Globe and talking about Davies said at one point in the hearing, "I took him to be either drunk or mad, and I think he is mad." With two people swearing in court that an assault had taken place and three swearing that it hadn't, the magistrates dismissed the case as not proved.
I've written a few times about the battle of wits between the police and beerhouse keepers over Sunday trading. The sale of alcohol was banned on the Sabbath until 12:30pm but many illegal sales still took place during the morning. Upon being summoned to court the licensees would normally plead not guilty and put the onus on the police to prove their case.
However when Owen Traynor from Parr appeared in court charged with allowing the sale of alcohol on a Sunday morning, he pleaded guilty. Well he had to really because of his daft sister! She had been positioned outside his beerhouse to keep watch and as soon as she saw a constable walking along the street, the silly woman ran towards the house shouting "Police!!!".
The constable would probably have carried on walking down the road but now his interest was awakened and he found two men inside the house supping beer. The beerhouse or pub was called the Cross Keys and appeared to be on, or near, Atlas Street. Owen Traynor was fined 40 shillings and costs, with the Chairman of the Bench saying Sunday trading had to be stopped, as it was "far more injurious, than the regular day business."
She said Mrs Gordon had failed to mention in her evidence that she was drunk and had called her an "Irish ________" (redacted by the Newspaper). The magistrates said no matter what the other woman had said she had no right to take the law into her own hands and Ellen Bolan was fined 5 shillings and costs.
There was another train accident on the 16th – yes another one! They rarely proved fatal but passengers certainly could have done with safety belts in those days! This crash concerned a passenger train from St Helens to Wigan, which was scheduled to arrive in the latter place at 8:20pm. It didn't because the train ran into a load of coal trucks with considerable force. Half a dozen passengers were badly bruised and some had to be taken to their homes and doctors called.
And the final item this week occurred in the Prescot Petty Sessions on the 17th. That was when Thomas Carter was charged with destroying his clothes while in Whiston Workhouse. All new admissions had their own clothes taken away and they were instead given standard workhouse ones to wear – rather like a prison uniform.
Carter had been admitted into the vagrant's ward during one evening and on the following morning was found to have torn his workhouse trousers to pieces. The tramp was either super-strong or the garment was cheap and flimsy – I expect it was the latter! Although Carter might have wished that the fabric hadn't ripped quite so easily, as he was sent to gaol for 14 days.
Next week's stories will include the 47th LRV's glittering annual ball in the Volunteer Hall, the drunken tramp in Liverpool Street, the night soil man in Rainford, a shocking train accident at St Helens Junction and the body that spent a month in St Helens Canal.
This week's stories include the Bridge Street beggar's hard luck story, the man who went to prison for tearing his trousers, the dispute between the auctioneer and the butcher and the Parr landlord's silly sister who landed her brother in court!
We start on the 12th with the annual Parish Church tea party, which was held in the girls' schoolroom adjoining the church.
The venues for such occasions were usually decorated with flags, floral garlands and mottoes – which we might call banners or slogans.
The ones at the tea party said: "Long live our Pastor" and "Success to our Schools", with the St Helens Newspaper describing the decorations as having been of "an exceedingly elaborate description".
Thomas Waterworth was the agent for Singer sewing machines in St Helens with premises opposite the Raven Hotel.
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 14th he was advertising treadle-powered machines for £6 10 shillings, which he claimed had been reduced from £9.
"Good news to all who use the needle", he wrote, although it was a still an awful lot of money for most people.
The dangers of coal mining both above and below ground were underlined this week when a total of seven men were killed in separate accidents within the Wigan district.
A fatality also occurred in St Helens with the death of Joseph Ellis at Groves Colliery (aka Ravenhead Colliery) on the 16th.
The joiner from Liverpool Road left a wife and four children and was crushed to death on the surface between a wheel and a wall.
In the St Helens Petty Sessions on Monday the 16th, Dennis Fay (or Feigh) made his 50th appearance in court.
This time he was charged with committing a breach of the peace by shouting and making a great noise in the market place on Saturday night.
With people then getting paid on a Saturday, the shops and market stallholders would stay open until late (some till midnight) to try and relieve them of their cash.
Drunks like Dennis would be attracted to the well-lit market and then find themselves stuck in the police lock-up until the court opened on Monday.
Often described in the newspapers as a "notorious character" or "old offender", Dennis was bound over by the Bench for one month.
However he needed to find sureties to guarantee his good behaviour and so almost certainly would have served the 14-day alternative prison term.
I think Dennis was the brother of Thomas Fay, who was mentioned last week and who had around 30 convictions to his name.
However as surname spellings varied a lot in the newspapers, it can be hard to be certain.
Thomas Lewis was another who would have spent 36 hours lodged in a police cell.
He appeared in the court charged with begging in Bridge Street on Saturday night.
A policeman said he had seen the man going into houses (presumably public houses) along with his two children in order to beg.
The constable told the court that he had found 1s. 1½d. on Lewis and his hands did not look as if he had worked for some time.
However Lewis told the Bench that he was a mason's labourer but had been out of work for two months.
The little money that he had was all gone and not being able to get any work, he said he and his wife and two children had been forced to beg.
"I am willing to work if I can get any to do", Lewis pleaded to the Bench. His story may well have been true but he received short shrift from the magistrates.
"From your own statement you have been begging for two months", claimed the Chairman (although Lewis did not actually say that), before adding: "You must go to gaol for seven days hard labour".
And hard labour in 1871 was very, very hard and involved pointlessly working on a treadmill in Kirkdale Gaol in Liverpool for at least six hours a day.
Roger Tansey would only have spent a single night in the police lock up. He had been arrested in Berrys Lane in Parr on the previous evening while quarrelling with another man.
Constable 189 (as he was described) said Tansey behaved "almost like a madman" and threw the other man down and attempted to strike the officer. He was fined ten shillings and costs.
A case that would have been received a lot of public interest was the prosecution of William Gerrard for assault.
The 51-year-old was a well-known auctioneer with premises in Bridge Street but who lived in Baldwin Street.
Young butcher John Davies – who lived over his own Bridge Street shop – brought the case against Gerrard, accusing the man of punching him in the Globe Hotel.
That was probably the one in Ormskirk Street, although there was also a Globe Inn in Hardshaw Street at some point.
We came across Davies last year when his wife accused her husband of threatening to assault her.
Elizabeth Davies then told the Bench: "He has beaten me and made me black several times" and claimed he had threatened to cut out her heart with a knife.
The unsympathetic Chairman of the Bench said there was insufficient evidence to bind over or fine John Davies, and so dismissed the case.
Now Davies was the complainant and he described calling into the Globe for a whisky on January 11th.
The 27-year-old claimed that without any provocation, Gerrard had struck him in the face, tore some artificial flowers out of his hat, put them into his own pocket and then dragged him into another room.
"I had a job to get away from him. My arms are all black", added the butcher.
To these comments William Gerrard bizarrely said to Davies:
"Were you not dancing before the mirror and shaking hands [with] yourself, and saying “How do you do, Mr. John Davies? You will be a gentleman some day!”"
Davies denied that claim, saying it was a falsehood and his shop boy who was with him in the pub corroborated his boss's evidence.
You will not be surprised that Gerrard had his own version of events and his own witnesses – three in fact – who told the court that the auctioneer had not touched the butcher.
Martin Sutton was a barman at the Globe and talking about Davies said at one point in the hearing, "I took him to be either drunk or mad, and I think he is mad."
With two people swearing in court that an assault had taken place and three swearing that it hadn't, the magistrates dismissed the case as not proved.
I've written a few times about the battle of wits between the police and beerhouse keepers over Sunday trading.
The sale of alcohol was banned on the Sabbath until 12:30pm but many illegal sales still took place during the morning.
Upon being summoned to court the licensees would normally plead not guilty and put the onus on the police to prove their case.
However when Owen Traynor from Parr appeared in court charged with allowing the sale of alcohol on a Sunday morning, he pleaded guilty.
Well he had to really because of his daft sister!
She had been positioned outside his beerhouse to keep watch and as soon as she saw a constable walking along the street, the silly woman ran towards the house shouting "Police!!!".
The constable would probably have carried on walking down the road but now his interest was awakened and he found two men inside the house supping beer.
The beerhouse or pub was called the Cross Keys and appeared to be on, or near, Atlas Street.
Owen Traynor was fined 40 shillings and costs, with the Chairman of the Bench saying Sunday trading had to be stopped, as it was "far more injurious, than the regular day business."
"Women's Squabbles" was a regular heading to reports of female disputes in the St Helens Newspaper. Oddly there was no equivalent for men!
Usually it was the good – and not so good – ladies of Parr who had engaged in fisticuffs but in this case in the Petty Sessions it was the fighting women of Sutton.
Unusually Ellen Bolan pleaded guilty to the charge of assaulting Mary Gordon in a Sutton pub but still accused the latter of telling lies in court.
She said Mrs Gordon had failed to mention in her evidence that she was drunk and had called her an "Irish ________" (redacted by the Newspaper).
The magistrates said no matter what the other woman had said she had no right to take the law into her own hands and Ellen Bolan was fined 5 shillings and costs.
There was another train accident on the 16th – yes another one!
They rarely proved fatal but passengers certainly could have done with safety belts in those days!
This crash concerned a passenger train from St Helens to Wigan, which was scheduled to arrive in the latter place at 8:20pm.
It didn't because the train ran into a load of coal trucks with considerable force.
Half a dozen passengers were badly bruised and some had to be taken to their homes and doctors called.
And the final item this week occurred in the Prescot Petty Sessions on the 17th.
That was when Thomas Carter was charged with destroying his clothes while in Whiston Workhouse.
All new admissions had their own clothes taken away and they were instead given standard workhouse ones to wear – rather like a prison uniform.
Carter had been admitted into the vagrant's ward during one evening and on the following morning was found to have torn his workhouse trousers to pieces.
The tramp was either super-strong or the garment was cheap and flimsy – I expect it was the latter!
Although Carter might have wished that the fabric hadn't ripped quite so easily, as he was sent to gaol for 14 days.
Next week's stories will include the 47th LRV's glittering annual ball in the Volunteer Hall, the drunken tramp in Liverpool Street, the night soil man in Rainford, a shocking train accident at St Helens Junction and the body that spent a month in St Helens Canal.
We start on the 12th with the annual Parish Church tea party, which was held in the girls' schoolroom adjoining the church.
The venues for such occasions were usually decorated with flags, floral garlands and mottoes – which we might call banners or slogans.
The ones at the tea party said: "Long live our Pastor" and "Success to our Schools", with the St Helens Newspaper describing the decorations as having been of "an exceedingly elaborate description".
Thomas Waterworth was the agent for Singer sewing machines in St Helens with premises opposite the Raven Hotel.
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 14th he was advertising treadle-powered machines for £6 10 shillings, which he claimed had been reduced from £9.
"Good news to all who use the needle", he wrote, although it was a still an awful lot of money for most people.
The dangers of coal mining both above and below ground were underlined this week when a total of seven men were killed in separate accidents within the Wigan district.
A fatality also occurred in St Helens with the death of Joseph Ellis at Groves Colliery (aka Ravenhead Colliery) on the 16th.
The joiner from Liverpool Road left a wife and four children and was crushed to death on the surface between a wheel and a wall.
In the St Helens Petty Sessions on Monday the 16th, Dennis Fay (or Feigh) made his 50th appearance in court.
This time he was charged with committing a breach of the peace by shouting and making a great noise in the market place on Saturday night.
With people then getting paid on a Saturday, the shops and market stallholders would stay open until late (some till midnight) to try and relieve them of their cash.
Drunks like Dennis would be attracted to the well-lit market and then find themselves stuck in the police lock-up until the court opened on Monday.
Often described in the newspapers as a "notorious character" or "old offender", Dennis was bound over by the Bench for one month.
However he needed to find sureties to guarantee his good behaviour and so almost certainly would have served the 14-day alternative prison term.
I think Dennis was the brother of Thomas Fay, who was mentioned last week and who had around 30 convictions to his name.
However as surname spellings varied a lot in the newspapers, it can be hard to be certain.
Thomas Lewis was another who would have spent 36 hours lodged in a police cell.
He appeared in the court charged with begging in Bridge Street on Saturday night.
A policeman said he had seen the man going into houses (presumably public houses) along with his two children in order to beg.
The constable told the court that he had found 1s. 1½d. on Lewis and his hands did not look as if he had worked for some time.
However Lewis told the Bench that he was a mason's labourer but had been out of work for two months.
The little money that he had was all gone and not being able to get any work, he said he and his wife and two children had been forced to beg.
"I am willing to work if I can get any to do", Lewis pleaded to the Bench. His story may well have been true but he received short shrift from the magistrates.
"From your own statement you have been begging for two months", claimed the Chairman (although Lewis did not actually say that), before adding: "You must go to gaol for seven days hard labour".
And hard labour in 1871 was very, very hard and involved pointlessly working on a treadmill in Kirkdale Gaol in Liverpool for at least six hours a day.
Roger Tansey would only have spent a single night in the police lock up. He had been arrested in Berrys Lane in Parr on the previous evening while quarrelling with another man.
Constable 189 (as he was described) said Tansey behaved "almost like a madman" and threw the other man down and attempted to strike the officer. He was fined ten shillings and costs.
A case that would have been received a lot of public interest was the prosecution of William Gerrard for assault.
The 51-year-old was a well-known auctioneer with premises in Bridge Street but who lived in Baldwin Street.
Young butcher John Davies – who lived over his own Bridge Street shop – brought the case against Gerrard, accusing the man of punching him in the Globe Hotel.
That was probably the one in Ormskirk Street, although there was also a Globe Inn in Hardshaw Street at some point.
We came across Davies last year when his wife accused her husband of threatening to assault her.
Elizabeth Davies then told the Bench: "He has beaten me and made me black several times" and claimed he had threatened to cut out her heart with a knife.
The unsympathetic Chairman of the Bench said there was insufficient evidence to bind over or fine John Davies, and so dismissed the case.
Now Davies was the complainant and he described calling into the Globe for a whisky on January 11th.
The 27-year-old claimed that without any provocation, Gerrard had struck him in the face, tore some artificial flowers out of his hat, put them into his own pocket and then dragged him into another room.
"I had a job to get away from him. My arms are all black", added the butcher.
To these comments William Gerrard bizarrely said to Davies:
"Were you not dancing before the mirror and shaking hands [with] yourself, and saying “How do you do, Mr. John Davies? You will be a gentleman some day!”"
Davies denied that claim, saying it was a falsehood and his shop boy who was with him in the pub corroborated his boss's evidence.
You will not be surprised that Gerrard had his own version of events and his own witnesses – three in fact – who told the court that the auctioneer had not touched the butcher.
Martin Sutton was a barman at the Globe and talking about Davies said at one point in the hearing, "I took him to be either drunk or mad, and I think he is mad."
With two people swearing in court that an assault had taken place and three swearing that it hadn't, the magistrates dismissed the case as not proved.
I've written a few times about the battle of wits between the police and beerhouse keepers over Sunday trading.
The sale of alcohol was banned on the Sabbath until 12:30pm but many illegal sales still took place during the morning.
Upon being summoned to court the licensees would normally plead not guilty and put the onus on the police to prove their case.
However when Owen Traynor from Parr appeared in court charged with allowing the sale of alcohol on a Sunday morning, he pleaded guilty.
Well he had to really because of his daft sister!
She had been positioned outside his beerhouse to keep watch and as soon as she saw a constable walking along the street, the silly woman ran towards the house shouting "Police!!!".
The constable would probably have carried on walking down the road but now his interest was awakened and he found two men inside the house supping beer.
The beerhouse or pub was called the Cross Keys and appeared to be on, or near, Atlas Street.
Owen Traynor was fined 40 shillings and costs, with the Chairman of the Bench saying Sunday trading had to be stopped, as it was "far more injurious, than the regular day business."
Usually it was the good – and not so good – ladies of Parr who had engaged in fisticuffs but in this case in the Petty Sessions it was the fighting women of Sutton.
Unusually Ellen Bolan pleaded guilty to the charge of assaulting Mary Gordon in a Sutton pub but still accused the latter of telling lies in court.
She said Mrs Gordon had failed to mention in her evidence that she was drunk and had called her an "Irish ________" (redacted by the Newspaper).
The magistrates said no matter what the other woman had said she had no right to take the law into her own hands and Ellen Bolan was fined 5 shillings and costs.
There was another train accident on the 16th – yes another one!
They rarely proved fatal but passengers certainly could have done with safety belts in those days!
This crash concerned a passenger train from St Helens to Wigan, which was scheduled to arrive in the latter place at 8:20pm.
It didn't because the train ran into a load of coal trucks with considerable force.
Half a dozen passengers were badly bruised and some had to be taken to their homes and doctors called.
And the final item this week occurred in the Prescot Petty Sessions on the 17th.
That was when Thomas Carter was charged with destroying his clothes while in Whiston Workhouse.
All new admissions had their own clothes taken away and they were instead given standard workhouse ones to wear – rather like a prison uniform.
Carter had been admitted into the vagrant's ward during one evening and on the following morning was found to have torn his workhouse trousers to pieces.
The tramp was either super-strong or the garment was cheap and flimsy – I expect it was the latter!
Although Carter might have wished that the fabric hadn't ripped quite so easily, as he was sent to gaol for 14 days.
Next week's stories will include the 47th LRV's glittering annual ball in the Volunteer Hall, the drunken tramp in Liverpool Street, the night soil man in Rainford, a shocking train accident at St Helens Junction and the body that spent a month in St Helens Canal.