150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 15 - 21 SEPTEMBER 1875
This week's many stories include the abominable offence committed in the stables of Rainford's Derby Arms, the man who wandered into a coal mine and began playing at being an engineer, the almighty row in Phythian Street, the attempted rape of a 9-year-old girl and the Smithy Brow row in which the contents of a bedroom chamber pot were poured over a woman's head.
We begin on the 15th when a special meeting of St Helens Council was held in which a decision was made to purchase the gas works for the sum of £137,000. This would be the start of the council placing local utilities and transport under its municipal control.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 15th a farm worker called William Pye and a man called Francis Moran – who was described as a deaf and dumb travelling hawker – were charged with having committed an unnatural offence at Rainford. The St Helens Newspaper in its headline to its report described it as an "abominable offence".
The euphemistic terms unnatural or abominable could have three meanings. The two men could have been engaged in gay sex, bestiality or paedophilia. The latter was unlikely in this case because if a child had been involved, the charge would normally say something like "committing an unnatural offence against a ten-year-old girl".
The two men had been drinking in the Derby Arms in Rainford and Sergeant Massey had seen them go outside and walk in the direction of the stables. That raised the possibility of bestiality and no further clues were revealed as to the goings on in the Newspaper's fairly brief report, other than stating that the policeman had caught the men "committing the offence charged against them".
The case was remanded so that an official from the Liverpool Deaf and Dumb Institution could attend a subsequent hearing in order to translate Moran's evidence. That suggests that no equivalent organisation then existed in St Helens. Upon the case returning to court, the charge was heard in the magistrates' private room because of its "disgusting nature", as the Newspaper put it. Ultimately, it was referred to the Liverpool Quarter Sessions at Kirkdale (pictured above) where sentences of five years imprisonment were imposed on both men.
Although the newspapers were shy of revealing what the men had actually been doing in the stables, the original court summaries of trials accessible via Findmypast were not. These were never intended for public consumption and so could state the actual offences that the two men faced, which were:
"Francis Moran is charged with having, at Rainford, on the 14th September, 1875, unlawfully attempted to commit the abominable crime of buggery with one William Pye. William Pye is charged with attempting to commit the said crime of buggery, by consenting, aiding, and abetting the said Francis Moran to commit the said offence."
But once in a while the newspapers were surprisingly open about sexual matters and the Newspaper could not have been clearer about what had happened to poor little Ann Rigby in another case. They wrote that when the nine-year-old had entered Patrick Sharkey's small rag and sweet shop in Copperas Street in Greenbank, the 75-year-old had thrown the girl down upon a heap of rags and attempted to rape her.
The girl from Bold Street had entered the shop at 8pm to exchange some rags for "toffy", as it was spelt in the report. When Patrick Sharkey appeared in court in St Helens this week charged with the attempted rape he was committed to take his trial at the Quarter Sessions at Kirkdale. In November, Sharkey was found guilty of "having unlawfully attempted to ravish one Ann Rigby, a girl under the age of twelve years" and was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment. Patrick Sharkey's age was then stated as being 78 and I can assume his advanced years had some bearing on what appears to have been a light sentence.
The Derby Arms in Rainford is also featured in my next item, as the inquest on Robert Ashurst took place there on the 16th. The man had been a miller and known as "Dusty Bob" but recently had been employed as a labourer. He was known to be addicted to drink, as it was put, and on the evening of his death had been visiting several pubs in Rainford.
A man called Woods had seen Dusty Bob walking on the railway and had warned him to beware of trains. About an hour later he was found dead on the line at Valentine's Bridge between Rainford Village station and the Junction, with the back of his head having been smashed in, presumably, after being hit by an engine.
There was another of those strange anomalies in St Helens courts this week when William Scott appeared in court. He was charged with being found on the premises of the Sankey Brook Colliery Company in Parr (off Redgate Drive) for an unlawful purpose. Usually that related to being discovered sleeping in some outbuilding and the penalty was invariably a couple of weeks in prison.
But Scott had been doing something much more serious. The man with no connections with the coal mine had wandered into the engine room and started playing with the engine that hauled the pit cage up and down the shaft. The engineer or winder had temporarily left his post to talk to another man and while doing so was horrified to see the cage moving upwards, seemingly on its own accord.
Upon dashing back to the engine room the engineer found William Scott handling the controls and upon asking him what he was doing, he replied: "Oh, I thought I should fetch some of you." Fortunately, no men were down the pit at the time and so no one needed "fetching".
The job of bringing men up and taking them down the pit shaft was one that had to be accomplished with great care and there were many deaths when mistakes were made. But the magistrates despite stating that it had been a serious offence, decided to let Scott off upon him promising not to go near the colliery again and paying the costs of the proceedings, which came to 30 shillings.
Two women neighbours in Smithy Brow, around Parr Street, appeared in court with one accusing the other of using defamatory language towards her. Agnes McKearnan claimed to be the victim of the fracas telling the court that Alice Moran had at 10:50pm on the night in question been using bad language outside her house. At 2 am Mrs Moran returned and was said to have disturbed the whole of the neighbours by using "the most violent language".
But the defence case was that the language used by Mrs McKearnan had been just as bad and from her bedroom window she had even "emptied the contents of the night utensil" over Mrs Moran. That, presumably, was the liquid contents of a po, or chamber pot. I think if someone had poured their pee over my head, I might well have used some defamatory language in return! But Alice Moran was seen as more culpable for what had happened and was bound over to keep the peace.
There had been another almighty row in Phythian Street in Greenbank and the residents of six adjoining houses all trooped into court. Only three lots had been directly involved in the fracas but the complainants and defendants had brought their neighbours along as witnesses. It was clearly another dispute that had been ongoing for some time and only the final chapter was discussed in court.
That had kicked off on one evening at 8pm when Mary Simpkin and Margaret Alton had been passing each other in the street and according to Mrs Simpkin, Mrs Alton had bashed her with her shopping basket. This, the woman strongly denied, claiming the contact had been accidental.
When a drunken Edward Simpkin heard of his wife being hit he was raving mad and Mrs Alton claimed that he had abused her several times during the night. She said he had called her vile names and had told her to send her "tally man" [husband] and her boys out and he would fight them all. Later he was accused of kicking her door in. Other claims were made as well but the magistrates considered each party to be as bad as each other and ordered them all to find sureties to keep the peace.
And finally, at 5am on the 18th the body of a boy called John Barton was discovered floating in the canal near Parr Mill. The 10-year old had been missing since the previous afternoon after playing with other boys by the canal near his home in Park Road. John had fallen into the water but couldn't be saved. The St Helens Canal could be deep and wide and despite the section where John had entered having been repeatedly dragged, his body could not be recovered until the following morning.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the intolerable nuisance in Victoria Passage, the strange death of a well-known St Helens builder, the formation of a shorthand writers association and the brainless theft from a Bridge Street beerhouse.
We begin on the 15th when a special meeting of St Helens Council was held in which a decision was made to purchase the gas works for the sum of £137,000. This would be the start of the council placing local utilities and transport under its municipal control.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 15th a farm worker called William Pye and a man called Francis Moran – who was described as a deaf and dumb travelling hawker – were charged with having committed an unnatural offence at Rainford. The St Helens Newspaper in its headline to its report described it as an "abominable offence".
The euphemistic terms unnatural or abominable could have three meanings. The two men could have been engaged in gay sex, bestiality or paedophilia. The latter was unlikely in this case because if a child had been involved, the charge would normally say something like "committing an unnatural offence against a ten-year-old girl".
The two men had been drinking in the Derby Arms in Rainford and Sergeant Massey had seen them go outside and walk in the direction of the stables. That raised the possibility of bestiality and no further clues were revealed as to the goings on in the Newspaper's fairly brief report, other than stating that the policeman had caught the men "committing the offence charged against them".
Although the newspapers were shy of revealing what the men had actually been doing in the stables, the original court summaries of trials accessible via Findmypast were not. These were never intended for public consumption and so could state the actual offences that the two men faced, which were:
"Francis Moran is charged with having, at Rainford, on the 14th September, 1875, unlawfully attempted to commit the abominable crime of buggery with one William Pye. William Pye is charged with attempting to commit the said crime of buggery, by consenting, aiding, and abetting the said Francis Moran to commit the said offence."
But once in a while the newspapers were surprisingly open about sexual matters and the Newspaper could not have been clearer about what had happened to poor little Ann Rigby in another case. They wrote that when the nine-year-old had entered Patrick Sharkey's small rag and sweet shop in Copperas Street in Greenbank, the 75-year-old had thrown the girl down upon a heap of rags and attempted to rape her.
The girl from Bold Street had entered the shop at 8pm to exchange some rags for "toffy", as it was spelt in the report. When Patrick Sharkey appeared in court in St Helens this week charged with the attempted rape he was committed to take his trial at the Quarter Sessions at Kirkdale. In November, Sharkey was found guilty of "having unlawfully attempted to ravish one Ann Rigby, a girl under the age of twelve years" and was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment. Patrick Sharkey's age was then stated as being 78 and I can assume his advanced years had some bearing on what appears to have been a light sentence.
The Derby Arms in Rainford is also featured in my next item, as the inquest on Robert Ashurst took place there on the 16th. The man had been a miller and known as "Dusty Bob" but recently had been employed as a labourer. He was known to be addicted to drink, as it was put, and on the evening of his death had been visiting several pubs in Rainford.
A man called Woods had seen Dusty Bob walking on the railway and had warned him to beware of trains. About an hour later he was found dead on the line at Valentine's Bridge between Rainford Village station and the Junction, with the back of his head having been smashed in, presumably, after being hit by an engine.
There was another of those strange anomalies in St Helens courts this week when William Scott appeared in court. He was charged with being found on the premises of the Sankey Brook Colliery Company in Parr (off Redgate Drive) for an unlawful purpose. Usually that related to being discovered sleeping in some outbuilding and the penalty was invariably a couple of weeks in prison.
But Scott had been doing something much more serious. The man with no connections with the coal mine had wandered into the engine room and started playing with the engine that hauled the pit cage up and down the shaft. The engineer or winder had temporarily left his post to talk to another man and while doing so was horrified to see the cage moving upwards, seemingly on its own accord.
Upon dashing back to the engine room the engineer found William Scott handling the controls and upon asking him what he was doing, he replied: "Oh, I thought I should fetch some of you." Fortunately, no men were down the pit at the time and so no one needed "fetching".
The job of bringing men up and taking them down the pit shaft was one that had to be accomplished with great care and there were many deaths when mistakes were made. But the magistrates despite stating that it had been a serious offence, decided to let Scott off upon him promising not to go near the colliery again and paying the costs of the proceedings, which came to 30 shillings.
Two women neighbours in Smithy Brow, around Parr Street, appeared in court with one accusing the other of using defamatory language towards her. Agnes McKearnan claimed to be the victim of the fracas telling the court that Alice Moran had at 10:50pm on the night in question been using bad language outside her house. At 2 am Mrs Moran returned and was said to have disturbed the whole of the neighbours by using "the most violent language".
But the defence case was that the language used by Mrs McKearnan had been just as bad and from her bedroom window she had even "emptied the contents of the night utensil" over Mrs Moran. That, presumably, was the liquid contents of a po, or chamber pot. I think if someone had poured their pee over my head, I might well have used some defamatory language in return! But Alice Moran was seen as more culpable for what had happened and was bound over to keep the peace.
There had been another almighty row in Phythian Street in Greenbank and the residents of six adjoining houses all trooped into court. Only three lots had been directly involved in the fracas but the complainants and defendants had brought their neighbours along as witnesses. It was clearly another dispute that had been ongoing for some time and only the final chapter was discussed in court.
That had kicked off on one evening at 8pm when Mary Simpkin and Margaret Alton had been passing each other in the street and according to Mrs Simpkin, Mrs Alton had bashed her with her shopping basket. This, the woman strongly denied, claiming the contact had been accidental.
When a drunken Edward Simpkin heard of his wife being hit he was raving mad and Mrs Alton claimed that he had abused her several times during the night. She said he had called her vile names and had told her to send her "tally man" [husband] and her boys out and he would fight them all. Later he was accused of kicking her door in. Other claims were made as well but the magistrates considered each party to be as bad as each other and ordered them all to find sureties to keep the peace.
And finally, at 5am on the 18th the body of a boy called John Barton was discovered floating in the canal near Parr Mill. The 10-year old had been missing since the previous afternoon after playing with other boys by the canal near his home in Park Road. John had fallen into the water but couldn't be saved. The St Helens Canal could be deep and wide and despite the section where John had entered having been repeatedly dragged, his body could not be recovered until the following morning.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the intolerable nuisance in Victoria Passage, the strange death of a well-known St Helens builder, the formation of a shorthand writers association and the brainless theft from a Bridge Street beerhouse.
This week's many stories include the abominable offence committed in the stables of Rainford's Derby Arms, the man who wandered into a coal mine and began playing at being an engineer, the almighty row in Phythian Street, the attempted rape of a 9-year-old girl and the Smithy Brow row in which the contents of a bedroom chamber pot were poured over a woman's head.
We begin on the 15th when a special meeting of St Helens Council was held in which a decision was made to purchase the gas works for the sum of £137,000.
This would be the start of the council placing local utilities and transport under its municipal control.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 15th a farm worker called William Pye and a man called Francis Moran – who was described as a deaf and dumb travelling hawker – were charged with having committed an unnatural offence at Rainford.
The St Helens Newspaper in its headline to its report described it as an "abominable offence".
The euphemistic terms unnatural or abominable could have three meanings. The two men could have been engaged in gay sex, bestiality or paedophilia.
The latter was unlikely in this case because if a child had been involved, the charge would normally say something like "committing an unnatural offence against a ten-year-old girl".
The two men had been drinking in the Derby Arms in Rainford and Sergeant Massey had seen them go outside and walk in the direction of the stables.
That raised the possibility of bestiality and no further clues were revealed as to the goings on in the Newspaper's fairly brief report, other than stating that the policeman had caught the men "committing the offence charged against them".
The case was remanded so that an official from the Liverpool Deaf and Dumb Institution could attend a subsequent hearing in order to translate Moran's evidence. That suggests that no equivalent organisation then existed in St Helens.
Upon the case returning to court, the charge was heard in the magistrates' private room because of its "disgusting nature", as the Newspaper put it.
Ultimately, it was referred to the Liverpool Quarter Sessions at Kirkdale where sentences of five years imprisonment were imposed on both men.
Although the newspapers were shy of revealing what the men had actually been doing in the stables, the original court summaries of trials accessible via Findmypast were not.
These were never intended for public consumption and so could state the actual offences that the two men faced, which were:
"Francis Moran is charged with having, at Rainford, on the 14th September, 1875, unlawfully attempted to commit the abominable crime of buggery with one William Pye.
"William Pye is charged with attempting to commit the said crime of buggery, by consenting, aiding, and abetting the said Francis Moran to commit the said offence."
But once in a while the newspapers were surprisingly open about sexual matters and the Newspaper could not have been clearer about what had happened to poor little Ann Rigby in another case.
They wrote that when the nine-year-old had entered Patrick Sharkey's small rag and sweet shop in Copperas Street in Greenbank, the 75-year-old had thrown the girl down upon a heap of rags and attempted to rape her.
The girl from Bold Street had entered the shop at 8pm to exchange some rags for "toffy", as it was spelt in the report.
When Patrick Sharkey appeared in court in St Helens this week charged with the attempted rape he was committed to take his trial at the Quarter Sessions at Kirkdale (pictured above).
In November, Sharkey was found guilty of "having unlawfully attempted to ravish one Ann Rigby, a girl under the age of twelve years" and was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment.
Patrick Sharkey's age was then stated as being 78 and I can assume his advanced years had some bearing on what appears to have been a light sentence.
The Derby Arms in Rainford is also featured in my next item, as the inquest on Robert Ashurst took place there on the 16th.
The man had been a miller and known as "Dusty Bob" but recently had been employed as a labourer.
He was known to be addicted to drink, as it was put, and on the evening of his death had been visiting several pubs in Rainford.
A man called Woods had seen Dusty Bob walking on the railway and had warned him to beware of trains.
About an hour later he was found dead on the line at Valentine's Bridge between Rainford Village station and the Junction, with the back of his head having been smashed in, presumably, after being hit by an engine.
There was another of those strange anomalies in St Helens courts this week when William Scott appeared in court.
He was charged with being found on the premises of the Sankey Brook Colliery Company in Parr (off Redgate Drive) for an unlawful purpose.
Usually that related to being discovered sleeping in some outbuilding and the penalty was invariably a couple of weeks in prison.
But Scott had been doing something much more serious. The man with no connections with the coal mine had wandered into the engine room and started playing with the engine that hauled the pit cage up and down the shaft.
The engineer or winder had temporarily left his post to talk to another man and while doing so was horrified to see the cage moving upwards, seemingly on its own accord.
Upon dashing back to the engine room the engineer found William Scott handling the controls and upon asking him what he was doing, he replied: "Oh, I thought I should fetch some of you."
Fortunately, no men were down the pit at the time and so no one needed "fetching".
The job of bringing men up and taking them down the pit shaft was one that had to be accomplished with great care and there were many deaths when mistakes were made.
But the magistrates despite stating that it had been a serious offence, decided to let Scott off upon him promising not to go near the colliery again and paying the costs of the proceedings, which came to 30 shillings.
Two women neighbours in Smithy Brow, around Parr Street, appeared in court with one accusing the other of using defamatory language towards her.
Agnes McKearnan claimed to be the victim of the fracas telling the court that Alice Moran had at 10:50pm on the night in question been using bad language outside her house.
At 2 am Mrs Moran returned and was said to have disturbed the whole of the neighbours by using "the most violent language".
But the defence case was that the language used by Mrs McKearnan had been just as bad and from her bedroom window she had even "emptied the contents of the night utensil" over Mrs Moran.
That, presumably, was the liquid contents of a po, or chamber pot. I think if someone had poured their pee over my head, I might well have used some defamatory language in return!
But Alice Moran was seen as more culpable for what had happened and was bound over to keep the peace.
There had been another almighty row in Phythian Street in Greenbank and the residents of six adjoining houses all trooped into court.
Only three lots had been directly involved in the fracas but the complainants and defendants had brought their neighbours along as witnesses.
It was clearly another dispute that had been ongoing for some time and only the final chapter was discussed in court.
That had kicked off on one evening at 8pm when Mary Simpkin and Margaret Alton had been passing each other in the street and according to Mrs Simpkin, Mrs Alton had bashed her with her shopping basket.
This, the woman strongly denied, claiming the contact had been accidental.
When a drunken Edward Simpkin heard of his wife being hit he was raving mad and Mrs Alton claimed that he had abused her several times during the night.
She said he had called her vile names and had told her to send her "tally man" [husband] and her boys out and he would fight them all. Later he was accused of kicking her door in.
Other claims were made as well but the magistrates considered each party to be as bad as each other and ordered them all to find sureties to keep the peace.
And finally, at 5am on the 18th the body of a boy called John Barton was discovered floating in the canal near Parr Mill.
The 10-year old had been missing since the previous afternoon after playing with other boys by the canal near his home in Park Road.
John had fallen into the water but couldn't be saved. The St Helens Canal could be deep and wide and despite the section where John had entered having been repeatedly dragged, his body could not be recovered until the following morning.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the intolerable nuisance in Victoria Passage, the strange death of a well-known St Helens builder, the formation of a shorthand writers association and the brainless theft from a Bridge Street beerhouse.
We begin on the 15th when a special meeting of St Helens Council was held in which a decision was made to purchase the gas works for the sum of £137,000.
This would be the start of the council placing local utilities and transport under its municipal control.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 15th a farm worker called William Pye and a man called Francis Moran – who was described as a deaf and dumb travelling hawker – were charged with having committed an unnatural offence at Rainford.
The St Helens Newspaper in its headline to its report described it as an "abominable offence".
The euphemistic terms unnatural or abominable could have three meanings. The two men could have been engaged in gay sex, bestiality or paedophilia.
The latter was unlikely in this case because if a child had been involved, the charge would normally say something like "committing an unnatural offence against a ten-year-old girl".
The two men had been drinking in the Derby Arms in Rainford and Sergeant Massey had seen them go outside and walk in the direction of the stables.
That raised the possibility of bestiality and no further clues were revealed as to the goings on in the Newspaper's fairly brief report, other than stating that the policeman had caught the men "committing the offence charged against them".
The case was remanded so that an official from the Liverpool Deaf and Dumb Institution could attend a subsequent hearing in order to translate Moran's evidence. That suggests that no equivalent organisation then existed in St Helens.
Upon the case returning to court, the charge was heard in the magistrates' private room because of its "disgusting nature", as the Newspaper put it.
Ultimately, it was referred to the Liverpool Quarter Sessions at Kirkdale where sentences of five years imprisonment were imposed on both men.
Although the newspapers were shy of revealing what the men had actually been doing in the stables, the original court summaries of trials accessible via Findmypast were not.
These were never intended for public consumption and so could state the actual offences that the two men faced, which were:
"Francis Moran is charged with having, at Rainford, on the 14th September, 1875, unlawfully attempted to commit the abominable crime of buggery with one William Pye.
"William Pye is charged with attempting to commit the said crime of buggery, by consenting, aiding, and abetting the said Francis Moran to commit the said offence."
But once in a while the newspapers were surprisingly open about sexual matters and the Newspaper could not have been clearer about what had happened to poor little Ann Rigby in another case.
They wrote that when the nine-year-old had entered Patrick Sharkey's small rag and sweet shop in Copperas Street in Greenbank, the 75-year-old had thrown the girl down upon a heap of rags and attempted to rape her.
The girl from Bold Street had entered the shop at 8pm to exchange some rags for "toffy", as it was spelt in the report.
In November, Sharkey was found guilty of "having unlawfully attempted to ravish one Ann Rigby, a girl under the age of twelve years" and was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment.
Patrick Sharkey's age was then stated as being 78 and I can assume his advanced years had some bearing on what appears to have been a light sentence.
The Derby Arms in Rainford is also featured in my next item, as the inquest on Robert Ashurst took place there on the 16th.
The man had been a miller and known as "Dusty Bob" but recently had been employed as a labourer.
He was known to be addicted to drink, as it was put, and on the evening of his death had been visiting several pubs in Rainford.
A man called Woods had seen Dusty Bob walking on the railway and had warned him to beware of trains.
About an hour later he was found dead on the line at Valentine's Bridge between Rainford Village station and the Junction, with the back of his head having been smashed in, presumably, after being hit by an engine.
There was another of those strange anomalies in St Helens courts this week when William Scott appeared in court.
He was charged with being found on the premises of the Sankey Brook Colliery Company in Parr (off Redgate Drive) for an unlawful purpose.
Usually that related to being discovered sleeping in some outbuilding and the penalty was invariably a couple of weeks in prison.
But Scott had been doing something much more serious. The man with no connections with the coal mine had wandered into the engine room and started playing with the engine that hauled the pit cage up and down the shaft.
The engineer or winder had temporarily left his post to talk to another man and while doing so was horrified to see the cage moving upwards, seemingly on its own accord.
Upon dashing back to the engine room the engineer found William Scott handling the controls and upon asking him what he was doing, he replied: "Oh, I thought I should fetch some of you."
Fortunately, no men were down the pit at the time and so no one needed "fetching".
The job of bringing men up and taking them down the pit shaft was one that had to be accomplished with great care and there were many deaths when mistakes were made.
But the magistrates despite stating that it had been a serious offence, decided to let Scott off upon him promising not to go near the colliery again and paying the costs of the proceedings, which came to 30 shillings.
Two women neighbours in Smithy Brow, around Parr Street, appeared in court with one accusing the other of using defamatory language towards her.
Agnes McKearnan claimed to be the victim of the fracas telling the court that Alice Moran had at 10:50pm on the night in question been using bad language outside her house.
At 2 am Mrs Moran returned and was said to have disturbed the whole of the neighbours by using "the most violent language".
But the defence case was that the language used by Mrs McKearnan had been just as bad and from her bedroom window she had even "emptied the contents of the night utensil" over Mrs Moran.
That, presumably, was the liquid contents of a po, or chamber pot. I think if someone had poured their pee over my head, I might well have used some defamatory language in return!
But Alice Moran was seen as more culpable for what had happened and was bound over to keep the peace.
There had been another almighty row in Phythian Street in Greenbank and the residents of six adjoining houses all trooped into court.
Only three lots had been directly involved in the fracas but the complainants and defendants had brought their neighbours along as witnesses.
It was clearly another dispute that had been ongoing for some time and only the final chapter was discussed in court.
That had kicked off on one evening at 8pm when Mary Simpkin and Margaret Alton had been passing each other in the street and according to Mrs Simpkin, Mrs Alton had bashed her with her shopping basket.
This, the woman strongly denied, claiming the contact had been accidental.
When a drunken Edward Simpkin heard of his wife being hit he was raving mad and Mrs Alton claimed that he had abused her several times during the night.
She said he had called her vile names and had told her to send her "tally man" [husband] and her boys out and he would fight them all. Later he was accused of kicking her door in.
Other claims were made as well but the magistrates considered each party to be as bad as each other and ordered them all to find sureties to keep the peace.
And finally, at 5am on the 18th the body of a boy called John Barton was discovered floating in the canal near Parr Mill.
The 10-year old had been missing since the previous afternoon after playing with other boys by the canal near his home in Park Road.
John had fallen into the water but couldn't be saved. The St Helens Canal could be deep and wide and despite the section where John had entered having been repeatedly dragged, his body could not be recovered until the following morning.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the intolerable nuisance in Victoria Passage, the strange death of a well-known St Helens builder, the formation of a shorthand writers association and the brainless theft from a Bridge Street beerhouse.