150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 16 - 22 DECEMBER 1874
This week's many stories include the fatal cart accident in Bold, the husband that threatened to knock his wife's neck out, the stabbing at a Sutton chemical works, a description of a shocking rape that a crowd watched and did nothing to stop, the Cowley school concert and the fatal fall near to Thatto Heath station.
We begin on the 16th when the annual tea party of St Thomas's Church was held in their schoolroom. More than 600 guests tucked in and the Wigan Observer wrote: "The proceedings throughout were characterised by the greatest possible order and happiness." Good to know it went well and they weren't chucking buns at each other! A speaker warned the young people in attendance against "convivialities which were pernicious" over the coming Christmas period. In other words, don't drink too much!
On the 17th there was another accident in which a horse took fright at what was either some thing or some sound. The exact cause of the accident at Bold was unknown because the man driving the frightened animal and its attached cart was killed and so unable to explain what occurred.
However, James Pollard's nag was seen galloping off at what was described as a furious pace. The cart was overturned, with it crashing down on to the man's neck and killing him instantly. It was later suggested that the man had been drunk, with carters renowned for stopping off at pubs while on their journeys.
In the newspaper reports of court hearings from the 19th and early 20th century, judges often appear arrogant, with justice in the St Helens County Court and Kirkdale Assizes dispensed rapidly. And so it is quite refreshing to read of an assizes judge (technically a commissioner) who was thoughtful and reflective.
Some weeks ago I described how Hugh McCabe was charged with stabbing Thomas Riley. Both men worked for Marsh's chemical works in Sutton and they'd had a quarrel that led to blows being exchanged. McCabe had then pulled out a knife and stabbed Reilly in his shoulder, although the wound was not serious, and the man was committed to the assizes for trial.
This week the jury found McCabe guilty but recommended leniency on account of the provocation that he had received. In 1858 McCabe had been convicted of the manslaughter of a man in Westfield Street and given 18 months in prison. That prior conviction led to the unnamed judge sentencing McCabe to a further three months in prison with hard labour.
But later in the day he announced that he had reflected on what the jury had said and had decided to reduce the sentence to one month in prison as well as a £5 fine. Not having to serve a prison sentence with hard labour would have been a great relief to Hugh McCabe as hard labour then meant the backbreaking punishment of working a treadmill.
In the 1870s dentists had little equipment to ply their trade and so they could easily visit their better-off patients in their own homes. On the 19th this advert appeared in the Prescot Reporter:
"TEETH ! – DENTISTRY !! – TEETH !! – Mr. Robert Pendlebury, Surgeon Dentist, Having acquired a large experience in his profession, both in England and abroad, respectfully announces to the Inhabitants of Prescot and the neighbourhood that he purposes [sic] extending his practice to this town, and will have much pleasure in calling upon ladies and gentlemen at their own houses on the shortest notice. MISS PICKTON, Confectioner, 50, Liverpool-road, St. Helens, has kindly consented to receive all orders, and to afford the fullest particulars."
The Prescot Reporter also described a shocking case at the Liverpool Assizes in which a female tramp whose name was unknown had been raped and murdered in a field near Burnley. Not that they used the word rape – as the newspapers preferred to say "violated" or "outraged", in case it offended people's sensibilities.
Those in the dock were a 16-year-old called Crompton Shepherd and a 20-year-old who bore the name Lord Durham, although he was a coal miner with no connection to the nobility. Although acquitted of the charge of murder, the pair was found guilty of the rape, and each was sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude.
If the brutal crime wasn't shocking enough, what the witnesses to the event said in court made it even more horrific. Each person who had watched the rape take place said they did not think there was anything wrong in what the youths had done. None had summoned help for the woman during or after the attack and she had been found dead in the field on the following day.
The Plain English Campaign say they launched in 1979 to campaign against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information. If they had started a century earlier I'm sure standards of literacy would have improved. As it was, only the better educated could manage to understand the newspapers. Read this extract from the Conservative supporting Prescot Reporter in which they attacked working class folk and civil servants for daring to demand more pay for their labours:
"During the past few years certain upheavings in the nether strata of society have led all sorts of persons to form exalted opinions and very exaggerated estimates of their own worth and the duty of society to pay them far more than their due. The labourer ought always to be worthy of his hire, but sometimes it happens that his services are not of very high value to the hirer, and whenever either indolent operatives or careless, demoralised officials seek to enforce remuneration for hours of idleness, it is very akin to the dishonesty that prompts the unprincipled to despoil others of their goods.
"…There has been too much of late of insubordination in strikes throughout the manufacturing districts, and restless agitators among the officials of the civil service….Under the lax Liberal rule of the late government, this insubordination and restless spirit on the part of civil servants was neither satisfied nor put down.
"Memorialists and deputations could be snubbed, baited and insulted, but a direct encouragement was given to agitators to pursue the baneful course of demoralizing the lower classes of functionaries by inculcating the doctrine that they had only to cry sufficiently loud and be more urgent and unanimous in their appeals to accomplish their objects and obtain their utmost desire."
It was quite common for workers to receive their pay around noon on Saturdays and head straight for the pub – where they might remain for the rest of the day and evening. It was a wise wife who met her spouse on Saturday lunchtime as he was leaving his work and ensured she got her housekeeping money before it was all spent on beer!
When making their journey back home on Saturday evenings the men would look to take shortcuts on the banks of the canal or walk along railway lines or across fields, sometimes with fatal consequences. What made matters worse for the inebriated when going home was the extreme darkness that pervaded much of the town.
On the 19th the St Helens Newspaper described how last Saturday Peter Anders had met his death near a railway line after a lengthy boozing session. But he had not been walking on the line. It had, instead, been a sharp fall in the dark that saw him off. The 34-year-old was a miner at Greengate Colliery and he died 300 yards from Thatto Heath station.
It was thought that after leaving a pub in the Thatto Heath district on Saturday night, Mr Anders had gone into a field and lost his way. Footmarks on a nearby wall suggested that he had been in the act of climbing over it when he fell into a railway cutting. That was a perpendicular drop of 45 feet and he was probably instantly killed after suffering head injuries.
Christmas adverts in the paper were few and far between. But Dromgoole's of Hardshaw Street was advertising its range of Christmas cards, envelopes and seasonal notepaper for sending letters of greeting. Christmas ornaments and flowers and tissue paper "in great variety, and of every colour" were also available to brighten up the house over the festive period.
I would have thought that having one of your front teeth knocked out would be considered a serious assault. But in the St Helens Petty Sessions this week a row that turned violent between a foreman called Thomas Sandford and a worker called Stephen McRory at the Union Chemical Works at Pocket Nook – and which resulted in a tooth being lost – only led to a 5-shilling fine.
In another case Susan Halsall had the courage to bring a summons for assault against her violent husband Joseph. She told the court that they had only been married three months but had an unpleasant life together owing in the main to the "perpetual interference" of her mother-in-law.
On December 9th – the most recent occasion that Susan had been assaulted – Joseph had struck her twice in the face and threatened to "knock her neck out" – as the Newspaper put it. Susan asked the magistrates to bind her husband over to keep the peace. As he had not turned up to the hearing, the Bench issued a warrant for his arrest and the police later brought Joseph to court.
He pleaded guilty to the charge and was bound over for only three months but needed to find a total of £15 in sureties. Whether such court action helped or hindered the couple's marriage, I cannot say. I think it would depend on the character of the husband but pleading guilty to the assault was a positive sign as most violent spouses denied such a charge.
And finally on the evening of the 22nd, the tenth annual concert was held at Cowley Boys School (pictured above) performed by a singing class that bore the name Tonic Sol-fa. Prior to the concert visitors could inspect an exhibition of maps and drawings made by the boys. The school was then in North Road and known to locals as "Lacey's", after the longstanding head Newton Lacey. Central Modern would later be built on the site.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's many stories will include the glitzy Christmas pantomime at the Theatre Royal, the typhoid fever in Rainford, the distribution of the volunteers' shooting prizes and the St Helens Newspaper's romantic picture of Christmas Day.
We begin on the 16th when the annual tea party of St Thomas's Church was held in their schoolroom. More than 600 guests tucked in and the Wigan Observer wrote: "The proceedings throughout were characterised by the greatest possible order and happiness." Good to know it went well and they weren't chucking buns at each other! A speaker warned the young people in attendance against "convivialities which were pernicious" over the coming Christmas period. In other words, don't drink too much!
On the 17th there was another accident in which a horse took fright at what was either some thing or some sound. The exact cause of the accident at Bold was unknown because the man driving the frightened animal and its attached cart was killed and so unable to explain what occurred.
However, James Pollard's nag was seen galloping off at what was described as a furious pace. The cart was overturned, with it crashing down on to the man's neck and killing him instantly. It was later suggested that the man had been drunk, with carters renowned for stopping off at pubs while on their journeys.
In the newspaper reports of court hearings from the 19th and early 20th century, judges often appear arrogant, with justice in the St Helens County Court and Kirkdale Assizes dispensed rapidly. And so it is quite refreshing to read of an assizes judge (technically a commissioner) who was thoughtful and reflective.
Some weeks ago I described how Hugh McCabe was charged with stabbing Thomas Riley. Both men worked for Marsh's chemical works in Sutton and they'd had a quarrel that led to blows being exchanged. McCabe had then pulled out a knife and stabbed Reilly in his shoulder, although the wound was not serious, and the man was committed to the assizes for trial.
This week the jury found McCabe guilty but recommended leniency on account of the provocation that he had received. In 1858 McCabe had been convicted of the manslaughter of a man in Westfield Street and given 18 months in prison. That prior conviction led to the unnamed judge sentencing McCabe to a further three months in prison with hard labour.
But later in the day he announced that he had reflected on what the jury had said and had decided to reduce the sentence to one month in prison as well as a £5 fine. Not having to serve a prison sentence with hard labour would have been a great relief to Hugh McCabe as hard labour then meant the backbreaking punishment of working a treadmill.
In the 1870s dentists had little equipment to ply their trade and so they could easily visit their better-off patients in their own homes. On the 19th this advert appeared in the Prescot Reporter:
"TEETH ! – DENTISTRY !! – TEETH !! – Mr. Robert Pendlebury, Surgeon Dentist, Having acquired a large experience in his profession, both in England and abroad, respectfully announces to the Inhabitants of Prescot and the neighbourhood that he purposes [sic] extending his practice to this town, and will have much pleasure in calling upon ladies and gentlemen at their own houses on the shortest notice. MISS PICKTON, Confectioner, 50, Liverpool-road, St. Helens, has kindly consented to receive all orders, and to afford the fullest particulars."
The Prescot Reporter also described a shocking case at the Liverpool Assizes in which a female tramp whose name was unknown had been raped and murdered in a field near Burnley. Not that they used the word rape – as the newspapers preferred to say "violated" or "outraged", in case it offended people's sensibilities.
Those in the dock were a 16-year-old called Crompton Shepherd and a 20-year-old who bore the name Lord Durham, although he was a coal miner with no connection to the nobility. Although acquitted of the charge of murder, the pair was found guilty of the rape, and each was sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude.
If the brutal crime wasn't shocking enough, what the witnesses to the event said in court made it even more horrific. Each person who had watched the rape take place said they did not think there was anything wrong in what the youths had done. None had summoned help for the woman during or after the attack and she had been found dead in the field on the following day.
The Plain English Campaign say they launched in 1979 to campaign against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information. If they had started a century earlier I'm sure standards of literacy would have improved. As it was, only the better educated could manage to understand the newspapers. Read this extract from the Conservative supporting Prescot Reporter in which they attacked working class folk and civil servants for daring to demand more pay for their labours:
"During the past few years certain upheavings in the nether strata of society have led all sorts of persons to form exalted opinions and very exaggerated estimates of their own worth and the duty of society to pay them far more than their due. The labourer ought always to be worthy of his hire, but sometimes it happens that his services are not of very high value to the hirer, and whenever either indolent operatives or careless, demoralised officials seek to enforce remuneration for hours of idleness, it is very akin to the dishonesty that prompts the unprincipled to despoil others of their goods.
"…There has been too much of late of insubordination in strikes throughout the manufacturing districts, and restless agitators among the officials of the civil service….Under the lax Liberal rule of the late government, this insubordination and restless spirit on the part of civil servants was neither satisfied nor put down.
"Memorialists and deputations could be snubbed, baited and insulted, but a direct encouragement was given to agitators to pursue the baneful course of demoralizing the lower classes of functionaries by inculcating the doctrine that they had only to cry sufficiently loud and be more urgent and unanimous in their appeals to accomplish their objects and obtain their utmost desire."
It was quite common for workers to receive their pay around noon on Saturdays and head straight for the pub – where they might remain for the rest of the day and evening. It was a wise wife who met her spouse on Saturday lunchtime as he was leaving his work and ensured she got her housekeeping money before it was all spent on beer!
When making their journey back home on Saturday evenings the men would look to take shortcuts on the banks of the canal or walk along railway lines or across fields, sometimes with fatal consequences. What made matters worse for the inebriated when going home was the extreme darkness that pervaded much of the town.
On the 19th the St Helens Newspaper described how last Saturday Peter Anders had met his death near a railway line after a lengthy boozing session. But he had not been walking on the line. It had, instead, been a sharp fall in the dark that saw him off. The 34-year-old was a miner at Greengate Colliery and he died 300 yards from Thatto Heath station.
It was thought that after leaving a pub in the Thatto Heath district on Saturday night, Mr Anders had gone into a field and lost his way. Footmarks on a nearby wall suggested that he had been in the act of climbing over it when he fell into a railway cutting. That was a perpendicular drop of 45 feet and he was probably instantly killed after suffering head injuries.
Christmas adverts in the paper were few and far between. But Dromgoole's of Hardshaw Street was advertising its range of Christmas cards, envelopes and seasonal notepaper for sending letters of greeting. Christmas ornaments and flowers and tissue paper "in great variety, and of every colour" were also available to brighten up the house over the festive period.
I would have thought that having one of your front teeth knocked out would be considered a serious assault. But in the St Helens Petty Sessions this week a row that turned violent between a foreman called Thomas Sandford and a worker called Stephen McRory at the Union Chemical Works at Pocket Nook – and which resulted in a tooth being lost – only led to a 5-shilling fine.
In another case Susan Halsall had the courage to bring a summons for assault against her violent husband Joseph. She told the court that they had only been married three months but had an unpleasant life together owing in the main to the "perpetual interference" of her mother-in-law.
On December 9th – the most recent occasion that Susan had been assaulted – Joseph had struck her twice in the face and threatened to "knock her neck out" – as the Newspaper put it. Susan asked the magistrates to bind her husband over to keep the peace. As he had not turned up to the hearing, the Bench issued a warrant for his arrest and the police later brought Joseph to court.
He pleaded guilty to the charge and was bound over for only three months but needed to find a total of £15 in sureties. Whether such court action helped or hindered the couple's marriage, I cannot say. I think it would depend on the character of the husband but pleading guilty to the assault was a positive sign as most violent spouses denied such a charge.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's many stories will include the glitzy Christmas pantomime at the Theatre Royal, the typhoid fever in Rainford, the distribution of the volunteers' shooting prizes and the St Helens Newspaper's romantic picture of Christmas Day.
This week's many stories include the fatal cart accident in Bold, the husband that threatened to knock his wife's neck out, the stabbing at a Sutton chemical works, a description of a shocking rape that a crowd watched and did nothing to stop, the Cowley school concert and the fatal fall near to Thatto Heath station.
We begin on the 16th when the annual tea party of St Thomas's Church was held in their schoolroom. More than 600 guests tucked in and the Wigan Observer wrote:
"The proceedings throughout were characterised by the greatest possible order and happiness." Good to know it went well and they weren't chucking buns at each other!
A speaker warned the young people in attendance against "convivialities which were pernicious" over the coming Christmas period. In other words, don't drink too much!
On the 17th there was another accident in which a horse took fright at what was either some thing or some sound.
The exact cause of the accident at Bold was unknown because the man driving the frightened animal and its attached cart was killed and so unable to explain what occurred.
However, James Pollard's nag was seen galloping off at what was described as a furious pace. The cart was overturned, with it crashing down on to the man's neck and killing him instantly.
It was later suggested that the man had been drunk, with carters renowned for stopping off at pubs while on their journeys.
In the newspaper reports of court hearings from the 19th and early 20th century, judges often appear arrogant, with justice in the St Helens County Court and Kirkdale Assizes dispensed rapidly.
And so it is quite refreshing to read of an assizes judge (technically a commissioner) who was thoughtful and reflective.
Some weeks ago I described how Hugh McCabe was charged with stabbing Thomas Riley.
Both men worked for Marsh's chemical works in Sutton and they'd had a quarrel that led to blows being exchanged.
McCabe had then pulled out a knife and stabbed Reilly in his shoulder, although the wound was not serious, and the man was committed to the assizes for trial.
This week the jury found McCabe guilty but recommended leniency on account of the provocation that he had received.
In 1858 McCabe had been convicted of the manslaughter of a man in Westfield Street and given 18 months in prison.
That prior conviction led to the unnamed judge sentencing McCabe to a further three months in prison with hard labour.
But later in the day he announced that he had reflected on what the jury had said and had decided to reduce the sentence to one month in prison as well as a £5 fine.
Not having to serve a prison sentence with hard labour would have been a great relief to Hugh McCabe as hard labour then meant the backbreaking punishment of working a treadmill.
In the 1870s dentists had little equipment to ply their trade and so they could easily visit their better-off patients in their own homes.
On the 19th this advert appeared in the Prescot Reporter:
"TEETH ! – DENTISTRY !! – TEETH !! – Mr. Robert Pendlebury, Surgeon Dentist, Having acquired a large experience in his profession, both in England and abroad, respectfully announces to the Inhabitants of Prescot and the neighbourhood that he purposes [sic] extending his practice to this town, and will have much pleasure in calling upon ladies and gentlemen at their own houses on the shortest notice.
"MISS PICKTON, Confectioner, 50, Liverpool-road, St. Helens, has kindly consented to receive all orders, and to afford the fullest particulars."
The Prescot Reporter also described a shocking case at the Liverpool Assizes in which a female tramp whose name was unknown had been raped and murdered in a field near Burnley.
Not that they used the word rape – as the newspapers preferred to say "violated" or "outraged", in case it offended people's sensibilities.
Those in the dock were a 16-year-old called Crompton Shepherd and a 20-year-old who bore the name Lord Durham, although he was a coal miner with no connection to the nobility.
Although acquitted of the charge of murder, the pair was found guilty of the rape, and each was sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude.
If the brutal crime wasn't shocking enough, what the witnesses to the event said in court made it even more horrific.
Each person who had watched the rape take place said they did not think there was anything wrong in what the youths had done.
None had summoned help for the woman during or after the attack and she had been found dead in the field on the following day.
The Plain English Campaign say they launched in 1979 to campaign against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information.
If they had started a century earlier I'm sure standards of literacy would have improved.
As it was, only the better educated could manage to understand the newspapers.
Read this extract from the Conservative supporting Prescot Reporter in which they attacked working class folk and civil servants for daring to demand more pay for their labours:
"During the past few years certain upheavings in the nether strata of society have led all sorts of persons to form exalted opinions and very exaggerated estimates of their own worth and the duty of society to pay them far more than their due.
"The labourer ought always to be worthy of his hire, but sometimes it happens that his services are not of very high value to the hirer, and whenever either indolent operatives or careless, demoralised officials seek to enforce remuneration for hours of idleness, it is very akin to the dishonesty that prompts the unprincipled to despoil others of their goods.
"…There has been too much of late of insubordination in strikes throughout the manufacturing districts, and restless agitators among the officials of the civil service….Under the lax Liberal rule of the late government, this insubordination and restless spirit on the part of civil servants was neither satisfied nor put down.
"Memorialists and deputations could be snubbed, baited and insulted, but a direct encouragement was given to agitators to pursue the baneful course of demoralizing the lower classes of functionaries by inculcating the doctrine that they had only to cry sufficiently loud and be more urgent and unanimous in their appeals to accomplish their objects and obtain their utmost desire."
It was quite common for workers to receive their pay around noon on Saturdays and head straight for the pub – where they might remain for the rest of the day and evening.
It was a wise wife who met her spouse on Saturday lunchtime as he was leaving his work and ensured she got her housekeeping money before it was all spent on beer!
When making their journey back home on Saturday evenings the men would look to take shortcuts on the banks of the canal or walk along railway lines or across fields, sometimes with fatal consequences.
What made matters worse for the inebriated when going home was the extreme darkness that pervaded much of the town.
On the 19th the St Helens Newspaper described how last Saturday Peter Anders had met his death near a railway line after a lengthy boozing session.
But he had not been walking on the line. It had, instead, been a sharp fall in the dark that saw him off.
The 34-year-old was a miner at Greengate Colliery and he died 300 yards from Thatto Heath station.
It was thought that after leaving a pub in the Thatto Heath district on Saturday night, Mr Anders had gone into a field and lost his way.
Footmarks on a nearby wall suggested that he had been in the act of climbing over it when he fell into a railway cutting.
That was a perpendicular drop of 45 feet and he was probably instantly killed after suffering head injuries.
Christmas adverts in the paper were few and far between. But Dromgoole's of Hardshaw Street was advertising its range of Christmas cards, envelopes and seasonal notepaper for sending letters of greeting.
Christmas ornaments and flowers and tissue paper "in great variety, and of every colour" were also available to brighten up the house over the festive period.
I would have thought that having one of your front teeth knocked out would be considered a serious assault.
But in the St Helens Petty Sessions this week a row that turned violent between a foreman called Thomas Sandford and a worker called Stephen McRory at the Union Chemical Works at Pocket Nook – and which resulted in a tooth being lost – only led to a 5-shilling fine.
In another case Susan Halsall had the courage to bring a summons for assault against her violent husband Joseph.
She told the court that they had only been married three months but had an unpleasant life together owing in the main to the "perpetual interference" of her mother-in-law.
On December 9th – the most recent occasion that Susan had been assaulted – Joseph had struck her twice in the face and threatened to "knock her neck out" – as the Newspaper put it.
Susan asked the magistrates to bind her husband over to keep the peace.
As he had not turned up to the hearing, the Bench issued a warrant for his arrest and the police later brought Joseph to court.
He pleaded guilty to the charge and was bound over for only three months but needed to find a total of £15 in sureties.
Whether such court action helped or hindered the couple's marriage, I cannot say. I think it would depend on the character of the husband but pleading guilty to the assault was a positive sign as most violent spouses denied such a charge.
And finally on the evening of the 22nd, the tenth annual concert was held at Cowley Boys School (pictured above) performed by a singing class that bore the name Tonic Sol-fa.
Prior to the concert visitors could inspect an exhibition of maps and drawings made by the boys.
The school was then in North Road and known to locals as "Lacey's", after the longstanding head Newton Lacey. Central Modern would later be built on the site.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's many stories will include the glitzy Christmas pantomime at the Theatre Royal, the typhoid fever in Rainford, the distribution of the volunteers' shooting prizes and the St Helens Newspaper's romantic picture of Christmas Day.
We begin on the 16th when the annual tea party of St Thomas's Church was held in their schoolroom. More than 600 guests tucked in and the Wigan Observer wrote:
"The proceedings throughout were characterised by the greatest possible order and happiness." Good to know it went well and they weren't chucking buns at each other!
A speaker warned the young people in attendance against "convivialities which were pernicious" over the coming Christmas period. In other words, don't drink too much!
On the 17th there was another accident in which a horse took fright at what was either some thing or some sound.
The exact cause of the accident at Bold was unknown because the man driving the frightened animal and its attached cart was killed and so unable to explain what occurred.
However, James Pollard's nag was seen galloping off at what was described as a furious pace. The cart was overturned, with it crashing down on to the man's neck and killing him instantly.
It was later suggested that the man had been drunk, with carters renowned for stopping off at pubs while on their journeys.
In the newspaper reports of court hearings from the 19th and early 20th century, judges often appear arrogant, with justice in the St Helens County Court and Kirkdale Assizes dispensed rapidly.
And so it is quite refreshing to read of an assizes judge (technically a commissioner) who was thoughtful and reflective.
Some weeks ago I described how Hugh McCabe was charged with stabbing Thomas Riley.
Both men worked for Marsh's chemical works in Sutton and they'd had a quarrel that led to blows being exchanged.
McCabe had then pulled out a knife and stabbed Reilly in his shoulder, although the wound was not serious, and the man was committed to the assizes for trial.
This week the jury found McCabe guilty but recommended leniency on account of the provocation that he had received.
In 1858 McCabe had been convicted of the manslaughter of a man in Westfield Street and given 18 months in prison.
That prior conviction led to the unnamed judge sentencing McCabe to a further three months in prison with hard labour.
But later in the day he announced that he had reflected on what the jury had said and had decided to reduce the sentence to one month in prison as well as a £5 fine.
Not having to serve a prison sentence with hard labour would have been a great relief to Hugh McCabe as hard labour then meant the backbreaking punishment of working a treadmill.
In the 1870s dentists had little equipment to ply their trade and so they could easily visit their better-off patients in their own homes.
On the 19th this advert appeared in the Prescot Reporter:
"TEETH ! – DENTISTRY !! – TEETH !! – Mr. Robert Pendlebury, Surgeon Dentist, Having acquired a large experience in his profession, both in England and abroad, respectfully announces to the Inhabitants of Prescot and the neighbourhood that he purposes [sic] extending his practice to this town, and will have much pleasure in calling upon ladies and gentlemen at their own houses on the shortest notice.
"MISS PICKTON, Confectioner, 50, Liverpool-road, St. Helens, has kindly consented to receive all orders, and to afford the fullest particulars."
The Prescot Reporter also described a shocking case at the Liverpool Assizes in which a female tramp whose name was unknown had been raped and murdered in a field near Burnley.
Not that they used the word rape – as the newspapers preferred to say "violated" or "outraged", in case it offended people's sensibilities.
Those in the dock were a 16-year-old called Crompton Shepherd and a 20-year-old who bore the name Lord Durham, although he was a coal miner with no connection to the nobility.
Although acquitted of the charge of murder, the pair was found guilty of the rape, and each was sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude.
If the brutal crime wasn't shocking enough, what the witnesses to the event said in court made it even more horrific.
Each person who had watched the rape take place said they did not think there was anything wrong in what the youths had done.
None had summoned help for the woman during or after the attack and she had been found dead in the field on the following day.
The Plain English Campaign say they launched in 1979 to campaign against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information.
If they had started a century earlier I'm sure standards of literacy would have improved.
As it was, only the better educated could manage to understand the newspapers.
Read this extract from the Conservative supporting Prescot Reporter in which they attacked working class folk and civil servants for daring to demand more pay for their labours:
"During the past few years certain upheavings in the nether strata of society have led all sorts of persons to form exalted opinions and very exaggerated estimates of their own worth and the duty of society to pay them far more than their due.
"The labourer ought always to be worthy of his hire, but sometimes it happens that his services are not of very high value to the hirer, and whenever either indolent operatives or careless, demoralised officials seek to enforce remuneration for hours of idleness, it is very akin to the dishonesty that prompts the unprincipled to despoil others of their goods.
"…There has been too much of late of insubordination in strikes throughout the manufacturing districts, and restless agitators among the officials of the civil service….Under the lax Liberal rule of the late government, this insubordination and restless spirit on the part of civil servants was neither satisfied nor put down.
"Memorialists and deputations could be snubbed, baited and insulted, but a direct encouragement was given to agitators to pursue the baneful course of demoralizing the lower classes of functionaries by inculcating the doctrine that they had only to cry sufficiently loud and be more urgent and unanimous in their appeals to accomplish their objects and obtain their utmost desire."
It was quite common for workers to receive their pay around noon on Saturdays and head straight for the pub – where they might remain for the rest of the day and evening.
It was a wise wife who met her spouse on Saturday lunchtime as he was leaving his work and ensured she got her housekeeping money before it was all spent on beer!
When making their journey back home on Saturday evenings the men would look to take shortcuts on the banks of the canal or walk along railway lines or across fields, sometimes with fatal consequences.
What made matters worse for the inebriated when going home was the extreme darkness that pervaded much of the town.
On the 19th the St Helens Newspaper described how last Saturday Peter Anders had met his death near a railway line after a lengthy boozing session.
But he had not been walking on the line. It had, instead, been a sharp fall in the dark that saw him off.
The 34-year-old was a miner at Greengate Colliery and he died 300 yards from Thatto Heath station.
It was thought that after leaving a pub in the Thatto Heath district on Saturday night, Mr Anders had gone into a field and lost his way.
Footmarks on a nearby wall suggested that he had been in the act of climbing over it when he fell into a railway cutting.
That was a perpendicular drop of 45 feet and he was probably instantly killed after suffering head injuries.
Christmas adverts in the paper were few and far between. But Dromgoole's of Hardshaw Street was advertising its range of Christmas cards, envelopes and seasonal notepaper for sending letters of greeting.
Christmas ornaments and flowers and tissue paper "in great variety, and of every colour" were also available to brighten up the house over the festive period.
I would have thought that having one of your front teeth knocked out would be considered a serious assault.
But in the St Helens Petty Sessions this week a row that turned violent between a foreman called Thomas Sandford and a worker called Stephen McRory at the Union Chemical Works at Pocket Nook – and which resulted in a tooth being lost – only led to a 5-shilling fine.
In another case Susan Halsall had the courage to bring a summons for assault against her violent husband Joseph.
She told the court that they had only been married three months but had an unpleasant life together owing in the main to the "perpetual interference" of her mother-in-law.
On December 9th – the most recent occasion that Susan had been assaulted – Joseph had struck her twice in the face and threatened to "knock her neck out" – as the Newspaper put it.
Susan asked the magistrates to bind her husband over to keep the peace.
As he had not turned up to the hearing, the Bench issued a warrant for his arrest and the police later brought Joseph to court.
He pleaded guilty to the charge and was bound over for only three months but needed to find a total of £15 in sureties.
Whether such court action helped or hindered the couple's marriage, I cannot say. I think it would depend on the character of the husband but pleading guilty to the assault was a positive sign as most violent spouses denied such a charge.
Prior to the concert visitors could inspect an exhibition of maps and drawings made by the boys.
The school was then in North Road and known to locals as "Lacey's", after the longstanding head Newton Lacey. Central Modern would later be built on the site.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's many stories will include the glitzy Christmas pantomime at the Theatre Royal, the typhoid fever in Rainford, the distribution of the volunteers' shooting prizes and the St Helens Newspaper's romantic picture of Christmas Day.