150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 23 - 29 SEPTEMBER 1874
This week's many stories include Rainford's poor water supply, the pubs that had their licences taken away, the movement calling for compulsory education for St Helens' children, the many men that died after suffering an accident, the riot in Greenbank after the police had made an arrest and the giant dying of fever that still managed to visit plenty of pubs on his way to the workhouse.
We begin with the annual St Helens Flower Show, which took place over two days from September 23rd at the Victoria Gardens in Thatto Heath, close to present day Whittle Street. The St Helens Newspaper wrote that the show had to labour under the disadvantage of the lateness of the season but on the whole the display had been "very fine".
The band of the Prescot Volunteers performed on the bowling green during the afternoon and later they moved indoors to play for the visitors. One class of flowers limited entries to cottagers, which the Newspaper applauded, saying that working folk could not hope to compete successfully with "gentlemen growers".
Extremely few of the working class had gardens and for those that did the acidic St Helens atmosphere would have done nothing to help their flowers grow. The gentlemen growers tended to live in places like St Ann’s in Eccleston, which suffered far less from pollution than other parts of the town.
The passing of new legislation was empowering the St Helens magistrates not to renew the licences of publicans and beersellers that had criminal convictions. And so at the licensing hearings held on the 23rd, the licensee of the Primrose Vaults in Parr – who had one conviction and was suspected of opening his house illegally on Sunday mornings – had his license refused.
Peter Roughley, the landlord of the Red Cat at Crank, suffered a similar fate after last year being fined the hefty amount of £5 and costs for permitting drunkenness in his pub. A beerseller called John Grimes of Sandfield Crescent in Greenbank also had one conviction and frequent complaints had been made against him and so his application for an extension of his licence was rejected. And John Whittle of the Kings Arms in Higher Parr Street was similarly refused, after being fined £1 for selling beer during prohibited hours on Sundays.
It could be a difficult journey for St Helens police to get their prisoners to the police station on Saturday nights as angry, drunken mobs often attempted to free them. However, in the almost lawless district of Greenbank any time was a bad time. In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 23rd a man identified only as T. Mangan was charged with assaulting PC Doig in Liverpool Street on the previous Saturday afternoon.
The officer said that while he was bringing another prisoner to the station, Mangan had knocked him down and kicked him. A second constable corroborated PC Doig's evidence and described how their arrest of a disorderly man in Greenbank had caused a "regular riot" with the police being knocked down several times. Mangan was sent to prison for a month, which was an unusually harsh sentence for violence and suggests the man had a bad record.
The Rainford Local Board held their monthly meeting this week. These were the folk that administered the village's affairs and reported to a Local Government Board. The latter had written to their surveyor asking questions about the sources of Rainford's water supply. The meeting's chairman was Hydes Brow farmer Richard Richardson who jokingly said: "It's well to say that each man looked after himself."
The meeting laughed but there was actually much truth in the statement – apart from the fact that women and children were the ones that had to draw the water. It was decided to reply to the Board and say Rainford's water supply primarily came from private wells. In 1871 a report from the Poor Law Board had stated that Rainford residents' supply came from either the Randle Brook or from wells – with both water sources interconnected and heavily polluted.
The brook water was mainly surface drainage from fields and mosses and when an inspection took place, an overflow of sewage into the brook from manure heaps was identified. The wells were described as shallow and contaminated by organic matter from peat soil and sewage and in the previous year there had been up to 30 cases of typhoid in the village.
In the 1870s there were 2 million children in England that had no access to education. And in 1871 the medical inspector of factories had revealed that only 6% of children employed in St Helens factories had satisfactory abilities in what later would be known as the "three Rs".
On the 26th the St Helens Newspaper published an article describing how a movement had been established in St Helens to make attendance at school compulsory for all children. In areas where what was known as school boards were in operation, they could mandate compulsory attendance – but schools run by the church could not.
A meeting had been held in St Thomas's school earlier in the week to consider how their aim of making all children receive an education could best be achieved. An important question was who should enforce such a compulsory system. Should it be the police and magistrates, the Prescot Board of Guardians or a body within St Helens Corporation? After a long discussion it was decided to call on Parliament to pass a new act. That did not impress the Newspaper who said:
"There is no doubt something is required to be done to secure a more universal application of the civilising influences of education; but to go before Parliament with an undigested scheme would probably tend to defeat the very object the promoters of the meeting held on Tuesday had in view."
The Newspaper also described the most recent meeting of the Prescot Board of Guardians who oversaw Whiston Workhouse. The elected members discussed a case of fever that had recently been admitted into their hospital. Fever was the generic term for all sorts of contagious diseases.
John Murray had died only hours after being admitted to the hospital by cab and the guardians wanted to know if the man's removal at such an advanced stage had contributed to his death. Their clerk pointed out that it was often very difficult to get patients to agree to go into hospital and by the time they consented it was too late to do them any good.
The Master of the Workhouse told the guardians that Murray had been drunk when he had arrived and so had been the man that accompanied him. He knew that they had both been supping in the Green Dragon and it was the Master's opinion that the pair had stopped at every public house on their journey from Widnes. The Chairman of the Guardians commented on "the evil of removing patients when they were at such a crisis of their illness." But the man could still go boozing and spreading disease here, there and everywhere!
The deceased John Murray did present the workhouse with a problem. The man would have been considered a giant in the 1870s, as he was 6’ 6” tall. People were then on average far shorter than today – by as much as 7 or 8 inches – and a male over 6 feet in height was rare. They couldn't fit Murray into one of the workhouse's basic coffins and, of course, there was no money for a made-to-measure coffin for those considered to be paupers. So the man had to be buried in what was reported as being a shell.
Your chances of surviving a serious accident in the 1870s were very low. There were no blood transfusions or means of helping the body cope with shock and so most injured folk lingered at home or in the cottage hospital for a few days before dying. This week the Newspaper had a long roll call of the fatally injured. James Grey had been involved in constructing a new chemical works in Boundary Road when he fell 20 feet to the ground. The labourer from Widnes was taken to the hospital in Peasley Cross but died a week later.
James Bate had been feeding corn into a threshing machine at Farnworth when he slipped and fell. His left arm was cut to pieces and the 44-year-old soon died. 31-year-old Peter Lucas of Elephant Lane was killed at Greengate Colliery in Thatto Heath when a stone estimated at weighing half a ton fell on him.
And John Power lingered for a few days in the Royal Hospital in Liverpool before dying after being knocked down by a passenger train. The 61-year-old had been trying to cross the line between St Helens and Peasley Cross when the engine struck him. He was probably very deaf as the engine driver told Mr Power's inquest that he had blown his whistle several times as a warning.
Another canal death also took place this week when a boatman named Scott came across the body of Thomas McGrath floating in the water at Blackbrook. The 45-year-old had worked on the canal as a labourer shipping coal from a wharf and it was not known how he died.
I find it quite amazing how some defendants in St Helens Petty Sessions expected the magistrates to take their word over that of a number of police officers. When William Craven appeared in court this week charged with assaulting and resisting PC Doig, he insisted that he had been the model of politeness. Craven said he had given his name to the officer "like a man" and asked to be let off the charge.
But the much-battered PC Doig said that was untrue and Craven had incited a crowd to rescue him and the constable had subsequently been knocked down and kicked and his trousers torn. This is what the Newspaper wrote: "A great crowd of persons followed the procession [to the police station], and there seemed to have been a great deal of excitement. Officer 300 said that when he went to the assistance of Doig he was knocked down by the prisoner several times, and kicked by the crowd when down.
"The prisoner said that he met two old friends in the street, and they began to trip him out of a spirit of friendship. In the same spirit he gripped them both by their collars, and giving them a playful wrench knocked both to the ground. When they got up they shook his hand, and threw their arms round his neck, and the whole three, overcome by emotion, fell together and rolled over. The police must have supposed them to be fighting."
The magistrates did not, of course, buy William Craven's curious account of how he greeted his mates. They were starting to clamp down on violent assaults on the police and he was ordered to pay £1 for the damage caused to PC Doig's trousers. And for the assault on the same officer, Craven was sent to prison for three months.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's many stories include the man called Crook in Church Street that punched a policeman on the nose, the miners' strike in St Helens, the claim that dying patients were being dumped on Whiston Workhouse and the road rage in Naylor Street.
We begin with the annual St Helens Flower Show, which took place over two days from September 23rd at the Victoria Gardens in Thatto Heath, close to present day Whittle Street. The St Helens Newspaper wrote that the show had to labour under the disadvantage of the lateness of the season but on the whole the display had been "very fine".
The band of the Prescot Volunteers performed on the bowling green during the afternoon and later they moved indoors to play for the visitors. One class of flowers limited entries to cottagers, which the Newspaper applauded, saying that working folk could not hope to compete successfully with "gentlemen growers".
Extremely few of the working class had gardens and for those that did the acidic St Helens atmosphere would have done nothing to help their flowers grow. The gentlemen growers tended to live in places like St Ann’s in Eccleston, which suffered far less from pollution than other parts of the town.
The passing of new legislation was empowering the St Helens magistrates not to renew the licences of publicans and beersellers that had criminal convictions. And so at the licensing hearings held on the 23rd, the licensee of the Primrose Vaults in Parr – who had one conviction and was suspected of opening his house illegally on Sunday mornings – had his license refused.
Peter Roughley, the landlord of the Red Cat at Crank, suffered a similar fate after last year being fined the hefty amount of £5 and costs for permitting drunkenness in his pub. A beerseller called John Grimes of Sandfield Crescent in Greenbank also had one conviction and frequent complaints had been made against him and so his application for an extension of his licence was rejected. And John Whittle of the Kings Arms in Higher Parr Street was similarly refused, after being fined £1 for selling beer during prohibited hours on Sundays.
It could be a difficult journey for St Helens police to get their prisoners to the police station on Saturday nights as angry, drunken mobs often attempted to free them. However, in the almost lawless district of Greenbank any time was a bad time. In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 23rd a man identified only as T. Mangan was charged with assaulting PC Doig in Liverpool Street on the previous Saturday afternoon.
The officer said that while he was bringing another prisoner to the station, Mangan had knocked him down and kicked him. A second constable corroborated PC Doig's evidence and described how their arrest of a disorderly man in Greenbank had caused a "regular riot" with the police being knocked down several times. Mangan was sent to prison for a month, which was an unusually harsh sentence for violence and suggests the man had a bad record.
The Rainford Local Board held their monthly meeting this week. These were the folk that administered the village's affairs and reported to a Local Government Board. The latter had written to their surveyor asking questions about the sources of Rainford's water supply. The meeting's chairman was Hydes Brow farmer Richard Richardson who jokingly said: "It's well to say that each man looked after himself."
The meeting laughed but there was actually much truth in the statement – apart from the fact that women and children were the ones that had to draw the water. It was decided to reply to the Board and say Rainford's water supply primarily came from private wells. In 1871 a report from the Poor Law Board had stated that Rainford residents' supply came from either the Randle Brook or from wells – with both water sources interconnected and heavily polluted.
The brook water was mainly surface drainage from fields and mosses and when an inspection took place, an overflow of sewage into the brook from manure heaps was identified. The wells were described as shallow and contaminated by organic matter from peat soil and sewage and in the previous year there had been up to 30 cases of typhoid in the village.
In the 1870s there were 2 million children in England that had no access to education. And in 1871 the medical inspector of factories had revealed that only 6% of children employed in St Helens factories had satisfactory abilities in what later would be known as the "three Rs".
On the 26th the St Helens Newspaper published an article describing how a movement had been established in St Helens to make attendance at school compulsory for all children. In areas where what was known as school boards were in operation, they could mandate compulsory attendance – but schools run by the church could not.
A meeting had been held in St Thomas's school earlier in the week to consider how their aim of making all children receive an education could best be achieved. An important question was who should enforce such a compulsory system. Should it be the police and magistrates, the Prescot Board of Guardians or a body within St Helens Corporation? After a long discussion it was decided to call on Parliament to pass a new act. That did not impress the Newspaper who said:
"There is no doubt something is required to be done to secure a more universal application of the civilising influences of education; but to go before Parliament with an undigested scheme would probably tend to defeat the very object the promoters of the meeting held on Tuesday had in view."
John Murray had died only hours after being admitted to the hospital by cab and the guardians wanted to know if the man's removal at such an advanced stage had contributed to his death. Their clerk pointed out that it was often very difficult to get patients to agree to go into hospital and by the time they consented it was too late to do them any good.
The Master of the Workhouse told the guardians that Murray had been drunk when he had arrived and so had been the man that accompanied him. He knew that they had both been supping in the Green Dragon and it was the Master's opinion that the pair had stopped at every public house on their journey from Widnes. The Chairman of the Guardians commented on "the evil of removing patients when they were at such a crisis of their illness." But the man could still go boozing and spreading disease here, there and everywhere!
The deceased John Murray did present the workhouse with a problem. The man would have been considered a giant in the 1870s, as he was 6’ 6” tall. People were then on average far shorter than today – by as much as 7 or 8 inches – and a male over 6 feet in height was rare. They couldn't fit Murray into one of the workhouse's basic coffins and, of course, there was no money for a made-to-measure coffin for those considered to be paupers. So the man had to be buried in what was reported as being a shell.
Your chances of surviving a serious accident in the 1870s were very low. There were no blood transfusions or means of helping the body cope with shock and so most injured folk lingered at home or in the cottage hospital for a few days before dying. This week the Newspaper had a long roll call of the fatally injured. James Grey had been involved in constructing a new chemical works in Boundary Road when he fell 20 feet to the ground. The labourer from Widnes was taken to the hospital in Peasley Cross but died a week later.
James Bate had been feeding corn into a threshing machine at Farnworth when he slipped and fell. His left arm was cut to pieces and the 44-year-old soon died. 31-year-old Peter Lucas of Elephant Lane was killed at Greengate Colliery in Thatto Heath when a stone estimated at weighing half a ton fell on him.
And John Power lingered for a few days in the Royal Hospital in Liverpool before dying after being knocked down by a passenger train. The 61-year-old had been trying to cross the line between St Helens and Peasley Cross when the engine struck him. He was probably very deaf as the engine driver told Mr Power's inquest that he had blown his whistle several times as a warning.
Another canal death also took place this week when a boatman named Scott came across the body of Thomas McGrath floating in the water at Blackbrook. The 45-year-old had worked on the canal as a labourer shipping coal from a wharf and it was not known how he died.
I find it quite amazing how some defendants in St Helens Petty Sessions expected the magistrates to take their word over that of a number of police officers. When William Craven appeared in court this week charged with assaulting and resisting PC Doig, he insisted that he had been the model of politeness. Craven said he had given his name to the officer "like a man" and asked to be let off the charge.
But the much-battered PC Doig said that was untrue and Craven had incited a crowd to rescue him and the constable had subsequently been knocked down and kicked and his trousers torn. This is what the Newspaper wrote: "A great crowd of persons followed the procession [to the police station], and there seemed to have been a great deal of excitement. Officer 300 said that when he went to the assistance of Doig he was knocked down by the prisoner several times, and kicked by the crowd when down.
"The prisoner said that he met two old friends in the street, and they began to trip him out of a spirit of friendship. In the same spirit he gripped them both by their collars, and giving them a playful wrench knocked both to the ground. When they got up they shook his hand, and threw their arms round his neck, and the whole three, overcome by emotion, fell together and rolled over. The police must have supposed them to be fighting."
The magistrates did not, of course, buy William Craven's curious account of how he greeted his mates. They were starting to clamp down on violent assaults on the police and he was ordered to pay £1 for the damage caused to PC Doig's trousers. And for the assault on the same officer, Craven was sent to prison for three months.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's many stories include the man called Crook in Church Street that punched a policeman on the nose, the miners' strike in St Helens, the claim that dying patients were being dumped on Whiston Workhouse and the road rage in Naylor Street.
This week's many stories include Rainford's poor water supply, the pubs that had their licences taken away, the movement calling for compulsory education for St Helens' children, the many men that died after suffering an accident, the riot in Greenbank after the police had made an arrest and the giant dying of fever that still managed to visit plenty of pubs on his way to the workhouse.
We begin with the annual St Helens Flower Show, which took place over two days from September 23rd at the Victoria Gardens in Thatto Heath, close to present day Whittle Street.
The St Helens Newspaper wrote that the show had to labour under the disadvantage of the lateness of the season but on the whole the display had been "very fine".
The band of the Prescot Volunteers performed on the bowling green during the afternoon and later they moved indoors to play for the visitors.
One class of flowers limited entries to cottagers, which the Newspaper applauded, saying that working folk could not hope to compete successfully with "gentlemen growers".
Extremely few of the working class had gardens and for those that did the acidic St Helens atmosphere would have done nothing to help their flowers grow.
The gentlemen growers tended to live in places like St Ann’s in Eccleston, which suffered far less from pollution than other parts of the town.
The passing of new legislation was empowering the St Helens magistrates not to renew the licences of publicans and beersellers that had criminal convictions.
And so at the licensing hearings held on the 23rd, the licensee of the Primrose Vaults in Parr – who had one conviction and was suspected of opening his house illegally on Sunday mornings – had his license refused.
Peter Roughley, the landlord of the Red Cat at Crank, suffered a similar fate after last year being fined the hefty amount of £5 and costs for permitting drunkenness in his pub.
A beerseller called John Grimes of Sandfield Crescent in Greenbank also had one conviction and frequent complaints had been made against him and so his application for an extension of his licence was rejected.
And John Whittle of the Kings Arms in Higher Parr Street was similarly refused, after being fined £1 for selling beer during prohibited hours on Sundays.
It could be a difficult journey for St Helens police to get their prisoners to the police station on Saturday nights as angry, drunken mobs often attempted to free them.
However, in the almost lawless district of Greenbank any time was a bad time.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 23rd a man identified only as T. Mangan was charged with assaulting PC Doig in Liverpool Street on the previous Saturday afternoon.
The officer said that while he was bringing another prisoner to the station, Mangan had knocked him down and kicked him.
A second constable corroborated PC Doig's evidence and described how their arrest of a disorderly man in Greenbank had caused a "regular riot" with the police being knocked down several times.
Mangan was sent to prison for a month, which was an unusually harsh sentence for violence and suggests the man had a bad record.
The Rainford Local Board held their monthly meeting this week. These were the folk that administered the village's affairs and reported to a Local Government Board.
The latter had written to their surveyor asking questions about the sources of Rainford's water supply.
The meeting's chairman was Hydes Brow farmer Richard Richardson who jokingly said: "It's well to say that each man looked after himself."
The meeting laughed but there was actually much truth in the statement – apart from the fact that women and children were the ones that had to draw the water.
It was decided to reply to the Board and say Rainford's water supply primarily came from private wells.
In 1871 a report from the Poor Law Board had stated that Rainford residents' supply came from either the Randle Brook or from wells – with both water sources interconnected and heavily polluted.
The brook water was mainly surface drainage from fields and mosses and when an inspection took place, an overflow of sewage into the brook from manure heaps was identified.
The wells were described as shallow and contaminated by organic matter from peat soil and sewage and in the previous year there had been up to 30 cases of typhoid in the village.
In the 1870s there were 2 million children in England that had no access to education.
And in 1871 the medical inspector of factories had revealed that only 6% of children employed in St Helens factories had satisfactory abilities in what later would be known as the "three Rs".
On the 26th the St Helens Newspaper published an article describing how a movement had been established in St Helens to make attendance at school compulsory for all children.
In areas where what was known as school boards were in operation, they could mandate compulsory attendance – but schools run by the church could not.
A meeting had been held in St Thomas's school earlier in the week to consider how their aim of making all children receive an education could best be achieved.
An important question was who should enforce such a compulsory system. Should it be the police and magistrates, the Prescot Board of Guardians or a body within St Helens Corporation?
After a long discussion it was decided to call on Parliament to pass a new act. That did not impress the Newspaper who said:
"There is no doubt something is required to be done to secure a more universal application of the civilising influences of education; but to go before Parliament with an undigested scheme would probably tend to defeat the very object the promoters of the meeting held on Tuesday had in view."
The Newspaper also described the most recent meeting of the Prescot Board of Guardians who oversaw Whiston Workhouse.
The elected members discussed a case of fever that had recently been admitted into their hospital. Fever was the generic term for all sorts of contagious diseases.
John Murray had died only hours after being admitted to the hospital by cab and the guardians wanted to know if the man's removal at such an advanced stage had contributed to his death.
Their clerk pointed out that it was often very difficult to get patients to agree to go into hospital and by the time they consented it was too late to do them any good.
The Master of the Workhouse told the guardians that Murray had been drunk when he had arrived and so had been the man that accompanied him.
He knew that they had both been supping in the Green Dragon and it was the Master's opinion that the pair had stopped at every public house on their journey from Widnes.
The Chairman of the Guardians commented on "the evil of removing patients when they were at such a crisis of their illness."
But the man could still go boozing and spreading disease here, there and everywhere!
The deceased John Murray did present the workhouse with a problem. The man would have been considered a giant in the 1870s, as he was 6’ 6” tall.
People were then on average far shorter than today – by as much as 7 or 8 inches – and a male over 6 feet in height was rare.
They couldn't fit Murray into one of the workhouse's basic coffins and, of course, there was no money for a made-to-measure coffin for those considered to be paupers. So the man had to be buried in what was reported as being a shell.
Your chances of surviving a serious accident in the 1870s were very low.
There were no blood transfusions or means of helping the body cope with shock and so most injured folk lingered at home or in the cottage hospital for a few days before dying.
This week the Newspaper had a long roll call of the fatally injured. James Grey had been involved in constructing a new chemical works in Boundary Road when he fell 20 feet to the ground.
The labourer from Widnes was taken to the hospital in Peasley Cross but died a week later.
James Bate had been feeding corn into a threshing machine at Farnworth when he slipped and fell. His left arm was cut to pieces and the 44-year-old soon died.
31-year-old Peter Lucas of Elephant Lane was killed at Greengate Colliery in Thatto Heath when a stone estimated at weighing half a ton fell on him.
And John Power lingered for a few days in the Royal Hospital in Liverpool before dying after being knocked down by a passenger train.
The 61-year-old had been trying to cross the line between St Helens and Peasley Cross when the engine struck him.
He was probably very deaf as the engine driver told Mr Power's inquest that he had blown his whistle several times as a warning.
Another canal death also took place this week when a boatman named Scott came across the body of Thomas McGrath floating in the water at Blackbrook.
The 45-year-old had worked on the canal as a labourer shipping coal from a wharf and it was not known how he died.
I find it quite amazing how some defendants in St Helens Petty Sessions expected the magistrates to take their word over that of a number of police officers.
When William Craven appeared in court this week charged with assaulting and resisting PC Doig, he insisted that he had been the model of politeness.
Craven said he had given his name to the officer "like a man" and asked to be let off the charge.
But the much-battered PC Doig said that was untrue and Craven had incited a crowd to rescue him and the constable had subsequently been knocked down and kicked and his trousers torn. This is what the Newspaper wrote:
"A great crowd of persons followed the procession [to the police station], and there seemed to have been a great deal of excitement.
"Officer 300 said that when he went to the assistance of Doig he was knocked down by the prisoner several times, and kicked by the crowd when down.
"The prisoner said that he met two old friends in the street, and they began to trip him out of a spirit of friendship. In the same spirit he gripped them both by their collars, and giving them a playful wrench knocked both to the ground.
"When they got up they shook his hand, and threw their arms round his neck, and the whole three, overcome by emotion, fell together and rolled over. The police must have supposed them to be fighting."
The magistrates did not, of course, buy William Craven's curious account of how he greeted his mates.
They were starting to clamp down on violent assaults on the police and he was ordered to pay £1 for the damage caused to PC Doig's trousers. And for the assault on the same officer, Craven was sent to prison for three months.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's many stories include the man called Crook in Church Street that punched a policeman on the nose, the miners' strike in St Helens, the claim that dying patients were being dumped on Whiston Workhouse and the road rage in Naylor Street.
We begin with the annual St Helens Flower Show, which took place over two days from September 23rd at the Victoria Gardens in Thatto Heath, close to present day Whittle Street.
The St Helens Newspaper wrote that the show had to labour under the disadvantage of the lateness of the season but on the whole the display had been "very fine".
The band of the Prescot Volunteers performed on the bowling green during the afternoon and later they moved indoors to play for the visitors.
One class of flowers limited entries to cottagers, which the Newspaper applauded, saying that working folk could not hope to compete successfully with "gentlemen growers".
Extremely few of the working class had gardens and for those that did the acidic St Helens atmosphere would have done nothing to help their flowers grow.
The gentlemen growers tended to live in places like St Ann’s in Eccleston, which suffered far less from pollution than other parts of the town.
The passing of new legislation was empowering the St Helens magistrates not to renew the licences of publicans and beersellers that had criminal convictions.
And so at the licensing hearings held on the 23rd, the licensee of the Primrose Vaults in Parr – who had one conviction and was suspected of opening his house illegally on Sunday mornings – had his license refused.
Peter Roughley, the landlord of the Red Cat at Crank, suffered a similar fate after last year being fined the hefty amount of £5 and costs for permitting drunkenness in his pub.
A beerseller called John Grimes of Sandfield Crescent in Greenbank also had one conviction and frequent complaints had been made against him and so his application for an extension of his licence was rejected.
And John Whittle of the Kings Arms in Higher Parr Street was similarly refused, after being fined £1 for selling beer during prohibited hours on Sundays.
It could be a difficult journey for St Helens police to get their prisoners to the police station on Saturday nights as angry, drunken mobs often attempted to free them.
However, in the almost lawless district of Greenbank any time was a bad time.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 23rd a man identified only as T. Mangan was charged with assaulting PC Doig in Liverpool Street on the previous Saturday afternoon.
The officer said that while he was bringing another prisoner to the station, Mangan had knocked him down and kicked him.
A second constable corroborated PC Doig's evidence and described how their arrest of a disorderly man in Greenbank had caused a "regular riot" with the police being knocked down several times.
Mangan was sent to prison for a month, which was an unusually harsh sentence for violence and suggests the man had a bad record.
The Rainford Local Board held their monthly meeting this week. These were the folk that administered the village's affairs and reported to a Local Government Board.
The latter had written to their surveyor asking questions about the sources of Rainford's water supply.
The meeting's chairman was Hydes Brow farmer Richard Richardson who jokingly said: "It's well to say that each man looked after himself."
The meeting laughed but there was actually much truth in the statement – apart from the fact that women and children were the ones that had to draw the water.
It was decided to reply to the Board and say Rainford's water supply primarily came from private wells.
In 1871 a report from the Poor Law Board had stated that Rainford residents' supply came from either the Randle Brook or from wells – with both water sources interconnected and heavily polluted.
The brook water was mainly surface drainage from fields and mosses and when an inspection took place, an overflow of sewage into the brook from manure heaps was identified.
The wells were described as shallow and contaminated by organic matter from peat soil and sewage and in the previous year there had been up to 30 cases of typhoid in the village.
In the 1870s there were 2 million children in England that had no access to education.
And in 1871 the medical inspector of factories had revealed that only 6% of children employed in St Helens factories had satisfactory abilities in what later would be known as the "three Rs".
On the 26th the St Helens Newspaper published an article describing how a movement had been established in St Helens to make attendance at school compulsory for all children.
In areas where what was known as school boards were in operation, they could mandate compulsory attendance – but schools run by the church could not.
A meeting had been held in St Thomas's school earlier in the week to consider how their aim of making all children receive an education could best be achieved.
An important question was who should enforce such a compulsory system. Should it be the police and magistrates, the Prescot Board of Guardians or a body within St Helens Corporation?
After a long discussion it was decided to call on Parliament to pass a new act. That did not impress the Newspaper who said:
"There is no doubt something is required to be done to secure a more universal application of the civilising influences of education; but to go before Parliament with an undigested scheme would probably tend to defeat the very object the promoters of the meeting held on Tuesday had in view."
The elected members discussed a case of fever that had recently been admitted into their hospital. Fever was the generic term for all sorts of contagious diseases.
John Murray had died only hours after being admitted to the hospital by cab and the guardians wanted to know if the man's removal at such an advanced stage had contributed to his death.
Their clerk pointed out that it was often very difficult to get patients to agree to go into hospital and by the time they consented it was too late to do them any good.
The Master of the Workhouse told the guardians that Murray had been drunk when he had arrived and so had been the man that accompanied him.
He knew that they had both been supping in the Green Dragon and it was the Master's opinion that the pair had stopped at every public house on their journey from Widnes.
The Chairman of the Guardians commented on "the evil of removing patients when they were at such a crisis of their illness."
But the man could still go boozing and spreading disease here, there and everywhere!
The deceased John Murray did present the workhouse with a problem. The man would have been considered a giant in the 1870s, as he was 6’ 6” tall.
People were then on average far shorter than today – by as much as 7 or 8 inches – and a male over 6 feet in height was rare.
They couldn't fit Murray into one of the workhouse's basic coffins and, of course, there was no money for a made-to-measure coffin for those considered to be paupers. So the man had to be buried in what was reported as being a shell.
Your chances of surviving a serious accident in the 1870s were very low.
There were no blood transfusions or means of helping the body cope with shock and so most injured folk lingered at home or in the cottage hospital for a few days before dying.
This week the Newspaper had a long roll call of the fatally injured. James Grey had been involved in constructing a new chemical works in Boundary Road when he fell 20 feet to the ground.
The labourer from Widnes was taken to the hospital in Peasley Cross but died a week later.
James Bate had been feeding corn into a threshing machine at Farnworth when he slipped and fell. His left arm was cut to pieces and the 44-year-old soon died.
31-year-old Peter Lucas of Elephant Lane was killed at Greengate Colliery in Thatto Heath when a stone estimated at weighing half a ton fell on him.
And John Power lingered for a few days in the Royal Hospital in Liverpool before dying after being knocked down by a passenger train.
The 61-year-old had been trying to cross the line between St Helens and Peasley Cross when the engine struck him.
He was probably very deaf as the engine driver told Mr Power's inquest that he had blown his whistle several times as a warning.
Another canal death also took place this week when a boatman named Scott came across the body of Thomas McGrath floating in the water at Blackbrook.
The 45-year-old had worked on the canal as a labourer shipping coal from a wharf and it was not known how he died.
I find it quite amazing how some defendants in St Helens Petty Sessions expected the magistrates to take their word over that of a number of police officers.
When William Craven appeared in court this week charged with assaulting and resisting PC Doig, he insisted that he had been the model of politeness.
Craven said he had given his name to the officer "like a man" and asked to be let off the charge.
But the much-battered PC Doig said that was untrue and Craven had incited a crowd to rescue him and the constable had subsequently been knocked down and kicked and his trousers torn. This is what the Newspaper wrote:
"A great crowd of persons followed the procession [to the police station], and there seemed to have been a great deal of excitement.
"Officer 300 said that when he went to the assistance of Doig he was knocked down by the prisoner several times, and kicked by the crowd when down.
"The prisoner said that he met two old friends in the street, and they began to trip him out of a spirit of friendship. In the same spirit he gripped them both by their collars, and giving them a playful wrench knocked both to the ground.
"When they got up they shook his hand, and threw their arms round his neck, and the whole three, overcome by emotion, fell together and rolled over. The police must have supposed them to be fighting."
The magistrates did not, of course, buy William Craven's curious account of how he greeted his mates.
They were starting to clamp down on violent assaults on the police and he was ordered to pay £1 for the damage caused to PC Doig's trousers. And for the assault on the same officer, Craven was sent to prison for three months.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's many stories include the man called Crook in Church Street that punched a policeman on the nose, the miners' strike in St Helens, the claim that dying patients were being dumped on Whiston Workhouse and the road rage in Naylor Street.