150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 26 FEB - 3 MARCH 1874
This week's many stories include Andrew Kurtz's generosity to St Helens Hospital, the riotous man in Church Street who was nettled at being arrested, the Sutton horse in a fearful condition that had been worked for its own good, the Prescot Reporter's unusual argument why women should not have the vote and the new Saints club play one of their first matches but needed to lend their opposition two of their own players.
The St Helens military reserve of part-time soldiers comprised the 47th Battalion of the LRV (Lancashire Rifle Volunteers) and the 2nd LEV (Lancashire Engineer Volunteers). The latter had opened their drill hall in Croppers Hill in 1869 (pictured above) and on February 26th it served as the venue for the Engineers annual dinner. Over 300 members of the corps attended and enjoyed a meal that had been prepared for them by the Fleece Hotel.
Such dinners always ended with a series of what were often described as "loyal and patriotic" toasts and lots of shouting of "Hear, hear". The toasts given to the army, navy and reserve forces were predictably well received. And Captain Jones, as chairman of the dinner, spoke of the value to the country in having men able to use arms to defend "hearths and homes".
John Kitchen was one of the St Helens' overseers responsible for collecting rates' bills and he was a well-known figure in the town. On the 26th his daughter Ellen died after being scalded on her shoulder and breast at her home in Tontine Street. The accident had occurred on the previous day when the seven-year-old had run into the family's washhouse and fallen into a tub that a servant had filled with boiling water. Countless similar accidents have occurred in St Helens in the past, more commonly involving toddlers.
Many will still remember the Kurtz Ward in the old St Helens Hospital but probably will not have known why it bore that name. The ward was called after chemical manufacturer Andrew Kurtz who had been largely responsible for founding St Helens Cottage Hospital when it opened its doors in January 1873. A year later the Peasley Cross infirmary was still very small but its advantages over patients being cared for in their own homes were slowly being appreciated.
Currently the hospital committee was renting only half of the property where the wards were located and had no opportunity to expand their premises as patient demand grew in the future. This week it was announced that Andrew Kurtz had acquired 3½ acres of grounds adjacent to the house that he had previously bought and he was donating the lot to the people of St Helens.
His expenditure of £1,700 meant that the town would eventually be able to have a much larger hospital free of any rent charges. The St Helens Newspaper said of Kurtz: "His practical and unstinted generosity has thus placed the town in secure possession of an institution which may become the nucleus of another far more commensurate with the population, growth, and wants of such a place as St. Helens; and through the changes of the future it will be remembered that he was the first, by purse and example, to make the hospital idea a real and substantial actuality."
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 28th Robert Pendlebury – who described himself as a "surgeon dentist" – wrote in an advert that he was extending his practice to St Helens and "will have much pleasure in calling upon ladies and gentlemen at their residences, on the shortest notice." I suppose in those days dentists had little equipment to ply their trade and so they could easily visit their better-off patients in their own homes. Those who requested Pendlebury's services could leave their details at Miss Pickton's confectionery shop in Liverpool Road.
In 1870 a dentist had actually set up shop inside another St Helens confectioner's. His advert in the St Helens Newspaper at the time went: "TEETH! TEETH!! TEETH!!! In consequence of numerous applications at the principal Establishment, one from the firm of Eskell Surgeon Dentist, 2 Peter's Square, Manchester, will attend every Tuesday from 10 till 5, at Mr. Scrymgeour's Confectioner, 96, Church-street, St. Helens."
This week's Newspaper also reported a mysterious child desertion in Widnes. The 6-month-old infant had been found in a cart in Mill Lane and was very well dressed.
And the paper reviewed one of the earliest matches of the recently formed St Helens Football Club under the captaincy of W. D. Herman. The Saints had taken on the club of the Liverpool Rifle Brigade and the game was described as "pleasant and hard fought". The Rifle Brigade only had ten players and so St Helens lent them two of their own to make the match more even. The 1871 census had 19-year-old William Herman listed as a Middlesex-born analytical chemist boarding in the better-off district of St Ann's in Eccleston. By 1881 he was living in Hastings.
The Prescot Reporter was also published on the 28th and was worried about the possibility of talkative women getting the vote, writing: "No less then 217 members of Parliament, or one-third of the whole house, have pledged themselves to vote for women suffrage. This circumstance will inspire the strong-minded ladies with fresh energy in prosecuting their agitation.
"The prospect is hardly a pleasant one. The gift of speech is a natural peculiarity of woman, and the freedom which modern civilization has accorded to the sex has developed it alarmingly." The paper felt there was far too much waffling from men about political matters going on, adding: "…the evil cannot but increase if public deliberations become open to women as well."
This week's court cases included a charge against Richard Chad of being riotous and disorderly in Church Street. PC Gilmore said the accused had been fighting with another man and when he apprehended him Chad had tripped him up and thrown him down with some violence. However, as was so often the case, Mr Chad had a different perspective on things.
He claimed he had been assaulted without reason in the street and – as the Newspaper put it – was "rather nettled at finding himself in custody". Chad was also ten bob worse off as that was his fine, which probably made him even more nettled!
Guinea cat was a popular street game played by boys. A piece of wood, such as an old axe handle, was used to club a projectile as near as possible to the designated "cat". Not only was it dangerous to the boy acting as the target but also to others who might get in the way. John Glynn was this week fined 2s 6d and costs for playing guinea cat in the street, in which it was stated that a little girl had been inadvertently struck on her head.
There's no doubt that the combative and smooth-talking Thomas Swift was the man to hire to defend you if you found yourself in court. He got countless clients off charges in which they would otherwise have probably been convicted. But Swift pushed his luck this week when defending Isaac and John Ashton on a charge of cruelty to a horse.
Sgt Bee told the court that he had seen the two men working the animal in Sutton. He said the horse's hind legs were in a "fearful condition" and had been "much swollen and filled with great cracks". However, Thomas Swift's argument was that the condition of the horse's legs was improving and that working the animal had stimulated its convalescence.
As the Newspaper put it in their report, "The defence, therefore, was that it was rather humanity than cruelty to the horse to work it as the defendants had worked it". Swift even had a certificate from a vet to support his point. But the magistrates did not buy the argument and fined the owner of the horse, John Ashton, 10 shillings, although the case against Isaac was dismissed.
If you couldn't afford a horse to cart your goods around St Helens, you bought a donkey. In another case James Ranson was charged with working his donkey while it was in an unfit state. The animal had been drawing a load weighing 22 cwt. without any shoes on its hind legs and with cracked shoes on its forefeet. Surprisingly, Ranson was discharged with a caution.
The separate carriages in trains led to a lot of trouble, particularly for women travelling on their own. In 1870 the Daily Telegraph, under the heading of "Scoundrels in Railway Trains", ran a series of letters about the problems that female passengers experienced from insulting and molesting men.
There was nowhere for women to go if they had a problem with a male passenger and men could also be on the receiving end of some idiot's behaviour. This week James Marsh was charged with assaulting John Rigby on a train travelling from Wigan to Rainford Junction. The pair were employed at Crow Orchard Colliery in Skelmersdale and Rigby worked there as an official.
As soon as he entered the carriage with his wife, Marsh started calling Rigby what was described as "foul" names and he ridiculed him throughout the journey in front of other passengers. Upon the train nearing Rainford, Marsh was said to have grabbed Rigby's head and threatened him. Several witnesses collaborated his account but solicitor Thomas Swift played the trouble down, claiming it had just been a "piece of course joking" and said the magistrates should not get involved in such cases. However, Swift (unusually) lost again and a fine of 20 shillings and costs was still imposed on his client.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the first annual meeting of St Helens Hospital, anger over the cost of a foundation stone laying, the workhouse portress receives a pay rise and a debate concludes that smoking is not bad for your health.
Such dinners always ended with a series of what were often described as "loyal and patriotic" toasts and lots of shouting of "Hear, hear". The toasts given to the army, navy and reserve forces were predictably well received. And Captain Jones, as chairman of the dinner, spoke of the value to the country in having men able to use arms to defend "hearths and homes".
John Kitchen was one of the St Helens' overseers responsible for collecting rates' bills and he was a well-known figure in the town. On the 26th his daughter Ellen died after being scalded on her shoulder and breast at her home in Tontine Street. The accident had occurred on the previous day when the seven-year-old had run into the family's washhouse and fallen into a tub that a servant had filled with boiling water. Countless similar accidents have occurred in St Helens in the past, more commonly involving toddlers.
Many will still remember the Kurtz Ward in the old St Helens Hospital but probably will not have known why it bore that name. The ward was called after chemical manufacturer Andrew Kurtz who had been largely responsible for founding St Helens Cottage Hospital when it opened its doors in January 1873. A year later the Peasley Cross infirmary was still very small but its advantages over patients being cared for in their own homes were slowly being appreciated.
Currently the hospital committee was renting only half of the property where the wards were located and had no opportunity to expand their premises as patient demand grew in the future. This week it was announced that Andrew Kurtz had acquired 3½ acres of grounds adjacent to the house that he had previously bought and he was donating the lot to the people of St Helens.
His expenditure of £1,700 meant that the town would eventually be able to have a much larger hospital free of any rent charges. The St Helens Newspaper said of Kurtz: "His practical and unstinted generosity has thus placed the town in secure possession of an institution which may become the nucleus of another far more commensurate with the population, growth, and wants of such a place as St. Helens; and through the changes of the future it will be remembered that he was the first, by purse and example, to make the hospital idea a real and substantial actuality."
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 28th Robert Pendlebury – who described himself as a "surgeon dentist" – wrote in an advert that he was extending his practice to St Helens and "will have much pleasure in calling upon ladies and gentlemen at their residences, on the shortest notice." I suppose in those days dentists had little equipment to ply their trade and so they could easily visit their better-off patients in their own homes. Those who requested Pendlebury's services could leave their details at Miss Pickton's confectionery shop in Liverpool Road.
In 1870 a dentist had actually set up shop inside another St Helens confectioner's. His advert in the St Helens Newspaper at the time went: "TEETH! TEETH!! TEETH!!! In consequence of numerous applications at the principal Establishment, one from the firm of Eskell Surgeon Dentist, 2 Peter's Square, Manchester, will attend every Tuesday from 10 till 5, at Mr. Scrymgeour's Confectioner, 96, Church-street, St. Helens."
This week's Newspaper also reported a mysterious child desertion in Widnes. The 6-month-old infant had been found in a cart in Mill Lane and was very well dressed.
And the paper reviewed one of the earliest matches of the recently formed St Helens Football Club under the captaincy of W. D. Herman. The Saints had taken on the club of the Liverpool Rifle Brigade and the game was described as "pleasant and hard fought". The Rifle Brigade only had ten players and so St Helens lent them two of their own to make the match more even. The 1871 census had 19-year-old William Herman listed as a Middlesex-born analytical chemist boarding in the better-off district of St Ann's in Eccleston. By 1881 he was living in Hastings.
The Prescot Reporter was also published on the 28th and was worried about the possibility of talkative women getting the vote, writing: "No less then 217 members of Parliament, or one-third of the whole house, have pledged themselves to vote for women suffrage. This circumstance will inspire the strong-minded ladies with fresh energy in prosecuting their agitation.
"The prospect is hardly a pleasant one. The gift of speech is a natural peculiarity of woman, and the freedom which modern civilization has accorded to the sex has developed it alarmingly." The paper felt there was far too much waffling from men about political matters going on, adding: "…the evil cannot but increase if public deliberations become open to women as well."
This week's court cases included a charge against Richard Chad of being riotous and disorderly in Church Street. PC Gilmore said the accused had been fighting with another man and when he apprehended him Chad had tripped him up and thrown him down with some violence. However, as was so often the case, Mr Chad had a different perspective on things.
He claimed he had been assaulted without reason in the street and – as the Newspaper put it – was "rather nettled at finding himself in custody". Chad was also ten bob worse off as that was his fine, which probably made him even more nettled!
Guinea cat was a popular street game played by boys. A piece of wood, such as an old axe handle, was used to club a projectile as near as possible to the designated "cat". Not only was it dangerous to the boy acting as the target but also to others who might get in the way. John Glynn was this week fined 2s 6d and costs for playing guinea cat in the street, in which it was stated that a little girl had been inadvertently struck on her head.
There's no doubt that the combative and smooth-talking Thomas Swift was the man to hire to defend you if you found yourself in court. He got countless clients off charges in which they would otherwise have probably been convicted. But Swift pushed his luck this week when defending Isaac and John Ashton on a charge of cruelty to a horse.
Sgt Bee told the court that he had seen the two men working the animal in Sutton. He said the horse's hind legs were in a "fearful condition" and had been "much swollen and filled with great cracks". However, Thomas Swift's argument was that the condition of the horse's legs was improving and that working the animal had stimulated its convalescence.
As the Newspaper put it in their report, "The defence, therefore, was that it was rather humanity than cruelty to the horse to work it as the defendants had worked it". Swift even had a certificate from a vet to support his point. But the magistrates did not buy the argument and fined the owner of the horse, John Ashton, 10 shillings, although the case against Isaac was dismissed.
If you couldn't afford a horse to cart your goods around St Helens, you bought a donkey. In another case James Ranson was charged with working his donkey while it was in an unfit state. The animal had been drawing a load weighing 22 cwt. without any shoes on its hind legs and with cracked shoes on its forefeet. Surprisingly, Ranson was discharged with a caution.
The separate carriages in trains led to a lot of trouble, particularly for women travelling on their own. In 1870 the Daily Telegraph, under the heading of "Scoundrels in Railway Trains", ran a series of letters about the problems that female passengers experienced from insulting and molesting men.
There was nowhere for women to go if they had a problem with a male passenger and men could also be on the receiving end of some idiot's behaviour. This week James Marsh was charged with assaulting John Rigby on a train travelling from Wigan to Rainford Junction. The pair were employed at Crow Orchard Colliery in Skelmersdale and Rigby worked there as an official.
As soon as he entered the carriage with his wife, Marsh started calling Rigby what was described as "foul" names and he ridiculed him throughout the journey in front of other passengers. Upon the train nearing Rainford, Marsh was said to have grabbed Rigby's head and threatened him. Several witnesses collaborated his account but solicitor Thomas Swift played the trouble down, claiming it had just been a "piece of course joking" and said the magistrates should not get involved in such cases. However, Swift (unusually) lost again and a fine of 20 shillings and costs was still imposed on his client.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the first annual meeting of St Helens Hospital, anger over the cost of a foundation stone laying, the workhouse portress receives a pay rise and a debate concludes that smoking is not bad for your health.
This week's many stories include Andrew Kurtz's generosity to St Helens Hospital, the riotous man in Church Street who was nettled at being arrested, the Sutton horse in a fearful condition that had been worked for its own good, the Prescot Reporter's unusual argument why women should not have the vote and the new Saints club play one of their first matches but needed to lend their opposition two of their own players.
The St Helens military reserve of part-time soldiers comprised the 47th Battalion of the LRV (Lancashire Rifle Volunteers) and the 2nd LEV (Lancashire Engineer Volunteers).
The latter had opened their drill hall in Croppers Hill in 1869 (pictured above) and on February 26th it served as the venue for the Engineers annual dinner.
Over 300 members of the corps attended and enjoyed a meal that had been prepared for them by the Fleece Hotel.
Such dinners always ended with a series of what were often described as "loyal and patriotic" toasts and lots of shouting of "Hear, hear".
The toasts given to the army, navy and reserve forces were predictably well received.
And Captain Jones, as chairman of the dinner, spoke of the value to the country in having men able to use arms to defend "hearths and homes".
John Kitchen was one of the St Helens' overseers responsible for collecting rates' bills and he was a well-known figure in the town.
On the 26th his daughter Ellen died after being scalded on her shoulder and breast at her home in Tontine Street.
The accident had occurred on the previous day when the seven-year-old had run into the family's washhouse and fallen into a tub that a servant had filled with boiling water.
Countless similar accidents have occurred in St Helens in the past, more commonly involving toddlers.
Many will still remember the Kurtz Ward in the old St Helens Hospital but probably will not have known why it bore that name.
The ward was called after chemical manufacturer Andrew Kurtz who had been largely responsible for founding St Helens Cottage Hospital when it opened its doors in January 1873.
A year later the Peasley Cross infirmary was still very small but its advantages over patients being cared for in their own homes were slowly being appreciated.
Currently the hospital committee was renting only half of the property where the wards were located and had no opportunity to expand their premises as patient demand grew in the future.
This week it was announced that Andrew Kurtz had acquired 3½ acres of grounds adjacent to the house that he had previously bought and he was donating the lot to the people of St Helens.
His expenditure of £1,700 meant that the town would eventually be able to have a much larger hospital free of any rent charges. The St Helens Newspaper said of Kurtz:
"His practical and unstinted generosity has thus placed the town in secure possession of an institution which may become the nucleus of another far more commensurate with the population, growth, and wants of such a place as St. Helens; and through the changes of the future it will be remembered that he was the first, by purse and example, to make the hospital idea a real and substantial actuality."
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 28th Robert Pendlebury – who described himself as a "surgeon dentist" – wrote in an advert that he was extending his practice to St Helens and "will have much pleasure in calling upon ladies and gentlemen at their residences, on the shortest notice."
I suppose in those days dentists had little equipment to ply their trade and so they could easily visit their better-off patients in their own homes.
Those who requested Pendlebury's services could leave their details at Miss Pickton's confectionery shop in Liverpool Road.
In 1870 a dentist had actually set up shop inside another St Helens confectioner's. His advert in the St Helens Newspaper at the time went:
"TEETH! TEETH!! TEETH!!! In consequence of numerous applications at the principal Establishment, one from the firm of Eskell Surgeon Dentist, 2 Peter's Square, Manchester, will attend every Tuesday from 10 till 5, at Mr. Scrymgeour's Confectioner, 96, Church-street, St. Helens."
This week's Newspaper also reported a mysterious child desertion in Widnes. The 6-month-old infant had been found in a cart in Mill Lane and was very well dressed.
And the paper reviewed one of the earliest matches of the recently formed St Helens Football Club under the captaincy of W. D. Herman.
The Saints had taken on the club of the Liverpool Rifle Brigade and the game was described as "pleasant and hard fought".
The Rifle Brigade only had ten players and so St Helens lent them two of their own to make the match more even.
The 1871 census had 19-year-old William Herman listed as a Middlesex-born analytical chemist boarding in the better-off district of St Ann's in Eccleston. By 1881 he was living in Hastings.
The Prescot Reporter was also published on the 28th and was worried about the possibility of talkative women getting the vote, writing:
"No less then 217 members of Parliament, or one-third of the whole house, have pledged themselves to vote for women suffrage. This circumstance will inspire the strong-minded ladies with fresh energy in prosecuting their agitation.
"The prospect is hardly a pleasant one. The gift of speech is a natural peculiarity of woman, and the freedom which modern civilization has accorded to the sex has developed it alarmingly."
The paper felt there was far too much waffling from men about political matters going on, adding: "…the evil cannot but increase if public deliberations become open to women as well."
This week's court cases included a charge against Richard Chad of being riotous and disorderly in Church Street.
PC Gilmore said the accused had been fighting with another man and when he apprehended him Chad had tripped him up and thrown him down with some violence.
However, as was so often the case, Mr Chad had a different perspective on things.
He claimed he had been assaulted without reason in the street and – as the Newspaper put it – was "rather nettled at finding himself in custody".
Chad was also ten bob worse off as that was his fine, which probably made him even more nettled!
Guinea cat was a popular street game played by boys. A piece of wood, such as an old axe handle, was used to club a projectile as near as possible to the designated "cat".
Not only was it dangerous to the boy acting as the target but also to others who might get in the way.
John Glynn was this week fined 2s 6d and costs for playing guinea cat in the street, in which it was stated that a little girl had been inadvertently struck on her head.
There's no doubt that the combative and smooth-talking Thomas Swift was the man to hire to defend you if you found yourself in court.
He got countless clients off charges in which they would otherwise have probably been convicted.
But Swift pushed his luck this week when defending Isaac and John Ashton on a charge of cruelty to a horse.
Sgt Bee told the court that he had seen the two men working the animal in Sutton.
He said the horse's hind legs were in a "fearful condition" and had been "much swollen and filled with great cracks".
However, Thomas Swift's argument was that the condition of the horse's legs was improving and that working the animal had stimulated its convalescence.
As the Newspaper put it in their report, "The defence, therefore, was that it was rather humanity than cruelty to the horse to work it as the defendants had worked it". Swift even had a certificate from a vet to support his point.
But the magistrates did not buy the argument and fined the owner of the horse, John Ashton, 10 shillings, although the case against Isaac was dismissed.
If you couldn't afford a horse to cart your goods around St Helens, you bought a donkey.
In another case James Ranson was charged with working his donkey while it was in an unfit state.
The animal had been drawing a load weighing 22 cwt. without any shoes on its hind legs and with cracked shoes on its forefeet. Surprisingly, Ranson was discharged with a caution.
The separate carriages in trains led to a lot of trouble, particularly for women travelling on their own.
In 1870 the Daily Telegraph, under the heading of "Scoundrels in Railway Trains", ran a series of letters about the problems that female passengers experienced from insulting and molesting men.
There was nowhere for women to go if they had a problem with a male passenger and men could also be on the receiving end of some idiot's behaviour.
This week James Marsh was charged with assaulting John Rigby on a train travelling from Wigan to Rainford Junction.
The pair were employed at Crow Orchard Colliery in Skelmersdale and Rigby worked there as an official.
As soon as he entered the carriage with his wife, Marsh started calling Rigby what was described as "foul" names and he ridiculed him throughout the journey in front of other passengers.
Upon the train nearing Rainford, Marsh was said to have grabbed Rigby's head and threatened him.
Several witnesses collaborated his account but solicitor Thomas Swift played the trouble down, claiming it had just been a "piece of course joking" and said the magistrates should not get involved in such cases.
However, Swift (unusually) lost again and a fine of 20 shillings and costs was still imposed on his client.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the first annual meeting of St Helens Hospital, anger over the cost of a foundation stone laying, the workhouse portress receives a pay rise and a debate concludes that smoking is not bad for your health.
The St Helens military reserve of part-time soldiers comprised the 47th Battalion of the LRV (Lancashire Rifle Volunteers) and the 2nd LEV (Lancashire Engineer Volunteers).
Over 300 members of the corps attended and enjoyed a meal that had been prepared for them by the Fleece Hotel.
Such dinners always ended with a series of what were often described as "loyal and patriotic" toasts and lots of shouting of "Hear, hear".
The toasts given to the army, navy and reserve forces were predictably well received.
And Captain Jones, as chairman of the dinner, spoke of the value to the country in having men able to use arms to defend "hearths and homes".
John Kitchen was one of the St Helens' overseers responsible for collecting rates' bills and he was a well-known figure in the town.
On the 26th his daughter Ellen died after being scalded on her shoulder and breast at her home in Tontine Street.
The accident had occurred on the previous day when the seven-year-old had run into the family's washhouse and fallen into a tub that a servant had filled with boiling water.
Countless similar accidents have occurred in St Helens in the past, more commonly involving toddlers.
Many will still remember the Kurtz Ward in the old St Helens Hospital but probably will not have known why it bore that name.
The ward was called after chemical manufacturer Andrew Kurtz who had been largely responsible for founding St Helens Cottage Hospital when it opened its doors in January 1873.
A year later the Peasley Cross infirmary was still very small but its advantages over patients being cared for in their own homes were slowly being appreciated.
Currently the hospital committee was renting only half of the property where the wards were located and had no opportunity to expand their premises as patient demand grew in the future.
This week it was announced that Andrew Kurtz had acquired 3½ acres of grounds adjacent to the house that he had previously bought and he was donating the lot to the people of St Helens.
His expenditure of £1,700 meant that the town would eventually be able to have a much larger hospital free of any rent charges. The St Helens Newspaper said of Kurtz:
"His practical and unstinted generosity has thus placed the town in secure possession of an institution which may become the nucleus of another far more commensurate with the population, growth, and wants of such a place as St. Helens; and through the changes of the future it will be remembered that he was the first, by purse and example, to make the hospital idea a real and substantial actuality."
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 28th Robert Pendlebury – who described himself as a "surgeon dentist" – wrote in an advert that he was extending his practice to St Helens and "will have much pleasure in calling upon ladies and gentlemen at their residences, on the shortest notice."
I suppose in those days dentists had little equipment to ply their trade and so they could easily visit their better-off patients in their own homes.
Those who requested Pendlebury's services could leave their details at Miss Pickton's confectionery shop in Liverpool Road.
In 1870 a dentist had actually set up shop inside another St Helens confectioner's. His advert in the St Helens Newspaper at the time went:
"TEETH! TEETH!! TEETH!!! In consequence of numerous applications at the principal Establishment, one from the firm of Eskell Surgeon Dentist, 2 Peter's Square, Manchester, will attend every Tuesday from 10 till 5, at Mr. Scrymgeour's Confectioner, 96, Church-street, St. Helens."
This week's Newspaper also reported a mysterious child desertion in Widnes. The 6-month-old infant had been found in a cart in Mill Lane and was very well dressed.
And the paper reviewed one of the earliest matches of the recently formed St Helens Football Club under the captaincy of W. D. Herman.
The Saints had taken on the club of the Liverpool Rifle Brigade and the game was described as "pleasant and hard fought".
The Rifle Brigade only had ten players and so St Helens lent them two of their own to make the match more even.
The 1871 census had 19-year-old William Herman listed as a Middlesex-born analytical chemist boarding in the better-off district of St Ann's in Eccleston. By 1881 he was living in Hastings.
The Prescot Reporter was also published on the 28th and was worried about the possibility of talkative women getting the vote, writing:
"No less then 217 members of Parliament, or one-third of the whole house, have pledged themselves to vote for women suffrage. This circumstance will inspire the strong-minded ladies with fresh energy in prosecuting their agitation.
"The prospect is hardly a pleasant one. The gift of speech is a natural peculiarity of woman, and the freedom which modern civilization has accorded to the sex has developed it alarmingly."
The paper felt there was far too much waffling from men about political matters going on, adding: "…the evil cannot but increase if public deliberations become open to women as well."
This week's court cases included a charge against Richard Chad of being riotous and disorderly in Church Street.
PC Gilmore said the accused had been fighting with another man and when he apprehended him Chad had tripped him up and thrown him down with some violence.
However, as was so often the case, Mr Chad had a different perspective on things.
He claimed he had been assaulted without reason in the street and – as the Newspaper put it – was "rather nettled at finding himself in custody".
Chad was also ten bob worse off as that was his fine, which probably made him even more nettled!
Guinea cat was a popular street game played by boys. A piece of wood, such as an old axe handle, was used to club a projectile as near as possible to the designated "cat".
Not only was it dangerous to the boy acting as the target but also to others who might get in the way.
John Glynn was this week fined 2s 6d and costs for playing guinea cat in the street, in which it was stated that a little girl had been inadvertently struck on her head.
There's no doubt that the combative and smooth-talking Thomas Swift was the man to hire to defend you if you found yourself in court.
He got countless clients off charges in which they would otherwise have probably been convicted.
But Swift pushed his luck this week when defending Isaac and John Ashton on a charge of cruelty to a horse.
Sgt Bee told the court that he had seen the two men working the animal in Sutton.
He said the horse's hind legs were in a "fearful condition" and had been "much swollen and filled with great cracks".
However, Thomas Swift's argument was that the condition of the horse's legs was improving and that working the animal had stimulated its convalescence.
As the Newspaper put it in their report, "The defence, therefore, was that it was rather humanity than cruelty to the horse to work it as the defendants had worked it". Swift even had a certificate from a vet to support his point.
But the magistrates did not buy the argument and fined the owner of the horse, John Ashton, 10 shillings, although the case against Isaac was dismissed.
If you couldn't afford a horse to cart your goods around St Helens, you bought a donkey.
In another case James Ranson was charged with working his donkey while it was in an unfit state.
The animal had been drawing a load weighing 22 cwt. without any shoes on its hind legs and with cracked shoes on its forefeet. Surprisingly, Ranson was discharged with a caution.
The separate carriages in trains led to a lot of trouble, particularly for women travelling on their own.
In 1870 the Daily Telegraph, under the heading of "Scoundrels in Railway Trains", ran a series of letters about the problems that female passengers experienced from insulting and molesting men.
There was nowhere for women to go if they had a problem with a male passenger and men could also be on the receiving end of some idiot's behaviour.
This week James Marsh was charged with assaulting John Rigby on a train travelling from Wigan to Rainford Junction.
The pair were employed at Crow Orchard Colliery in Skelmersdale and Rigby worked there as an official.
As soon as he entered the carriage with his wife, Marsh started calling Rigby what was described as "foul" names and he ridiculed him throughout the journey in front of other passengers.
Upon the train nearing Rainford, Marsh was said to have grabbed Rigby's head and threatened him.
Several witnesses collaborated his account but solicitor Thomas Swift played the trouble down, claiming it had just been a "piece of course joking" and said the magistrates should not get involved in such cases.
However, Swift (unusually) lost again and a fine of 20 shillings and costs was still imposed on his client.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the first annual meeting of St Helens Hospital, anger over the cost of a foundation stone laying, the workhouse portress receives a pay rise and a debate concludes that smoking is not bad for your health.