150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (31st MAY - 6th JUNE 1871)
This week's stories include reflections on the first bank holiday in St Helens, the wandering cows of Ashton, the illegal furniture remover from North Road, the villas for rent at St Ann's in Eccleston and the extraordinary suicide of a Rainford girl.
St Helens was returning to normal this week after the first ever Bank Holiday had been held under a new law. That had been Whit Monday and the newly passed legislation also enabled the banks to lawfully close on Easter Monday, August 1st and Boxing Day – in addition to Christmas Day. Previously banks had been legally obliged to remain open throughout the week to deal with bills of exchange that fell due on the day in question. However the creation of bank holidays did not mean that workers necessarily got a day off.
The Bank Holiday Act simply removed a legal impediment to banks closing their doors on what would normally be a working day. The legislation did not compel any business to close (and if they did their workers would not be paid). Many shops in St Helens were afraid of losing trade if they shut for the day and their rival establishment down the road didn't. However the St Helens Newspaper wrote how things were changing:
"Whit-Monday, even in St. Helens, is gradually becoming a general holiday. For some years there has been a degree of hesitancy felt by some of our tradesmen with reference to closing on Whit Monday. We are glad to find that the closing movement is gaining every year, and we have little doubt of its ultimately being a general holiday in St. Helens, as it is in most of the towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire."
Violence against a police officer usually meant a fine in 1871 and only a prison sentence if the fine could not be paid. So when three circus lads appeared at the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 31st charged with a savage assault on PC McLaren, one was acquitted and the other two were fined £2 and £3. After the officer had asked them to be less noisy, Thomas Neland and Samuel Smith knocked the constable down and "kicked his face until he was scarcely recognisable".
Speaking in Liverpool on June 1st at a public meeting to discuss the building of new workmen's houses, Lord Derby said of the atmosphere in the city: "We are not altogether free from smoke, certainly, but as compared with Wigan or St. Helen's, or most of the towns situated on the coalfield, we are relatively clear and pure." There was certainly plenty of smoke around Greenbank. That was the predominantly Irish district around Liverpool Road that had its own chemical industry, pottery and tannery.
These works had been situated to the south to take advantage of the St Helens Canal and on the 2nd, Greenbank Tannery was advertised for sale in the Liverpool Mercury. "These works are excellently situated, and may be readily converted into plate glass, glass bottle, alkali, or other works", said the ad. Other local tanneries included Sutton Tannery in Sutton Heath and Houghwood at Billinge, where the golf course now is.
One of my favourite wandering cow stories has to be the beast that decided to tramp eight miles to Aughton from James Birchall's farm in Rainford before finally being apprehended. I reckon it was making a break for Southport and the seaside! Wandering cows could be a serious danger to road users and on the 2nd a number of cattle owners from Ashton-in-Makerfield were summoned to court, as described by the Wigan Observer:
"At the county police court Wigan, on Friday, John Cunliffe, Richard Marsh, John Ashton, and James Heaton, of Ashton, were charged with allowing cattle to stray on highways in Ashton. Mr. Superintendent Clarkson stated that great complaints were made throughout the district in consequence of cattle straying on highways.
"He had caused the defendants to be summoned simply for the purpose of it being known publicly that this would not be permitted, and that the law must be obeyed. He did not in these cases ask for penalties, but hoped the magistrates would caution the defendants against repeating the offence. Mr. Eckersley (the chairman) said the cases would be dismissed, and the justices hoped that the defendants would take warning and be careful not to offend again."
Newton Races (pictured above) was being held in a couple of weeks and on the 5th the letting of sites for drinking bars and booths took place. Publicans and fairground folk and others had to go to the Grandstand on Newton Racecourse at 11am in order to agree their site and cough up their rent in advance. The vicar of St Helens was once quoted as saying: "Very many poor sinners have confessed to me on their death beds that they commenced their wicked career at Newton races". I'm not sure exactly what he meant but the races were renowned for drunken behaviour and a magnet for pickpockets and other criminals. Horse racing had taken place on Newton Common from at least 1678 and continued until 1899 when Lord Newton accepted an offer from a syndicate to rent land in Haydock to establish a new course that we know as Haydock Park.
The St Helens Newspaper was published on the 3rd and contained this advert: "TRAPS! TRAPS!! TRAPS!!! “Money saved is money gained!” If you want your Traps neatly, cheaply, and promptly repaired, go to: WALTER CLARKE’S, New Coach Building Establishment, at the Running Horses Inn, Bridge Street, St. Helens”.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 5th, Patrick Mullen from Victoria Street – near North Road – was summoned for attempting to defraud his landlord, James Robertshaw. That was by secretly moving his furniture out of the house while owing Robertshaw £1 10s 6d rent. Poor people had few possessions in those days and Mullen was probably expecting his landlord to obtain a court order allowing him to enter his tenant's home and seize property in lieu of rent.
So the 52-year-old chemical labourer decided to stash his possessions elsewhere. However what he had done was a foolish act, as it compounded his troubles. The magistrates ordered Mullen to pay £2 and costs or go to prison for a month. As he hadn't been able to pay the rent, there was every chance that Mullen would have ended up in Kirkdale Gaol.
During the evening of the 6th the extraordinary suicide of a Rainford girl took place at Croston, near Leyland. Alice Hart was from School Brow in Rainford, where her father Robert was a wheelwright. That is now part of Church Road but it used to be the name of the road leading from Pasture Lane to the Derby Arms. The 18-year-old was a domestic servant to a doctor's practice in Croston but she had been back home in Rainford just five weeks earlier. Then Alice had been in good spirits. At her inquest her friend Mary Farington said:
"I knew the deceased. On Tuesday night last, about seven o’clock, she came to me and said, “Mary, I have been taking poison.” I said, “Get out with you.” She said, “I have.” I said, “What have you been taking it for?” and she said, “For fun.” She said her legs were mazy. She then left me. She laughed very hard when she told me. I said, “Perhaps you have been taking the rum bottle?”
"She was different in her manner than what she had seemed before. She was sometimes queer in her talk, and was more lively than she had been for some time. I never heard her threaten to make herself away. She had a queer temper sometimes." The jury returned the following verdict: "That the deceased died from the effects of having taken strychnine; but whether she took the poison for the purpose of destroying herself, or not, there is not sufficient evidence to show."
This advert was published in the Liverpool Mercury on the 6th: "To be Let. Semi-detached VILLAS, situated at St. Ann's, Eccleston, near St. Helen's, containing drawing room, dining room, kitchen, scullery, cellars, three bedrooms, bathroom, and water closet; garden back and front. Within two minutes of St. Helen's and Liverpool omnibus. Rent £25 per annum. – Apply to Mr. James Prescot, St. Ann's."
That was a lot of money and so only the well heeled would have been interested in living in the new residential district of St Ann's. Their neighbours would have included a candlemaker, a builder, landowner, druggist, manufacturing chemist, mining engineer, ironmonger, corn dealer, curate, commercial clerk, pawnbroker and teacher.
And finally Skelmersdale was only a small mining village in 1871 but – despite the rural life – it was still having its troubles, as this letter published in the Liverpool Mercury this week reveals: "Gentlemen, We have through your columns been made acquainted with the fearful [yellow fever] epidemic that has swept off its thousands of valuable lives at Buenos Ayres. I fully expect, unless some remedial measures are adopted, we shall have a repetition of that awful visitation on a small scale at Skelmersdale.
"The heat of summer is fast approaching; its roadside ditches, in some instances but a few feet from the houses, are still full of stagnant filth from the overflow of pigsties and middens. There seems to be no controlling power here. Any man can have as many pigs and sties as his inclination and circumstances will permit. The rain water tubs are neatly all empty, and in such as are not, the water in them has become bad through the depositing of the larvae of a fly, the taking of which into the system causes prostration of the vital powers, producing weakness, fever, and consumption.
"The inhabitants are in a great measure compelled to draw their present supply from the ponds, which are now being covered with a green scum, and is not much better than ditch water. No wonder that small-pox and fever are on the increase, or that “the mourners go about the street.” Can nothing be done for the poor collier? Skelmersdale is a wealth producing country. The coalpit proprietors are adding largely to their wealth; yet the priest and the Levite, in the bodies of the guardian and the coal-owner, see all, “and pass by on the other side.” Oh, that the good Samaritan may soon journey that way, and have compassion on him. – Yours, &c., R. L."
Next week's stories will include the 13-year-old girl imprisoned for theft, the unwanted kissing on the streets of Prescot, the outspoken solicitor Thomas Swift is sued for slander and the new St Helens pubs without beer.
St Helens was returning to normal this week after the first ever Bank Holiday had been held under a new law. That had been Whit Monday and the newly passed legislation also enabled the banks to lawfully close on Easter Monday, August 1st and Boxing Day – in addition to Christmas Day. Previously banks had been legally obliged to remain open throughout the week to deal with bills of exchange that fell due on the day in question. However the creation of bank holidays did not mean that workers necessarily got a day off.
The Bank Holiday Act simply removed a legal impediment to banks closing their doors on what would normally be a working day. The legislation did not compel any business to close (and if they did their workers would not be paid). Many shops in St Helens were afraid of losing trade if they shut for the day and their rival establishment down the road didn't. However the St Helens Newspaper wrote how things were changing:
"Whit-Monday, even in St. Helens, is gradually becoming a general holiday. For some years there has been a degree of hesitancy felt by some of our tradesmen with reference to closing on Whit Monday. We are glad to find that the closing movement is gaining every year, and we have little doubt of its ultimately being a general holiday in St. Helens, as it is in most of the towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire."
Violence against a police officer usually meant a fine in 1871 and only a prison sentence if the fine could not be paid. So when three circus lads appeared at the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 31st charged with a savage assault on PC McLaren, one was acquitted and the other two were fined £2 and £3. After the officer had asked them to be less noisy, Thomas Neland and Samuel Smith knocked the constable down and "kicked his face until he was scarcely recognisable".
Speaking in Liverpool on June 1st at a public meeting to discuss the building of new workmen's houses, Lord Derby said of the atmosphere in the city: "We are not altogether free from smoke, certainly, but as compared with Wigan or St. Helen's, or most of the towns situated on the coalfield, we are relatively clear and pure." There was certainly plenty of smoke around Greenbank. That was the predominantly Irish district around Liverpool Road that had its own chemical industry, pottery and tannery.
These works had been situated to the south to take advantage of the St Helens Canal and on the 2nd, Greenbank Tannery was advertised for sale in the Liverpool Mercury. "These works are excellently situated, and may be readily converted into plate glass, glass bottle, alkali, or other works", said the ad. Other local tanneries included Sutton Tannery in Sutton Heath and Houghwood at Billinge, where the golf course now is.
One of my favourite wandering cow stories has to be the beast that decided to tramp eight miles to Aughton from James Birchall's farm in Rainford before finally being apprehended. I reckon it was making a break for Southport and the seaside! Wandering cows could be a serious danger to road users and on the 2nd a number of cattle owners from Ashton-in-Makerfield were summoned to court, as described by the Wigan Observer:
"At the county police court Wigan, on Friday, John Cunliffe, Richard Marsh, John Ashton, and James Heaton, of Ashton, were charged with allowing cattle to stray on highways in Ashton. Mr. Superintendent Clarkson stated that great complaints were made throughout the district in consequence of cattle straying on highways.
"He had caused the defendants to be summoned simply for the purpose of it being known publicly that this would not be permitted, and that the law must be obeyed. He did not in these cases ask for penalties, but hoped the magistrates would caution the defendants against repeating the offence. Mr. Eckersley (the chairman) said the cases would be dismissed, and the justices hoped that the defendants would take warning and be careful not to offend again."
The St Helens Newspaper was published on the 3rd and contained this advert: "TRAPS! TRAPS!! TRAPS!!! “Money saved is money gained!” If you want your Traps neatly, cheaply, and promptly repaired, go to: WALTER CLARKE’S, New Coach Building Establishment, at the Running Horses Inn, Bridge Street, St. Helens”.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 5th, Patrick Mullen from Victoria Street – near North Road – was summoned for attempting to defraud his landlord, James Robertshaw. That was by secretly moving his furniture out of the house while owing Robertshaw £1 10s 6d rent. Poor people had few possessions in those days and Mullen was probably expecting his landlord to obtain a court order allowing him to enter his tenant's home and seize property in lieu of rent.
So the 52-year-old chemical labourer decided to stash his possessions elsewhere. However what he had done was a foolish act, as it compounded his troubles. The magistrates ordered Mullen to pay £2 and costs or go to prison for a month. As he hadn't been able to pay the rent, there was every chance that Mullen would have ended up in Kirkdale Gaol.
During the evening of the 6th the extraordinary suicide of a Rainford girl took place at Croston, near Leyland. Alice Hart was from School Brow in Rainford, where her father Robert was a wheelwright. That is now part of Church Road but it used to be the name of the road leading from Pasture Lane to the Derby Arms. The 18-year-old was a domestic servant to a doctor's practice in Croston but she had been back home in Rainford just five weeks earlier. Then Alice had been in good spirits. At her inquest her friend Mary Farington said:
"I knew the deceased. On Tuesday night last, about seven o’clock, she came to me and said, “Mary, I have been taking poison.” I said, “Get out with you.” She said, “I have.” I said, “What have you been taking it for?” and she said, “For fun.” She said her legs were mazy. She then left me. She laughed very hard when she told me. I said, “Perhaps you have been taking the rum bottle?”
"She was different in her manner than what she had seemed before. She was sometimes queer in her talk, and was more lively than she had been for some time. I never heard her threaten to make herself away. She had a queer temper sometimes." The jury returned the following verdict: "That the deceased died from the effects of having taken strychnine; but whether she took the poison for the purpose of destroying herself, or not, there is not sufficient evidence to show."
This advert was published in the Liverpool Mercury on the 6th: "To be Let. Semi-detached VILLAS, situated at St. Ann's, Eccleston, near St. Helen's, containing drawing room, dining room, kitchen, scullery, cellars, three bedrooms, bathroom, and water closet; garden back and front. Within two minutes of St. Helen's and Liverpool omnibus. Rent £25 per annum. – Apply to Mr. James Prescot, St. Ann's."
That was a lot of money and so only the well heeled would have been interested in living in the new residential district of St Ann's. Their neighbours would have included a candlemaker, a builder, landowner, druggist, manufacturing chemist, mining engineer, ironmonger, corn dealer, curate, commercial clerk, pawnbroker and teacher.
And finally Skelmersdale was only a small mining village in 1871 but – despite the rural life – it was still having its troubles, as this letter published in the Liverpool Mercury this week reveals: "Gentlemen, We have through your columns been made acquainted with the fearful [yellow fever] epidemic that has swept off its thousands of valuable lives at Buenos Ayres. I fully expect, unless some remedial measures are adopted, we shall have a repetition of that awful visitation on a small scale at Skelmersdale.
"The heat of summer is fast approaching; its roadside ditches, in some instances but a few feet from the houses, are still full of stagnant filth from the overflow of pigsties and middens. There seems to be no controlling power here. Any man can have as many pigs and sties as his inclination and circumstances will permit. The rain water tubs are neatly all empty, and in such as are not, the water in them has become bad through the depositing of the larvae of a fly, the taking of which into the system causes prostration of the vital powers, producing weakness, fever, and consumption.
"The inhabitants are in a great measure compelled to draw their present supply from the ponds, which are now being covered with a green scum, and is not much better than ditch water. No wonder that small-pox and fever are on the increase, or that “the mourners go about the street.” Can nothing be done for the poor collier? Skelmersdale is a wealth producing country. The coalpit proprietors are adding largely to their wealth; yet the priest and the Levite, in the bodies of the guardian and the coal-owner, see all, “and pass by on the other side.” Oh, that the good Samaritan may soon journey that way, and have compassion on him. – Yours, &c., R. L."
Next week's stories will include the 13-year-old girl imprisoned for theft, the unwanted kissing on the streets of Prescot, the outspoken solicitor Thomas Swift is sued for slander and the new St Helens pubs without beer.
This week's stories include reflections on the first bank holiday in St Helens, the wandering cows of Ashton, the illegal furniture remover from North Road, the villas for rent at St Ann's in Eccleston and the extraordinary suicide of a Rainford girl.
St Helens was returning to normal this week after the first ever Bank Holiday had been held under a new law.
That had been Whit Monday and the newly passed legislation also enabled the banks to lawfully close on Easter Monday, August 1st and Boxing Day – in addition to Christmas Day.
Previously banks had been legally obliged to remain open throughout the week to deal with bills of exchange that fell due on the day in question.
However the creation of bank holidays did not mean that workers necessarily got a day off.
The Bank Holiday Act simply removed a legal impediment to banks closing their doors on what would normally be a working day.
The legislation did not compel any business to close (and if they did their workers would not be paid).
Many shops in St Helens were afraid of losing trade if they shut for the day and their rival establishment down the road didn't.
However the St Helens Newspaper wrote how things were changing:
"Whit-Monday, even in St. Helens, is gradually becoming a general holiday. For some years there has been a degree of hesitancy felt by some of our tradesmen with reference to closing on Whit Monday.
"We are glad to find that the closing movement is gaining every year, and we have little doubt of its ultimately being a general holiday in St. Helens, as it is in most of the towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire."
Violence against a police officer usually meant a fine in 1871 and only a prison sentence if the fine could not be paid.
So when three circus lads appeared at the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 31st charged with a savage assault on PC McLaren, one was acquitted and the other two were fined £2 and £3.
After the officer had asked them to be less noisy, Thomas Neland and Samuel Smith knocked the constable down and "kicked his face until he was scarcely recognisable".
Speaking in Liverpool on June 1st at a public meeting to discuss the building of new workmen's houses, Lord Derby said of the atmosphere in the city:
"We are not altogether free from smoke, certainly, but as compared with Wigan or St. Helen's, or most of the towns situated on the coalfield, we are relatively clear and pure."
There was certainly plenty of smoke around Greenbank. That was the predominantly Irish district around Liverpool Road that had its own chemical industry, pottery and tannery.
These works had been situated to the south to take advantage of the St Helens Canal and on the 2nd, Greenbank Tannery was advertised for sale in the Liverpool Mercury.
"These works are excellently situated, and may be readily converted into plate glass, glass bottle, alkali, or other works", said the ad.
Other local tanneries included Sutton Tannery in Sutton Heath and Houghwood at Billinge, where the golf course now is.
One of my favourite wandering cow stories has to be the beast that decided to tramp eight miles to Aughton from James Birchall's farm in Rainford before finally being apprehended. I reckon it was making a break for Southport and the seaside!
Wandering cows could be a serious danger to road users and on the 2nd a number of cattle owners from Ashton-in-Makerfield were summoned to court, as described by the Wigan Observer:
"At the county police court Wigan, on Friday, John Cunliffe, Richard Marsh, John Ashton, and James Heaton, of Ashton, were charged with allowing cattle to stray on highways in Ashton.
"Mr. Superintendent Clarkson stated that great complaints were made throughout the district in consequence of cattle straying on highways.
"He had caused the defendants to be summoned simply for the purpose of it being known publicly that this would not be permitted, and that the law must be obeyed.
"He did not in these cases ask for penalties, but hoped the magistrates would caution the defendants against repeating the offence.
"Mr. Eckersley (the chairman) said the cases would be dismissed, and the justices hoped that the defendants would take warning and be careful not to offend again."
Newton Races (pictured above) was being held in a couple of weeks and on the 5th the letting of sites for drinking bars and booths took place.
Publicans and fairground folk and others had to go to the Grandstand on Newton Racecourse at 11am in order to agree their site and cough up their rent in advance.
The vicar of St Helens was once quoted as saying: "Very many poor sinners have confessed to me on their death beds that they commenced their wicked career at Newton races".
I'm not sure exactly what he meant but the races were renowned for drunken behaviour and a magnet for pickpockets and other criminals.
Horse racing had taken place on Newton Common from at least 1678 and continued until 1899 when Lord Newton accepted an offer from a syndicate to rent land in Haydock to establish a new course that we know as Haydock Park.
The St Helens Newspaper was published on the 3rd and contained this advert:
"TRAPS! TRAPS!! TRAPS!!! “Money saved is money gained!” If you want your Traps neatly, cheaply, and promptly repaired, go to: WALTER CLARKE’S, New Coach Building Establishment, at the Running Horses Inn, Bridge Street, St. Helens”.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 5th, Patrick Mullen from Victoria Street – near North Road – was summoned for attempting to defraud his landlord, James Robertshaw.
That was by secretly moving his furniture out of the house while owing Robertshaw £1 10s 6d rent.
Poor people had few possessions in those days and Mullen was probably expecting his landlord to obtain a court order allowing him to enter his tenant's home and seize property in lieu of rent.
So the 52-year-old chemical labourer decided to stash his possessions elsewhere. However what he had done was a foolish act, as it compounded his troubles.
The magistrates ordered Mullen to pay £2 and costs or go to prison for a month. As he hadn't been able to pay the rent, there was every chance that Mullen would have ended up in Kirkdale Gaol.
During the evening of the 6th the extraordinary suicide of a Rainford girl took place at Croston, near Leyland.
Alice Hart was from School Brow in Rainford, where her father Robert was a wheelwright.
That is now part of Church Road but it used to be the name of the road leading from Pasture Lane to the Derby Arms.
The 18-year-old was a domestic servant to a doctor's practice in Croston but she had been back home in Rainford just five weeks earlier. Then Alice had been in good spirits. At her inquest her friend Mary Farington said:
"I knew the deceased. On Tuesday night last, about seven o’clock, she came to me and said, “Mary, I have been taking poison.”
"I said, “Get out with you.” She said, “I have.” I said, “What have you been taking it for?” and she said, “For fun.”
"She said her legs were mazy. She then left me. She laughed very hard when she told me. I said, “Perhaps you have been taking the rum bottle?”
"She was different in her manner than what she had seemed before. She was sometimes queer in her talk, and was more lively than she had been for some time. I never heard her threaten to make herself away. She had a queer temper sometimes."
The jury returned the following verdict: "That the deceased died from the effects of having taken strychnine; but whether she took the poison for the purpose of destroying herself, or not, there is not sufficient evidence to show."
This advert was published in the Liverpool Mercury on the 6th:
"To be Let. Semi-detached VILLAS, situated at St. Ann's, Eccleston, near St. Helen's, containing drawing room, dining room, kitchen, scullery, cellars, three bedrooms, bathroom, and water closet; garden back and front.
"Within two minutes of St. Helen's and Liverpool omnibus. Rent £25 per annum. – Apply to Mr. James Prescot, St. Ann's."
That was a lot of money and so only the well heeled would have been interested in living in the new residential district of St Ann's.
Their neighbours would have included a candlemaker, a builder, landowner, druggist, manufacturing chemist, mining engineer, ironmonger, corn dealer, curate, commercial clerk, pawnbroker and teacher.
And finally Skelmersdale was only a small mining village in 1871 but – despite the rural life – it was still having its troubles, as this letter published in the Liverpool Mercury this week reveals:
"Gentlemen, We have through your columns been made acquainted with the fearful [yellow fever] epidemic that has swept off its thousands of valuable lives at Buenos Ayres.
"I fully expect, unless some remedial measures are adopted, we shall have a repetition of that awful visitation on a small scale at Skelmersdale.
"The heat of summer is fast approaching; its roadside ditches, in some instances but a few feet from the houses, are still full of stagnant filth from the overflow of pigsties and middens.
"There seems to be no controlling power here. Any man can have as many pigs and sties as his inclination and circumstances will permit.
"The rain water tubs are neatly all empty, and in such as are not, the water in them has become bad through the depositing of the larvae of a fly, the taking of which into the system causes prostration of the vital powers, producing weakness, fever, and consumption.
"The inhabitants are in a great measure compelled to draw their present supply from the ponds, which are now being covered with a green scum, and is not much better than ditch water.
"No wonder that small-pox and fever are on the increase, or that “the mourners go about the street.”
"Can nothing be done for the poor collier? Skelmersdale is a wealth producing country. The coalpit proprietors are adding largely to their wealth; yet the priest and the Levite, in the bodies of the guardian and the coal-owner, see all, “and pass by on the other side.”
"Oh, that the good Samaritan may soon journey that way, and have compassion on him. – Yours, &c., R. L."
Next week's stories will include the 13-year-old girl imprisoned for theft, the unwanted kissing on the streets of Prescot, the outspoken solicitor Thomas Swift is sued for slander and the new St Helens pubs without beer.
St Helens was returning to normal this week after the first ever Bank Holiday had been held under a new law.
That had been Whit Monday and the newly passed legislation also enabled the banks to lawfully close on Easter Monday, August 1st and Boxing Day – in addition to Christmas Day.
Previously banks had been legally obliged to remain open throughout the week to deal with bills of exchange that fell due on the day in question.
However the creation of bank holidays did not mean that workers necessarily got a day off.
The Bank Holiday Act simply removed a legal impediment to banks closing their doors on what would normally be a working day.
The legislation did not compel any business to close (and if they did their workers would not be paid).
Many shops in St Helens were afraid of losing trade if they shut for the day and their rival establishment down the road didn't.
However the St Helens Newspaper wrote how things were changing:
"Whit-Monday, even in St. Helens, is gradually becoming a general holiday. For some years there has been a degree of hesitancy felt by some of our tradesmen with reference to closing on Whit Monday.
"We are glad to find that the closing movement is gaining every year, and we have little doubt of its ultimately being a general holiday in St. Helens, as it is in most of the towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire."
Violence against a police officer usually meant a fine in 1871 and only a prison sentence if the fine could not be paid.
So when three circus lads appeared at the St Helens Petty Sessions on the 31st charged with a savage assault on PC McLaren, one was acquitted and the other two were fined £2 and £3.
After the officer had asked them to be less noisy, Thomas Neland and Samuel Smith knocked the constable down and "kicked his face until he was scarcely recognisable".
Speaking in Liverpool on June 1st at a public meeting to discuss the building of new workmen's houses, Lord Derby said of the atmosphere in the city:
"We are not altogether free from smoke, certainly, but as compared with Wigan or St. Helen's, or most of the towns situated on the coalfield, we are relatively clear and pure."
There was certainly plenty of smoke around Greenbank. That was the predominantly Irish district around Liverpool Road that had its own chemical industry, pottery and tannery.
These works had been situated to the south to take advantage of the St Helens Canal and on the 2nd, Greenbank Tannery was advertised for sale in the Liverpool Mercury.
"These works are excellently situated, and may be readily converted into plate glass, glass bottle, alkali, or other works", said the ad.
Other local tanneries included Sutton Tannery in Sutton Heath and Houghwood at Billinge, where the golf course now is.
One of my favourite wandering cow stories has to be the beast that decided to tramp eight miles to Aughton from James Birchall's farm in Rainford before finally being apprehended. I reckon it was making a break for Southport and the seaside!
Wandering cows could be a serious danger to road users and on the 2nd a number of cattle owners from Ashton-in-Makerfield were summoned to court, as described by the Wigan Observer:
"At the county police court Wigan, on Friday, John Cunliffe, Richard Marsh, John Ashton, and James Heaton, of Ashton, were charged with allowing cattle to stray on highways in Ashton.
"Mr. Superintendent Clarkson stated that great complaints were made throughout the district in consequence of cattle straying on highways.
"He had caused the defendants to be summoned simply for the purpose of it being known publicly that this would not be permitted, and that the law must be obeyed.
"He did not in these cases ask for penalties, but hoped the magistrates would caution the defendants against repeating the offence.
"Mr. Eckersley (the chairman) said the cases would be dismissed, and the justices hoped that the defendants would take warning and be careful not to offend again."
Publicans and fairground folk and others had to go to the Grandstand on Newton Racecourse at 11am in order to agree their site and cough up their rent in advance.
The vicar of St Helens was once quoted as saying: "Very many poor sinners have confessed to me on their death beds that they commenced their wicked career at Newton races".
I'm not sure exactly what he meant but the races were renowned for drunken behaviour and a magnet for pickpockets and other criminals.
Horse racing had taken place on Newton Common from at least 1678 and continued until 1899 when Lord Newton accepted an offer from a syndicate to rent land in Haydock to establish a new course that we know as Haydock Park.
The St Helens Newspaper was published on the 3rd and contained this advert:
"TRAPS! TRAPS!! TRAPS!!! “Money saved is money gained!” If you want your Traps neatly, cheaply, and promptly repaired, go to: WALTER CLARKE’S, New Coach Building Establishment, at the Running Horses Inn, Bridge Street, St. Helens”.
In St Helens Petty Sessions on the 5th, Patrick Mullen from Victoria Street – near North Road – was summoned for attempting to defraud his landlord, James Robertshaw.
That was by secretly moving his furniture out of the house while owing Robertshaw £1 10s 6d rent.
Poor people had few possessions in those days and Mullen was probably expecting his landlord to obtain a court order allowing him to enter his tenant's home and seize property in lieu of rent.
So the 52-year-old chemical labourer decided to stash his possessions elsewhere. However what he had done was a foolish act, as it compounded his troubles.
The magistrates ordered Mullen to pay £2 and costs or go to prison for a month. As he hadn't been able to pay the rent, there was every chance that Mullen would have ended up in Kirkdale Gaol.
During the evening of the 6th the extraordinary suicide of a Rainford girl took place at Croston, near Leyland.
Alice Hart was from School Brow in Rainford, where her father Robert was a wheelwright.
That is now part of Church Road but it used to be the name of the road leading from Pasture Lane to the Derby Arms.
The 18-year-old was a domestic servant to a doctor's practice in Croston but she had been back home in Rainford just five weeks earlier. Then Alice had been in good spirits. At her inquest her friend Mary Farington said:
"I knew the deceased. On Tuesday night last, about seven o’clock, she came to me and said, “Mary, I have been taking poison.”
"I said, “Get out with you.” She said, “I have.” I said, “What have you been taking it for?” and she said, “For fun.”
"She said her legs were mazy. She then left me. She laughed very hard when she told me. I said, “Perhaps you have been taking the rum bottle?”
"She was different in her manner than what she had seemed before. She was sometimes queer in her talk, and was more lively than she had been for some time. I never heard her threaten to make herself away. She had a queer temper sometimes."
The jury returned the following verdict: "That the deceased died from the effects of having taken strychnine; but whether she took the poison for the purpose of destroying herself, or not, there is not sufficient evidence to show."
This advert was published in the Liverpool Mercury on the 6th:
"To be Let. Semi-detached VILLAS, situated at St. Ann's, Eccleston, near St. Helen's, containing drawing room, dining room, kitchen, scullery, cellars, three bedrooms, bathroom, and water closet; garden back and front.
"Within two minutes of St. Helen's and Liverpool omnibus. Rent £25 per annum. – Apply to Mr. James Prescot, St. Ann's."
That was a lot of money and so only the well heeled would have been interested in living in the new residential district of St Ann's.
Their neighbours would have included a candlemaker, a builder, landowner, druggist, manufacturing chemist, mining engineer, ironmonger, corn dealer, curate, commercial clerk, pawnbroker and teacher.
And finally Skelmersdale was only a small mining village in 1871 but – despite the rural life – it was still having its troubles, as this letter published in the Liverpool Mercury this week reveals:
"Gentlemen, We have through your columns been made acquainted with the fearful [yellow fever] epidemic that has swept off its thousands of valuable lives at Buenos Ayres.
"I fully expect, unless some remedial measures are adopted, we shall have a repetition of that awful visitation on a small scale at Skelmersdale.
"The heat of summer is fast approaching; its roadside ditches, in some instances but a few feet from the houses, are still full of stagnant filth from the overflow of pigsties and middens.
"There seems to be no controlling power here. Any man can have as many pigs and sties as his inclination and circumstances will permit.
"The rain water tubs are neatly all empty, and in such as are not, the water in them has become bad through the depositing of the larvae of a fly, the taking of which into the system causes prostration of the vital powers, producing weakness, fever, and consumption.
"The inhabitants are in a great measure compelled to draw their present supply from the ponds, which are now being covered with a green scum, and is not much better than ditch water.
"No wonder that small-pox and fever are on the increase, or that “the mourners go about the street.”
"Can nothing be done for the poor collier? Skelmersdale is a wealth producing country. The coalpit proprietors are adding largely to their wealth; yet the priest and the Levite, in the bodies of the guardian and the coal-owner, see all, “and pass by on the other side.”
"Oh, that the good Samaritan may soon journey that way, and have compassion on him. – Yours, &c., R. L."
Next week's stories will include the 13-year-old girl imprisoned for theft, the unwanted kissing on the streets of Prescot, the outspoken solicitor Thomas Swift is sued for slander and the new St Helens pubs without beer.