FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 1 - 7 JANUARY 1974
This week's many stories include the start of the 3-day working week, Snoopy's Christmas contest, the death of the Blackbrook kidney donor, the senseless vandalism at Victoria Park Meteorological Station, an investment boost for Rockware Glass, a death threat for NUM officials at Bold Colliery, UGB's Peasley glassworks advertise for a caring personnel manager, Helena House's "Great New Year Sale and Dividend Stamp Bonanza" and St Helens is dubbed a blackspot for child abnormalities.
We begin on January 1st when for two weeks the Pilkington Musical Society presented their annual pantomime with a performance of 'Aladdin'. The show at the Theatre Royal was advertised in the Reporter as a "Big laughter panto especially for children".
The St Helens Health Committee met this week and heard of more vandalism in the town's parks. On this occasion the Victoria Park Meteorological Station had been entered and weather equipment and records destroyed. Two barometers were stolen and later abandoned nearby, after having been "smashed beyond repair". A device that measured wind direction was also damaged.
The Chief Public Health Inspector for St Helens, Nat Birch, told the committee: "This is a sad blow. It destroys the continuity of our readings which are used by many firms, particularly builders, who want to know before beginning work what the weather is like at a certain time of year. It's particularly useful where concreting is concerned because we can supply readings about frost.
"Also, the station has done a very good job with school visits and students using the information for their university degrees. We have had plenty of attacks from vandals in the past but this is the first where instruments have been damaged and is really senseless." Mr Birch added that it could take up to six months to get the meteorological station up and running again.
On the 3rd there was an advert in the Liverpool Echo for a personnel manager at United Glass's Peasley glassworks in St Helens. It was an unusual ad for the 1970s as it was demonstrating the company's caring side:
"Paperwork Wizard Not Required. If you are, then you are probably not the Personnel Manager for us. We are not looking for a ‘desk-bound genius’. What we are looking for is a man of proven ability, capable of dealing with shop floor problems in a practical, straightforward manner; a person who appreciates not all shop floor personnel are motivated by the philosophy of getting as much as they can for as little effort as possible but are conscientious employees like himself with genuine problems and grievances – the type of problems that originate from working continuous shifts, often in relatively unpleasant conditions."
Above is an aerial photo of Bold Colliery. On the 4th when the Bold NUM branch secretary Jim Dowd opened a pile of mail he discovered a death threat. "It gave me a bit of a shock," admitted Mr Dowd. "Whoever wrote it is evidently twisted. I have no idea who it could be but the fact they place nine local branch officials on a ‘liquidation list’ shows they have some knowledge of us." The letter had been posted in Warrington and the writer objected to the position that the nine had adopted in the present overtime ban in the coal industry.
The dispute was beginning to seriously affect coal production in the North West and as well as no overtime taking place, high rates of absenteeism were being reported. This week eighty men on the night shift at Bold Colliery had to be sent home when the winding enginemen failed to show up for work.
In the St Helens Reporter on the 4th much was made of the fact that Rockware Glass (pictured above) had ordered new equipment worth over £1 million for its factory in Pocket Nook. And with a further £1½ million going to be invested at the St Helens plant over the next four years, the Rockware Group's vice-chairman said that was good news for its workforce:
"Long term, it will certainly ensure existing jobs rather than providing new ones". How long is a piece of string comes to mind when defining what long-term means – but surely it's a bit longer than eight years, as the plant closed down in February 1982? Then 800 jobs were lost with the company saying redundancies and radical cost-cutting had failed to stem £1½ million losses each year.
Helena House in Baldwin Street was advertising its "Great New Year Sale and Dividend Stamp Bonanza" in the Reporter with 100 stamps to the pound on offer in many departments. In 1972 the Reporter had said: "If all the dividend stamps issued to customers by the St. Helens Industrial Co-operative Society during the year were released from a helicopter over the town centre, they would produce a “snowstorm” which would quickly carpet the area to a depth of several inches. Last year the Co-op issued 100 million dividend stamps to customers."
Snoopy, the glove puppet penguin, said this week in the Reporter: "Here is the news you have all been waiting for – the names of the winners in our Christmas competition." The Snoopy Club – the paper's column for 4 to 11 year olds – had started in 1970. In the contest Gary McDonald of Malvern Road in Parr won a set of Stickle Bricks that Snoopy said would give the six-year-old "hours of fun". And a spiroscope – "an interesting type of kaleidoscope" – was won by seven-year-old Angela Williams of Rivington Road in St Helens and Stephen Hughes of Lowton.
The Reporter described how St Helens was a "blackspot for child abnormalities". In a recent 12-month period 70 babies had been born with one or more congenital abnormalities – 59 of them alive and 11 stillborn. The conditions ranged from treatable eye and ear defects to those that were always fatal. Commenting on the statistics, Dr Julian Baines, the St Helens Medical Officer of Health, said:
"Different types of abnormality may cluster in ways which suggest exposure of the mothers to a common noxious agent. I cannot put forward an explanation, but the incidence varies enough to make one feel there may be an environmental factor." However, Dr Baines did also accept that some abnormalities were purely genetic.
The Reporter also described how the Department of Employment in St Helens had announced that the three-day working week had so far led to 1,187 workers applying for unemployment benefit through receiving reduced wages. And MANWEB had been receiving telephone calls from shopkeepers "incensed" about other traders breaking the electricity regulations and using too much power. A MANWEB spokesman said: "It's my opinion that the small shops are getting away with all they can. There’s nothing much we can do about it. We have to ask people to ring the police."
Pilkingtons had been forced to reduce their electricity use by 35% but so far their production had not been affected. The glass giant had also guaranteed full wages to its staff until January 15th. And Rockware and UGB had been allocated 100% power in order to ease a drastic shortage of glass containers for the food industry.
Mary Wylie of Ellon Avenue in Rainhill was profiled in the Reporter. She was a tegestologist – a collector of beermats and so far Mary had 2,000 of them, with 200 recently contributed by the Admiralty.
Last May Harry Davies had made the news after donating one of his kidneys to his sister Elsie Jones. The 33-year-old from Wyresdale Avenue in St Helens had been seriously ill for a year, of which two months had been spent in a coma. Tests revealed that Elsie had been living with only one functioning kidney. "I never thought of saying no. I am not afraid. If my sister can last for 35 years on one kidney, I can go another 30 years without one of mine", remarked Harry at the time.
However, late on January 6th the 47-year-old from Frodsham Drive in Blackbrook was a passenger in a car that struck a lamp-standard in Derbyshire Hill Road and was killed. Harry had been a steeplejack who spent weeks on top of chimneys, where demolition space was restricted, carefully taking them down brick-by-brick. Ironically, he had survived that dangerous job and only having one kidney but not the motor car.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the blockade of mud-splattering lorries on Burtonhead Road, how the 3-day week was affecting St Helens firms, the prosecutions under the Trades Descriptions Act and the remarkable Rainhill letter collection from a bygone age.
We begin on January 1st when for two weeks the Pilkington Musical Society presented their annual pantomime with a performance of 'Aladdin'. The show at the Theatre Royal was advertised in the Reporter as a "Big laughter panto especially for children".
The St Helens Health Committee met this week and heard of more vandalism in the town's parks. On this occasion the Victoria Park Meteorological Station had been entered and weather equipment and records destroyed. Two barometers were stolen and later abandoned nearby, after having been "smashed beyond repair". A device that measured wind direction was also damaged.
The Chief Public Health Inspector for St Helens, Nat Birch, told the committee: "This is a sad blow. It destroys the continuity of our readings which are used by many firms, particularly builders, who want to know before beginning work what the weather is like at a certain time of year. It's particularly useful where concreting is concerned because we can supply readings about frost.
"Also, the station has done a very good job with school visits and students using the information for their university degrees. We have had plenty of attacks from vandals in the past but this is the first where instruments have been damaged and is really senseless." Mr Birch added that it could take up to six months to get the meteorological station up and running again.
On the 3rd there was an advert in the Liverpool Echo for a personnel manager at United Glass's Peasley glassworks in St Helens. It was an unusual ad for the 1970s as it was demonstrating the company's caring side:
"Paperwork Wizard Not Required. If you are, then you are probably not the Personnel Manager for us. We are not looking for a ‘desk-bound genius’. What we are looking for is a man of proven ability, capable of dealing with shop floor problems in a practical, straightforward manner; a person who appreciates not all shop floor personnel are motivated by the philosophy of getting as much as they can for as little effort as possible but are conscientious employees like himself with genuine problems and grievances – the type of problems that originate from working continuous shifts, often in relatively unpleasant conditions."
The dispute was beginning to seriously affect coal production in the North West and as well as no overtime taking place, high rates of absenteeism were being reported. This week eighty men on the night shift at Bold Colliery had to be sent home when the winding enginemen failed to show up for work.
"Long term, it will certainly ensure existing jobs rather than providing new ones". How long is a piece of string comes to mind when defining what long-term means – but surely it's a bit longer than eight years, as the plant closed down in February 1982? Then 800 jobs were lost with the company saying redundancies and radical cost-cutting had failed to stem £1½ million losses each year.
Helena House in Baldwin Street was advertising its "Great New Year Sale and Dividend Stamp Bonanza" in the Reporter with 100 stamps to the pound on offer in many departments. In 1972 the Reporter had said: "If all the dividend stamps issued to customers by the St. Helens Industrial Co-operative Society during the year were released from a helicopter over the town centre, they would produce a “snowstorm” which would quickly carpet the area to a depth of several inches. Last year the Co-op issued 100 million dividend stamps to customers."
Snoopy, the glove puppet penguin, said this week in the Reporter: "Here is the news you have all been waiting for – the names of the winners in our Christmas competition." The Snoopy Club – the paper's column for 4 to 11 year olds – had started in 1970. In the contest Gary McDonald of Malvern Road in Parr won a set of Stickle Bricks that Snoopy said would give the six-year-old "hours of fun". And a spiroscope – "an interesting type of kaleidoscope" – was won by seven-year-old Angela Williams of Rivington Road in St Helens and Stephen Hughes of Lowton.
The Reporter described how St Helens was a "blackspot for child abnormalities". In a recent 12-month period 70 babies had been born with one or more congenital abnormalities – 59 of them alive and 11 stillborn. The conditions ranged from treatable eye and ear defects to those that were always fatal. Commenting on the statistics, Dr Julian Baines, the St Helens Medical Officer of Health, said:
"Different types of abnormality may cluster in ways which suggest exposure of the mothers to a common noxious agent. I cannot put forward an explanation, but the incidence varies enough to make one feel there may be an environmental factor." However, Dr Baines did also accept that some abnormalities were purely genetic.
The Reporter also described how the Department of Employment in St Helens had announced that the three-day working week had so far led to 1,187 workers applying for unemployment benefit through receiving reduced wages. And MANWEB had been receiving telephone calls from shopkeepers "incensed" about other traders breaking the electricity regulations and using too much power. A MANWEB spokesman said: "It's my opinion that the small shops are getting away with all they can. There’s nothing much we can do about it. We have to ask people to ring the police."
Pilkingtons had been forced to reduce their electricity use by 35% but so far their production had not been affected. The glass giant had also guaranteed full wages to its staff until January 15th. And Rockware and UGB had been allocated 100% power in order to ease a drastic shortage of glass containers for the food industry.
Mary Wylie of Ellon Avenue in Rainhill was profiled in the Reporter. She was a tegestologist – a collector of beermats and so far Mary had 2,000 of them, with 200 recently contributed by the Admiralty.
Last May Harry Davies had made the news after donating one of his kidneys to his sister Elsie Jones. The 33-year-old from Wyresdale Avenue in St Helens had been seriously ill for a year, of which two months had been spent in a coma. Tests revealed that Elsie had been living with only one functioning kidney. "I never thought of saying no. I am not afraid. If my sister can last for 35 years on one kidney, I can go another 30 years without one of mine", remarked Harry at the time.
However, late on January 6th the 47-year-old from Frodsham Drive in Blackbrook was a passenger in a car that struck a lamp-standard in Derbyshire Hill Road and was killed. Harry had been a steeplejack who spent weeks on top of chimneys, where demolition space was restricted, carefully taking them down brick-by-brick. Ironically, he had survived that dangerous job and only having one kidney but not the motor car.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the blockade of mud-splattering lorries on Burtonhead Road, how the 3-day week was affecting St Helens firms, the prosecutions under the Trades Descriptions Act and the remarkable Rainhill letter collection from a bygone age.
This week's many stories include the start of the 3-day working week, Snoopy's Christmas contest, the death of the Blackbrook kidney donor, the senseless vandalism at Victoria Park Meteorological Station, an investment boost for Rockware Glass, a death threat for NUM officials at Bold Colliery, UGB's Peasley glassworks advertise for a caring personnel manager, Helena House's "Great New Year Sale and Dividend Stamp Bonanza" and St Helens is dubbed a blackspot for child abnormalities.
We begin on January 1st when for two weeks the Pilkington Musical Society presented their annual pantomime with a performance of 'Aladdin'.
The show at the Theatre Royal was advertised in the Reporter as a "Big laughter panto especially for children".
The St Helens Health Committee met this week and heard of more vandalism in the town's parks.
On this occasion the Victoria Park Meteorological Station had been entered and weather equipment and records destroyed.
Two barometers were stolen and later abandoned nearby, after having been "smashed beyond repair". A device that measured wind direction was also damaged.
The Chief Public Health Inspector for St Helens, Nat Birch, told the committee:
"This is a sad blow. It destroys the continuity of our readings which are used by many firms, particularly builders, who want to know before beginning work what the weather is like at a certain time of year.
"It's particularly useful where concreting is concerned because we can supply readings about frost.
"Also, the station has done a very good job with school visits and students using the information for their university degrees.
"We have had plenty of attacks from vandals in the past but this is the first where instruments have been damaged and is really senseless."
Mr Birch added that it could take up to six months to get the meteorological station up and running again.
On the 3rd there was an advert in the Liverpool Echo for a personnel manager at United Glass's Peasley glassworks in St Helens.
It was an unusual ad for the 1970s as it was demonstrating the company's caring side:
"Paperwork Wizard Not Required. If you are, then you are probably not the Personnel Manager for us. We are not looking for a ‘desk-bound genius’.
"What we are looking for is a man of proven ability, capable of dealing with shop floor problems in a practical, straightforward manner; a person who appreciates not all shop floor personnel are motivated by the philosophy of getting as much as they can for as little effort as possible but are conscientious employees like himself with genuine problems and grievances – the type of problems that originate from working continuous shifts, often in relatively unpleasant conditions."
Above is an aerial photo of Bold Colliery. On the 4th when the Bold NUM branch secretary Jim Dowd opened a pile of mail he discovered a death threat.
"It gave me a bit of a shock," admitted Mr Dowd. "Whoever wrote it is evidently twisted. I have no idea who it could be but the fact they place nine local branch officials on a ‘liquidation list’ shows they have some knowledge of us."
The letter had been posted in Warrington and the writer objected to the position that the nine had adopted in the present overtime ban in the coal industry.
The dispute was beginning to seriously affect coal production in the North West and as well as no overtime taking place, high rates of absenteeism were being reported.
This week eighty men on the night shift at Bold Colliery had to be sent home when the winding enginemen failed to show up for work.
In the St Helens Reporter on the 4th much was made of the fact that Rockware Glass (pictured above) had ordered new equipment worth over £1 million for its factory in Pocket Nook.
And with a further £1½ million going to be invested at the St Helens plant over the next four years, the Rockware Group's vice-chairman said that was good news for its workforce:
"Long term, it will certainly ensure existing jobs rather than providing new ones."
How long is a piece of string comes to mind when defining what long-term means – but surely it's a bit longer than eight years, as the plant closed down in February 1982?
Then 800 jobs were lost with the company saying redundancies and radical cost-cutting had failed to stem £1½ million losses each year.
Helena House in Baldwin Street was advertising its "Great New Year Sale and Dividend Stamp Bonanza" in the Reporter with 100 stamps to the pound on offer in many departments.
In 1972 the Reporter had said: "If all the dividend stamps issued to customers by the St. Helens Industrial Co-operative Society during the year were released from a helicopter over the town centre, they would produce a “snowstorm” which would quickly carpet the area to a depth of several inches. Last year the Co-op issued 100 million dividend stamps to customers."
Snoopy, the glove puppet penguin, said this week in the Reporter: "Here is the news you have all been waiting for – the names of the winners in our Christmas competition."
The Snoopy Club – the paper's column for 4 to 11 year olds – had started in 1970. In the contest Gary McDonald of Malvern Road in Parr won a set of Stickle Bricks that Snoopy said would give the six-year-old "hours of fun".
And a spiroscope – "an interesting type of kaleidoscope" – was won by seven-year-old Angela Williams of Rivington Road in St Helens and Stephen Hughes of Lowton.
The Reporter described how St Helens was a "blackspot for child abnormalities".
In a recent 12-month period 70 babies had been born with one or more congenital abnormalities – 59 of them alive and 11 stillborn.
The conditions ranged from treatable eye and ear defects to those that were always fatal. Commenting on the statistics, Dr Julian Baines, the St Helens Medical Officer of Health, said:
"Different types of abnormality may cluster in ways which suggest exposure of the mothers to a common noxious agent.
"I cannot put forward an explanation, but the incidence varies enough to make one feel there may be an environmental factor."
However, Dr Baines did also accept that some abnormalities were purely genetic.
The Reporter also described how the Department of Employment in St Helens had announced that the three-day working week had so far led to 1,187 workers applying for unemployment benefit through receiving reduced wages.
And MANWEB had been receiving telephone calls from shopkeepers "incensed" about other traders breaking the electricity regulations and using too much power.
A MANWEB spokesman said: "It's my opinion that the small shops are getting away with all they can. There’s nothing much we can do about it. We have to ask people to ring the police."
Pilkingtons had been forced to reduce their electricity use by 35% but so far their production had not been affected. The glass giant had also guaranteed full wages to its staff until January 15th.
And Rockware and UGB had been allocated 100% power in order to ease a drastic shortage of glass containers for the food industry.
Mary Wylie of Ellon Avenue in Rainhill was profiled in the Reporter. She was a tegestologist – a collector of beermats and so far Mary had 2,000 of them, with 200 recently contributed by the Admiralty.
Last May Harry Davies had made the news after donating one of his kidneys to his sister Elsie Jones.
The 33-year-old from Wyresdale Avenue in St Helens had been seriously ill for a year, of which two months had been spent in a coma. Tests revealed that Elsie had been living with only one functioning kidney.
"I never thought of saying no. I am not afraid. If my sister can last for 35 years on one kidney, I can go another 30 years without one of mine", remarked Harry at the time.
However, late on January 6th the 47-year-old from Frodsham Drive in Blackbrook was a passenger in a car that struck a lamp-standard in Derbyshire Hill Road and was killed.
Harry had been a steeplejack who spent weeks on top of chimneys, where demolition space was restricted, carefully taking them down brick-by-brick.
Ironically, he had survived that dangerous job and only having one kidney but not the motor car.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the blockade of mud-splattering lorries on Burtonhead Road, how the 3-day week was affecting St Helens firms, the prosecutions under the Trades Descriptions Act and the remarkable Rainhill letter collection from a bygone age.
We begin on January 1st when for two weeks the Pilkington Musical Society presented their annual pantomime with a performance of 'Aladdin'.
The show at the Theatre Royal was advertised in the Reporter as a "Big laughter panto especially for children".
The St Helens Health Committee met this week and heard of more vandalism in the town's parks.
On this occasion the Victoria Park Meteorological Station had been entered and weather equipment and records destroyed.
Two barometers were stolen and later abandoned nearby, after having been "smashed beyond repair". A device that measured wind direction was also damaged.
The Chief Public Health Inspector for St Helens, Nat Birch, told the committee:
"This is a sad blow. It destroys the continuity of our readings which are used by many firms, particularly builders, who want to know before beginning work what the weather is like at a certain time of year.
"It's particularly useful where concreting is concerned because we can supply readings about frost.
"Also, the station has done a very good job with school visits and students using the information for their university degrees.
"We have had plenty of attacks from vandals in the past but this is the first where instruments have been damaged and is really senseless."
Mr Birch added that it could take up to six months to get the meteorological station up and running again.
On the 3rd there was an advert in the Liverpool Echo for a personnel manager at United Glass's Peasley glassworks in St Helens.
It was an unusual ad for the 1970s as it was demonstrating the company's caring side:
"Paperwork Wizard Not Required. If you are, then you are probably not the Personnel Manager for us. We are not looking for a ‘desk-bound genius’.
"What we are looking for is a man of proven ability, capable of dealing with shop floor problems in a practical, straightforward manner; a person who appreciates not all shop floor personnel are motivated by the philosophy of getting as much as they can for as little effort as possible but are conscientious employees like himself with genuine problems and grievances – the type of problems that originate from working continuous shifts, often in relatively unpleasant conditions."
"It gave me a bit of a shock," admitted Mr Dowd. "Whoever wrote it is evidently twisted. I have no idea who it could be but the fact they place nine local branch officials on a ‘liquidation list’ shows they have some knowledge of us."
The letter had been posted in Warrington and the writer objected to the position that the nine had adopted in the present overtime ban in the coal industry.
The dispute was beginning to seriously affect coal production in the North West and as well as no overtime taking place, high rates of absenteeism were being reported.
This week eighty men on the night shift at Bold Colliery had to be sent home when the winding enginemen failed to show up for work.
And with a further £1½ million going to be invested at the St Helens plant over the next four years, the Rockware Group's vice-chairman said that was good news for its workforce:
"Long term, it will certainly ensure existing jobs rather than providing new ones."
How long is a piece of string comes to mind when defining what long-term means – but surely it's a bit longer than eight years, as the plant closed down in February 1982?
Then 800 jobs were lost with the company saying redundancies and radical cost-cutting had failed to stem £1½ million losses each year.
Helena House in Baldwin Street was advertising its "Great New Year Sale and Dividend Stamp Bonanza" in the Reporter with 100 stamps to the pound on offer in many departments.
In 1972 the Reporter had said: "If all the dividend stamps issued to customers by the St. Helens Industrial Co-operative Society during the year were released from a helicopter over the town centre, they would produce a “snowstorm” which would quickly carpet the area to a depth of several inches. Last year the Co-op issued 100 million dividend stamps to customers."
Snoopy, the glove puppet penguin, said this week in the Reporter: "Here is the news you have all been waiting for – the names of the winners in our Christmas competition."
The Snoopy Club – the paper's column for 4 to 11 year olds – had started in 1970. In the contest Gary McDonald of Malvern Road in Parr won a set of Stickle Bricks that Snoopy said would give the six-year-old "hours of fun".
And a spiroscope – "an interesting type of kaleidoscope" – was won by seven-year-old Angela Williams of Rivington Road in St Helens and Stephen Hughes of Lowton.
The Reporter described how St Helens was a "blackspot for child abnormalities".
In a recent 12-month period 70 babies had been born with one or more congenital abnormalities – 59 of them alive and 11 stillborn.
The conditions ranged from treatable eye and ear defects to those that were always fatal. Commenting on the statistics, Dr Julian Baines, the St Helens Medical Officer of Health, said:
"Different types of abnormality may cluster in ways which suggest exposure of the mothers to a common noxious agent.
"I cannot put forward an explanation, but the incidence varies enough to make one feel there may be an environmental factor."
However, Dr Baines did also accept that some abnormalities were purely genetic.
The Reporter also described how the Department of Employment in St Helens had announced that the three-day working week had so far led to 1,187 workers applying for unemployment benefit through receiving reduced wages.
And MANWEB had been receiving telephone calls from shopkeepers "incensed" about other traders breaking the electricity regulations and using too much power.
A MANWEB spokesman said: "It's my opinion that the small shops are getting away with all they can. There’s nothing much we can do about it. We have to ask people to ring the police."
Pilkingtons had been forced to reduce their electricity use by 35% but so far their production had not been affected. The glass giant had also guaranteed full wages to its staff until January 15th.
And Rockware and UGB had been allocated 100% power in order to ease a drastic shortage of glass containers for the food industry.
Mary Wylie of Ellon Avenue in Rainhill was profiled in the Reporter. She was a tegestologist – a collector of beermats and so far Mary had 2,000 of them, with 200 recently contributed by the Admiralty.
Last May Harry Davies had made the news after donating one of his kidneys to his sister Elsie Jones.
The 33-year-old from Wyresdale Avenue in St Helens had been seriously ill for a year, of which two months had been spent in a coma. Tests revealed that Elsie had been living with only one functioning kidney.
"I never thought of saying no. I am not afraid. If my sister can last for 35 years on one kidney, I can go another 30 years without one of mine", remarked Harry at the time.
However, late on January 6th the 47-year-old from Frodsham Drive in Blackbrook was a passenger in a car that struck a lamp-standard in Derbyshire Hill Road and was killed.
Harry had been a steeplejack who spent weeks on top of chimneys, where demolition space was restricted, carefully taking them down brick-by-brick.
Ironically, he had survived that dangerous job and only having one kidney but not the motor car.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the blockade of mud-splattering lorries on Burtonhead Road, how the 3-day week was affecting St Helens firms, the prosecutions under the Trades Descriptions Act and the remarkable Rainhill letter collection from a bygone age.