FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 15 - 21 JUNE 1976
This week's many stories include the Windlehurst gas explosion, the fantastic success of Parr Swimming Baths, the man who lay dead in his Parr flat for over 10 days, the phantom church bell ringer, the backlog of storm damage repairs, the St John's Ambulance Brigade's disaster appeal and the campaign to report child batterers in St Helens.
We begin on the 15th when three workmen were injured in a gas explosion after one of them had lit a cigarette near to a gas leak. The men were employed by a firm of building contractors and engaged in modernisation work for the council in the Windlehurst area. The threesome was trying to clear a drain blockage in Birch Avenue when the blast occurred.
John Griffin and Joseph Walsh – both from North Road in St Helens – and John Manning from Prescot were rushed to Whiston Hospital with facial and body burns. Mr Griffin was described as comfortable and the other two were allowed home after treatment.
Their employers explained how one of the men had climbed down a manhole to try and clear a blockage, while the two others were standing at the top. One had lit a cigarette, which caused an explosion, with the men not knowing there was a gas leak in the drain.
The neighbours of George Bagot in Newton Road were accused in the St Helens Reporter on the 18th of heartlessness after the 66-year-old had been left dead in his flat for at least ten days. Catherine Taylor of Malvern Road undertook some shopping for another man in Newton Road and he had told her that he had not seen Mr Bagot for a couple of weeks. So Catherine went to investigate and called the police, who broke into the man's home and found his body.
She said: "The curtains have been drawn for a fortnight and papers were sticking out of the door yet no-one bothered to see if he was all right. If I had not come along he could have been there for another month. These so-called neighbours must be heartless, they are not what I would call sociable."
The Reporter described how Windle Grange in Rainford Road was being purchased for sheltered housing. The Grosvenor Housing Society had bought the 200-year-old Georgian estate for around £30,000. The properties in the estate had been built in 1777 and were part of the Arthur Pilkington Memorial Trust.
One of the buildings was the Malt House, which was the subject of a preservation order. Windle Parish Council had been hoping to buy the Malt House for use as a community hall but the cost had proved too high.
The paper described how a dispute was likely to result in no police presence at the forthcoming St Helens Show in Sherdley Park. A couple of years earlier Merseyside Police had introduced a charge of £200 per officer for their attendance at private functions. In 1975 St Helens Council had decided to pay the £1,000 bill for an inspector, a sergeant and three constables to patrol the showground.
But they were now refusing to pay, insisting that the show was a public, not private event. A council spokesman said: "We feel we should get police cover free of charge. The show is not a private function and we indirectly pay for police services through the County levy." However, the police insisted that the show was private but said they would still be providing officers for traffic control for which there would be no charge.
In May a fire had completely destroyed the headquarters of the St John's Ambulance Brigade in Standish Street. About £20,000 worth of damage had been caused and Derek Unsworth, the Brigade's Area Treasurer, had described the fire as a sickening blow, adding: "I do not know how we will manage to carry on."
Subsequently, the brigade had launched a Disaster Appeal to build new premises and this week the Reporter revealed that over £1,240 had already been raised. Recent donors included hauliers Sutton and Son (£100), Beechams (£25), Greenall Whitley (£25), Rockware (£20), Saints (£10) and Clock Face Crisps (£4). A flag day would be taking place on the 19th and the Salvation Army had offered the brigade a room in Milk Street for them to use on the day.
The Reporter also described how Parr Swimming Baths, which was set to celebrate its first birthday in July, was proving to be the most popular pool in St Helens. Manager Reg Hogg said he believed that by the end of the year over three-quarters of a million people will have used the baths, adding:
"A fantastic number of people use the pool. Parr Baths is just as popular now as when it opened last July. The novelty hasn't worn off and we get more than 1,500 people here sometimes during holiday times."
The Reporter said vandalism in the pool had been very low, although there had been an incident recently in which a window had been smashed overnight. Glass was splintered into the water, leading to the double shallow-ended pool having to be closed for two days.
Child abuse in the home was almost exclusively in the ‘70s seen as the beating of children, with sexual abuse rarely mentioned. This week the NSPCC made a plea for local people to inform on children who they believed were being battered. St Helens Social Services were backing the appeal, saying:
"Don't hesitate in contacting either organisation over fears of child-beating offenders." The Reporter wrote that although only 11 cases of "child-battering" were proved on Merseyside in 1975, the NSPCC was convinced that many more children were being injured or neglected by their parents.
It was reported this week that St Helens Council workmen still had a backlog of 400 houses in need of repairs, five months after 100 mph gales had lashed the district. And to make matters worse, they had run out of roofing tiles due to a shortage. The council had mended 800 out of 1,200 houses that had been badly damaged in January but ten requests for repairs to storm-damaged roofs were still coming in each week.
A council spokesman said: "The damage by the storms was fantastic. At one time we could not cope with the work. We had to call in private contractors to do jobs for us. We are still receiving requests for repairs, for some people are just discovering their roofs are damaged. But we cannot do anything at all because of the tile shortage."
What the Reporter called a "phantom bell ringer" was blamed for disturbing the peace of St Helens in the early hours. Once a week, on a Thursday, Friday or a Saturday night between midnight and 2am, a mystery individual would ring the bell at Holy Cross Church in Corporation Street (pictured above). The ringing forced the parish priest and his two assistant priests out of their beds. However, by the time they got to the scene, the bell ringer had disappeared.
The bell had not been used since WW2 and to gain access to the belfry the individual had a difficult climb to make. Father Billington said he was getting rather tired of the comedic campanologist. "This practical joker is getting a bit too much. He had us out of bed three times last week. It is somebody doing it for a joke and for kicks, but I was hoping he had got over this lark and become fed up by now."
The Reporter revealed that there was a 7-year waiting list for parents wanting to get their children into Rainford High School. Extensions costing £626,000 were well under way to help ease their accommodation problem but headmaster David Hay said they would still have a waiting list stretching to 1983.
The Reporter also described how gangs of marauding children were making "weekly wrecking raids" on factories at Peasley Cross. One factory owner said it was costing him as much as £300 a week to replace broken windows. Rod Keay of A. R. Keay building contractors said: "It's a hopeless situation. Vandals are causing extensive damage to factories in Peasley Cross Lane, and it seems to be increasing."
And there had also been trouble at Rainhill Hospital, where patients had been forced to run for cover as 50 youths rampaged through the hospital grounds. John Brady, the Chief Administrator at the hospital, explained what had occurred:
"I think they were rival gangs from Rainhill and Thatto Heath. They just marched into the grounds and held a full-scale fight. They interfered with the patients and scared them. They don't seem to care that this is a hospital where people receive special treatment."
And finally, from the 20th Charles Bronson's 'Death Wish' was replaced at the ABC Savoy by 'Gone With The Wind' – "by public demand". And the Capitol cinema replaced 'The Exorcist' with 'Policewoman'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the children dicing with death at Clock Face, there's a reprieve for the death list houses in Rainford and Haydock, two St Helens churches complain of vandalism and the campaign for St Helens to return to Lancashire.
We begin on the 15th when three workmen were injured in a gas explosion after one of them had lit a cigarette near to a gas leak. The men were employed by a firm of building contractors and engaged in modernisation work for the council in the Windlehurst area. The threesome was trying to clear a drain blockage in Birch Avenue when the blast occurred.
John Griffin and Joseph Walsh – both from North Road in St Helens – and John Manning from Prescot were rushed to Whiston Hospital with facial and body burns. Mr Griffin was described as comfortable and the other two were allowed home after treatment.
Their employers explained how one of the men had climbed down a manhole to try and clear a blockage, while the two others were standing at the top. One had lit a cigarette, which caused an explosion, with the men not knowing there was a gas leak in the drain.
The neighbours of George Bagot in Newton Road were accused in the St Helens Reporter on the 18th of heartlessness after the 66-year-old had been left dead in his flat for at least ten days. Catherine Taylor of Malvern Road undertook some shopping for another man in Newton Road and he had told her that he had not seen Mr Bagot for a couple of weeks. So Catherine went to investigate and called the police, who broke into the man's home and found his body.
She said: "The curtains have been drawn for a fortnight and papers were sticking out of the door yet no-one bothered to see if he was all right. If I had not come along he could have been there for another month. These so-called neighbours must be heartless, they are not what I would call sociable."
The Reporter described how Windle Grange in Rainford Road was being purchased for sheltered housing. The Grosvenor Housing Society had bought the 200-year-old Georgian estate for around £30,000. The properties in the estate had been built in 1777 and were part of the Arthur Pilkington Memorial Trust.
One of the buildings was the Malt House, which was the subject of a preservation order. Windle Parish Council had been hoping to buy the Malt House for use as a community hall but the cost had proved too high.
The paper described how a dispute was likely to result in no police presence at the forthcoming St Helens Show in Sherdley Park. A couple of years earlier Merseyside Police had introduced a charge of £200 per officer for their attendance at private functions. In 1975 St Helens Council had decided to pay the £1,000 bill for an inspector, a sergeant and three constables to patrol the showground.
But they were now refusing to pay, insisting that the show was a public, not private event. A council spokesman said: "We feel we should get police cover free of charge. The show is not a private function and we indirectly pay for police services through the County levy." However, the police insisted that the show was private but said they would still be providing officers for traffic control for which there would be no charge.
In May a fire had completely destroyed the headquarters of the St John's Ambulance Brigade in Standish Street. About £20,000 worth of damage had been caused and Derek Unsworth, the Brigade's Area Treasurer, had described the fire as a sickening blow, adding: "I do not know how we will manage to carry on."
Subsequently, the brigade had launched a Disaster Appeal to build new premises and this week the Reporter revealed that over £1,240 had already been raised. Recent donors included hauliers Sutton and Son (£100), Beechams (£25), Greenall Whitley (£25), Rockware (£20), Saints (£10) and Clock Face Crisps (£4). A flag day would be taking place on the 19th and the Salvation Army had offered the brigade a room in Milk Street for them to use on the day.
The Reporter also described how Parr Swimming Baths, which was set to celebrate its first birthday in July, was proving to be the most popular pool in St Helens. Manager Reg Hogg said he believed that by the end of the year over three-quarters of a million people will have used the baths, adding:
"A fantastic number of people use the pool. Parr Baths is just as popular now as when it opened last July. The novelty hasn't worn off and we get more than 1,500 people here sometimes during holiday times."
The Reporter said vandalism in the pool had been very low, although there had been an incident recently in which a window had been smashed overnight. Glass was splintered into the water, leading to the double shallow-ended pool having to be closed for two days.
Child abuse in the home was almost exclusively in the ‘70s seen as the beating of children, with sexual abuse rarely mentioned. This week the NSPCC made a plea for local people to inform on children who they believed were being battered. St Helens Social Services were backing the appeal, saying:
"Don't hesitate in contacting either organisation over fears of child-beating offenders." The Reporter wrote that although only 11 cases of "child-battering" were proved on Merseyside in 1975, the NSPCC was convinced that many more children were being injured or neglected by their parents.
It was reported this week that St Helens Council workmen still had a backlog of 400 houses in need of repairs, five months after 100 mph gales had lashed the district. And to make matters worse, they had run out of roofing tiles due to a shortage. The council had mended 800 out of 1,200 houses that had been badly damaged in January but ten requests for repairs to storm-damaged roofs were still coming in each week.
A council spokesman said: "The damage by the storms was fantastic. At one time we could not cope with the work. We had to call in private contractors to do jobs for us. We are still receiving requests for repairs, for some people are just discovering their roofs are damaged. But we cannot do anything at all because of the tile shortage."
The bell had not been used since WW2 and to gain access to the belfry the individual had a difficult climb to make. Father Billington said he was getting rather tired of the comedic campanologist. "This practical joker is getting a bit too much. He had us out of bed three times last week. It is somebody doing it for a joke and for kicks, but I was hoping he had got over this lark and become fed up by now."
The Reporter revealed that there was a 7-year waiting list for parents wanting to get their children into Rainford High School. Extensions costing £626,000 were well under way to help ease their accommodation problem but headmaster David Hay said they would still have a waiting list stretching to 1983.
The Reporter also described how gangs of marauding children were making "weekly wrecking raids" on factories at Peasley Cross. One factory owner said it was costing him as much as £300 a week to replace broken windows. Rod Keay of A. R. Keay building contractors said: "It's a hopeless situation. Vandals are causing extensive damage to factories in Peasley Cross Lane, and it seems to be increasing."
And there had also been trouble at Rainhill Hospital, where patients had been forced to run for cover as 50 youths rampaged through the hospital grounds. John Brady, the Chief Administrator at the hospital, explained what had occurred:
"I think they were rival gangs from Rainhill and Thatto Heath. They just marched into the grounds and held a full-scale fight. They interfered with the patients and scared them. They don't seem to care that this is a hospital where people receive special treatment."
And finally, from the 20th Charles Bronson's 'Death Wish' was replaced at the ABC Savoy by 'Gone With The Wind' – "by public demand". And the Capitol cinema replaced 'The Exorcist' with 'Policewoman'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the children dicing with death at Clock Face, there's a reprieve for the death list houses in Rainford and Haydock, two St Helens churches complain of vandalism and the campaign for St Helens to return to Lancashire.
This week's many stories include the Windlehurst gas explosion, the fantastic success of Parr Swimming Baths, the man who lay dead in his Parr flat for over 10 days, the phantom church bell ringer, the backlog of storm damage repairs, the St John's Ambulance Brigade's disaster appeal and the campaign to report child batterers in St Helens.
We begin on the 15th when three workmen were injured in a gas explosion after one of them had lit a cigarette near to a gas leak.
The men were employed by a firm of building contractors and engaged in modernisation work for the council in the Windlehurst area.
The threesome was trying to clear a drain blockage in Birch Avenue when the blast occurred.
John Griffin and Joseph Walsh – both from North Road in St Helens – and John Manning from Prescot were rushed to Whiston Hospital with facial and body burns.
Mr Griffin was described as comfortable and the other two were allowed home after treatment.
Their employers explained how one of the men had climbed down a manhole to try and clear a blockage, while the two others were standing at the top.
One had lit a cigarette, which caused an explosion, with the men not knowing there was a gas leak in the drain.
The neighbours of George Bagot in Newton Road were accused in the St Helens Reporter on the 18th of heartlessness after the 66-year-old had been left dead in his flat for at least ten days.
Catherine Taylor of Malvern Road undertook some shopping for another man in Newton Road and he had told her that he had not seen Mr Bagot for a couple of weeks.
So Catherine went to investigate and called the police, who broke into the man's home and found his body.
She said: "The curtains have been drawn for a fortnight and papers were sticking out of the door yet no-one bothered to see if he was all right.
"If I had not come along he could have been there for another month. These so-called neighbours must be heartless, they are not what I would call sociable."
The Reporter described how Windle Grange in Rainford Road was being purchased for sheltered housing.
The Grosvenor Housing Society had bought the 200-year-old Georgian estate for around £30,000.
The properties in the estate had been built in 1777 and were part of the Arthur Pilkington Memorial Trust.
One of the buildings was the Malt House, which was the subject of a preservation order.
Windle Parish Council had been hoping to buy the Malt House for use as a community hall but the cost had proved too high.
The paper described how a dispute was likely to result in no police presence at the forthcoming St Helens Show in Sherdley Park.
A couple of years earlier Merseyside Police had introduced a charge of £200 per officer for their attendance at private functions.
In 1975 St Helens Council had decided to pay the £1,000 bill for an inspector, a sergeant and three constables to patrol the showground.
But they were now refusing to pay, insisting that the show was a public, not private event.
A council spokesman said: "We feel we should get police cover free of charge. The show is not a private function and we indirectly pay for police services through the County levy."
However, the police insisted that the show was private but said they would still be providing officers for traffic control for which there would be no charge.
In May a fire had completely destroyed the headquarters of the St John's Ambulance Brigade in Standish Street.
About £20,000 worth of damage had been caused and Derek Unsworth, the Brigade's Area Treasurer, had described the fire as a sickening blow, adding: "I do not know how we will manage to carry on."
Subsequently, the brigade had launched a Disaster Appeal to build new premises and this week the Reporter revealed that over £1,240 had already been raised.
Recent donors included hauliers Sutton and Son (£100), Beechams (£25), Greenall Whitley (£25), Rockware (£20), Saints (£10) and Clock Face Crisps (£4).
A flag day would be taking place on the 19th and the Salvation Army had offered the brigade a room in Milk Street for them to use on the day.
The Reporter also described how Parr Swimming Baths, which was set to celebrate its first birthday in July, was proving to be the most popular pool in St Helens.
Manager Reg Hogg said he believed that by the end of the year over three-quarters of a million people will have used the baths, adding:
"A fantastic number of people use the pool. Parr Baths is just as popular now as when it opened last July. The novelty hasn't worn off and we get more than 1,500 people here sometimes during holiday times."
The Reporter said vandalism in the pool had been very low, although there had been an incident recently in which a window had been smashed overnight.
Glass was splintered into the water, leading to the double shallow-ended pool having to be closed for two days.
Child abuse in the home was almost exclusively in the ‘70s seen as the beating of children, with sexual abuse rarely mentioned.
This week the NSPCC made a plea for local people to inform on children who they believed were being battered.
St Helens Social Services were backing the appeal, saying: "Don't hesitate in contacting either organisation over fears of child-beating offenders."
The Reporter wrote that although only 11 cases of "child-battering" were proved on Merseyside in 1975, the NSPCC was convinced that many more children were being injured or neglected by their parents.
It was reported this week that St Helens Council workmen still had a backlog of 400 houses in need of repairs, five months after 100 mph gales had lashed the district.
And to make matters worse, they had run out of roofing tiles due to a shortage.
The council had mended 800 out of 1,200 houses that had been badly damaged in January but ten requests for repairs to storm-damaged roofs were still coming in each week.
A council spokesman said: "The damage by the storms was fantastic. At one time we could not cope with the work. We had to call in private contractors to do jobs for us.
"We are still receiving requests for repairs, for some people are just discovering their roofs are damaged. But we cannot do anything at all because of the tile shortage."
What the Reporter called a "phantom bell ringer" was blamed for disturbing the peace of St Helens in the early hours.
Once a week, on a Thursday, Friday or a Saturday night between midnight and 2am, a mystery individual would ring the bell at Holy Cross Church in Corporation Street (pictured above).
The ringing forced the parish priest and his two assistant priests out of their beds.
However, by the time they got to the scene, the bell ringer had disappeared.
The bell had not been used since WW2 and to gain access to the belfry the individual had a difficult climb to make.
Father Billington said he was getting rather tired of the comedic campanologist.
"This practical joker is getting a bit too much. He had us out of bed three times last week. It is somebody doing it for a joke and for kicks, but I was hoping he had got over this lark and become fed up by now."
The Reporter revealed that there was a 7-year waiting list for parents wanting to get their children into Rainford High School.
Extensions costing £626,000 were well under way to help ease their accommodation problem but headmaster David Hay said they would still have a waiting list stretching to 1983.
The Reporter also described how gangs of marauding children were making "weekly wrecking raids" on factories at Peasley Cross.
One factory owner said it was costing him as much as £300 a week to replace broken windows.
Rod Keay of A. R. Keay building contractors said: "It's a hopeless situation. Vandals are causing extensive damage to factories in Peasley Cross Lane, and it seems to be increasing."
And there had also been trouble at Rainhill Hospital, where patients had been forced to run for cover as 50 youths rampaged through the hospital grounds.
John Brady, the Chief Administrator at the hospital, explained what had occurred:
"I think they were rival gangs from Rainhill and Thatto Heath. They just marched into the grounds and held a full-scale fight. They interfered with the patients and scared them. They don't seem to care that this is a hospital where people receive special treatment."
And finally, from the 20th Charles Bronson's 'Death Wish' was replaced at the ABC Savoy by 'Gone With The Wind' – "by public demand". And the Capitol cinema replaced 'The Exorcist' with 'Policewoman'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the children dicing with death at Clock Face, there's a reprieve for the death list houses in Rainford and Haydock, two St Helens churches complain of vandalism and the campaign for St Helens to return to Lancashire.
We begin on the 15th when three workmen were injured in a gas explosion after one of them had lit a cigarette near to a gas leak.
The men were employed by a firm of building contractors and engaged in modernisation work for the council in the Windlehurst area.
The threesome was trying to clear a drain blockage in Birch Avenue when the blast occurred.
John Griffin and Joseph Walsh – both from North Road in St Helens – and John Manning from Prescot were rushed to Whiston Hospital with facial and body burns.
Mr Griffin was described as comfortable and the other two were allowed home after treatment.
Their employers explained how one of the men had climbed down a manhole to try and clear a blockage, while the two others were standing at the top.
One had lit a cigarette, which caused an explosion, with the men not knowing there was a gas leak in the drain.
The neighbours of George Bagot in Newton Road were accused in the St Helens Reporter on the 18th of heartlessness after the 66-year-old had been left dead in his flat for at least ten days.
Catherine Taylor of Malvern Road undertook some shopping for another man in Newton Road and he had told her that he had not seen Mr Bagot for a couple of weeks.
So Catherine went to investigate and called the police, who broke into the man's home and found his body.
She said: "The curtains have been drawn for a fortnight and papers were sticking out of the door yet no-one bothered to see if he was all right.
"If I had not come along he could have been there for another month. These so-called neighbours must be heartless, they are not what I would call sociable."
The Reporter described how Windle Grange in Rainford Road was being purchased for sheltered housing.
The Grosvenor Housing Society had bought the 200-year-old Georgian estate for around £30,000.
The properties in the estate had been built in 1777 and were part of the Arthur Pilkington Memorial Trust.
One of the buildings was the Malt House, which was the subject of a preservation order.
Windle Parish Council had been hoping to buy the Malt House for use as a community hall but the cost had proved too high.
The paper described how a dispute was likely to result in no police presence at the forthcoming St Helens Show in Sherdley Park.
A couple of years earlier Merseyside Police had introduced a charge of £200 per officer for their attendance at private functions.
In 1975 St Helens Council had decided to pay the £1,000 bill for an inspector, a sergeant and three constables to patrol the showground.
But they were now refusing to pay, insisting that the show was a public, not private event.
A council spokesman said: "We feel we should get police cover free of charge. The show is not a private function and we indirectly pay for police services through the County levy."
However, the police insisted that the show was private but said they would still be providing officers for traffic control for which there would be no charge.
In May a fire had completely destroyed the headquarters of the St John's Ambulance Brigade in Standish Street.
About £20,000 worth of damage had been caused and Derek Unsworth, the Brigade's Area Treasurer, had described the fire as a sickening blow, adding: "I do not know how we will manage to carry on."
Subsequently, the brigade had launched a Disaster Appeal to build new premises and this week the Reporter revealed that over £1,240 had already been raised.
Recent donors included hauliers Sutton and Son (£100), Beechams (£25), Greenall Whitley (£25), Rockware (£20), Saints (£10) and Clock Face Crisps (£4).
A flag day would be taking place on the 19th and the Salvation Army had offered the brigade a room in Milk Street for them to use on the day.
The Reporter also described how Parr Swimming Baths, which was set to celebrate its first birthday in July, was proving to be the most popular pool in St Helens.
Manager Reg Hogg said he believed that by the end of the year over three-quarters of a million people will have used the baths, adding:
"A fantastic number of people use the pool. Parr Baths is just as popular now as when it opened last July. The novelty hasn't worn off and we get more than 1,500 people here sometimes during holiday times."
The Reporter said vandalism in the pool had been very low, although there had been an incident recently in which a window had been smashed overnight.
Glass was splintered into the water, leading to the double shallow-ended pool having to be closed for two days.
Child abuse in the home was almost exclusively in the ‘70s seen as the beating of children, with sexual abuse rarely mentioned.
This week the NSPCC made a plea for local people to inform on children who they believed were being battered.
St Helens Social Services were backing the appeal, saying: "Don't hesitate in contacting either organisation over fears of child-beating offenders."
The Reporter wrote that although only 11 cases of "child-battering" were proved on Merseyside in 1975, the NSPCC was convinced that many more children were being injured or neglected by their parents.
It was reported this week that St Helens Council workmen still had a backlog of 400 houses in need of repairs, five months after 100 mph gales had lashed the district.
And to make matters worse, they had run out of roofing tiles due to a shortage.
The council had mended 800 out of 1,200 houses that had been badly damaged in January but ten requests for repairs to storm-damaged roofs were still coming in each week.
A council spokesman said: "The damage by the storms was fantastic. At one time we could not cope with the work. We had to call in private contractors to do jobs for us.
"We are still receiving requests for repairs, for some people are just discovering their roofs are damaged. But we cannot do anything at all because of the tile shortage."
What the Reporter called a "phantom bell ringer" was blamed for disturbing the peace of St Helens in the early hours.
The ringing forced the parish priest and his two assistant priests out of their beds.
However, by the time they got to the scene, the bell ringer had disappeared.
The bell had not been used since WW2 and to gain access to the belfry the individual had a difficult climb to make.
Father Billington said he was getting rather tired of the comedic campanologist.
"This practical joker is getting a bit too much. He had us out of bed three times last week. It is somebody doing it for a joke and for kicks, but I was hoping he had got over this lark and become fed up by now."
The Reporter revealed that there was a 7-year waiting list for parents wanting to get their children into Rainford High School.
Extensions costing £626,000 were well under way to help ease their accommodation problem but headmaster David Hay said they would still have a waiting list stretching to 1983.
The Reporter also described how gangs of marauding children were making "weekly wrecking raids" on factories at Peasley Cross.
One factory owner said it was costing him as much as £300 a week to replace broken windows.
Rod Keay of A. R. Keay building contractors said: "It's a hopeless situation. Vandals are causing extensive damage to factories in Peasley Cross Lane, and it seems to be increasing."
And there had also been trouble at Rainhill Hospital, where patients had been forced to run for cover as 50 youths rampaged through the hospital grounds.
John Brady, the Chief Administrator at the hospital, explained what had occurred:
"I think they were rival gangs from Rainhill and Thatto Heath. They just marched into the grounds and held a full-scale fight. They interfered with the patients and scared them. They don't seem to care that this is a hospital where people receive special treatment."
And finally, from the 20th Charles Bronson's 'Death Wish' was replaced at the ABC Savoy by 'Gone With The Wind' – "by public demand". And the Capitol cinema replaced 'The Exorcist' with 'Policewoman'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the children dicing with death at Clock Face, there's a reprieve for the death list houses in Rainford and Haydock, two St Helens churches complain of vandalism and the campaign for St Helens to return to Lancashire.