FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 26 FEB - 3 MARCH 1974
This week's many stories include the result of the General Election in St Helens, a new library is planned for Blackbrook, complaints that Dentons Green Lane had been turned into a noisy, fume-filled danger zone, the preservation plans for four historic Eccleston cottages and the Vicar of St Peter's Church in Parr criticises the parents of children that vandalise his churchyard.
We begin on the 26th what was described as a "Dinner Boxing Evening" at the Fleece Hotel in St Helens with rugby league personality Alex Murphy as guest of honour.
The early 1970s was certainly the era for new libraries to open in St Helens (and the 2020s, sadly, the era for them to close!) In December 1972 Eccleston's library on Broadway had opened and the new Four Acre Library (which in 1990 became Chester Lane Library / Centre) was scheduled to open next month.
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 26th it was announced that a "new four-building community complex" which included a £55,000 branch library was also being planned for Blackbrook. The scheme included two hostels, one for "old people" and another for trainees at the Adult Training Centre, as well as an all-purpose community building. The library would be built next to the Primrose Hotel and it was hoped that work would begin in a year's time.
This week some patients at Rainhill Hospital had to be evacuated when smoke from a fire in a basement storeroom reached one of the wards. St Helens firemen needed to use breathing apparatus to bring the blaze under control.
On the 27th the Liverpool Echo's 'Children's Corner' said they had received a postal order for £4 from Linda, Jeanne, Pamela and Elizabeth Tolput of Rainford. The girls had raised the money by holding a jumble sale with the proceeds going to the Echo's Cot Fund at the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital. "They must have worked very hard at their jumble sale and, despite rainy weather, achieved this marvellous total", wrote the Echo.
During the present miners' strike, pickets were preventing all coal shipments. But exceptions could be made and on the 27th miners at Sutton Manor Colliery allowed what was described as a mercy shipment to be despatched to a Northern Ireland hospital. Just before lunchtime the National Coal Board had appealed to officials of the National Union of Mineworkers for help after learning that a Londonderry hospital had virtually exhausted its coal supply. The miners immediately agreed to allow 600 tons of coal to be moved to Garston from where it was shipped.
It was "Star Celebrity Night" at the Rivoli Star Social Club in St Helens on the 27th when bingo was put to one side and the Mutton Chop Banjo Band took to the stage. On the same evening The Yetties performed their interpretation of West Country folk music at the Theatre Royal. Then on the following evening the Harry Secombe Show came to Corporation Street.
The General Election was held on the 28th and the Daily Mirror published a photo of Jennifer Holland from St Helens kissing Harold Wilson. This is what they wrote: "Jennifer Holland knew exactly where to put her X yesterday. Right on Harold Wilson's cheek. Blonde Jennifer put her arms around the smiling Labour leader and kissed him as he went on an election-eve walkabout in Prescot, near Liverpool.
"Mr. Wilson was signing autographs when Jennifer dashed from the butcher's shop where she works. Before giving her happy hug, she said: “I've wanted to do this for a long time. I think you're a little love.” Mr. Wilson beamed, then told laughing autograph-hunters: “If my handwriting looks a bit shaky, you will know what caused it!”"
Cowley Girls also held their own mock election with Gillian Topping representing Labour, Janette Patrick the Conservatives and Susan Smart standing for the Liberals. Organiser Joan Hyde, head of the school’s history department, said: "We found that most of the girls knew very little about politics and voting, and this was a way of whipping up interest."
In the real election Leslie Spriggs increased his majority for Labour from 15,078 at the 1970 poll to 21,716. The Liberals just beat the Tories into second place and 61-year-old May Pike of Cedar Street in St Helens – standing as an Independent Labour candidate and who I profiled last week – achieved a creditable 991 votes. Candidates then had to pay £150 deposit, which was refunded if they received 12½% of the vote. That is a higher bar than today when 5% entitles you to your money back. But May Pike gained less than 2% of the total ballots cast and so would have lost her deposit under either system.
In the St Helens Reporter on March 1st the Vicar of St Peter's Church in Parr angrily slammed parents whose children had vandalised his churchyard. The Rev. John Roberts said they didn't seem to care about their children's bad behaviour and had refused to cooperate with him.
He explained how the vandals had smashed vases, scattered flowers about and used chippings on graves as ammunition for catapults. The kids had also made dens and fires in his churchyard; loosened headstones; pulled stones and lumps of concrete from boundary walls and uprooted a gatepost.
Rev. Roberts described how he had recently spoken to the mother of one of the boys involved in the vandalism: "All she said was that she didn't know where he had been, and she refused to tell me the names of the boys he was with. It is really annoying when parents won't cooperate. They are quick enough to come to us if they need us, but when it comes to their children's bad behaviour they just aren't interested.
"I get heartbroken widows coming to me and saying vases on a grave have been broken, chippings removed, or monument stones tampered with. I try to discourage people from erecting elaborate monuments or using chippings, but it often isn't until months later they realise why. If parents would keep their children under control, the graveyard would be much nicer."
The Reporter also described how plans were being made to preserve a four-cottage terrace in Millbrook Lane that a famous biblical scholar had built. Dr Adam Clarke had moved to rural Eccleston in 1815 to write a section on his biblical commentary that he devoted forty years of his life composing. During the eight years that he spent in the township, Dr Clarke built the four cottages, one of which was used as a Methodist chapel.
According to the article in the Reporter, Chapel Lane in Eccleston takes its name from Dr Clarke’s cottages. Suggestions that the buildings were going to be bulldozed had stirred Eccleston and Whiston Councils into applying for a historical interest listing for them, which would hopefully go through within a few months.
In the summer of 1972 St Helens Council had introduced a one-way system in which outgoing traffic went along Dentons Green Lane (pictured above) and incoming vehicles passed through Greenfield Road. The change considerably boosted the volume of traffic using Dentons Green Lane and, according to an article in the Reporter, had turned a "once residential area into a noisy, fume-filled danger zone".
Resident Betty Campbell told the paper: "I daren't let my children play out at the front anymore. It's too dangerous. Drivers seem to ignore signs saying there is a crossing patrol ahead. Whenever the lollipop lady steps out to let school children across, the cars pull up fast, and the screech of brakes is terrible."
Another resident, Hilda Mather, said the vibrations from the heavy traffic had led to plaster coming off the walls and ceiling in her home. "The noise is very disturbing and the vibrations are causing damage," she said, adding that she and her husband had been forced to have the front of their house double-glazed to reduce the noise.
And Carol Ashcroft complained that her 2-year-old daughter could not get to sleep at night because of the racket from the road. Last week another resident of Dentons Green Lane, Brian Molyneux, had lost his appeal for a rates rebate despite putting forward figures from a census showing that evening peak-hour traffic had tripled to 1,250 vehicles an hour.
Last March the Daily Mirror had written about the benevolence of a Rainford milkie: "Milkman Alan Grice said a surprise thank-you to his loyal customers yesterday – with 6,000 golden daffodils. He delivered the flowers on his morning pinta round. Every one of Alan's 500 customers found a bouquet of a dozen daffs on the doorstep with the milk.
"His round has blossomed from four families in just two-and-a-half years. So Alan decided to say thank-you to the housewives with flowers." Apparently, Alan had bought fridges for his first four customers to ensure that he retained their custom!
On March 1st 32-year-old Alan from News Lane was back in the news after repeating his daffodil give-away. However, his round had now increased to 750 homes, boosted, no doubt, by all the publicity from last year. Tragically in 1995 at the age of 54, Alan would die in a shooting incident in Bickerstaffe, two years after the death of his wife.
And finally from the 3rd it was all change at the town's two cinemas. The ABC Savoy began screening Bruce Lee's 'Enter The Dragon' and the Capitol started showing 'The Adventures of Barry McKenzie' as a double feature with 'Easy Rider'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the 6-month-old baby abandoned at Blackbrook, the glue-sniffing craze in Parr, the streaking craze hits Prescot and Squeak the Sherdley Park penguin has another narrow squeak.
We begin on the 26th what was described as a "Dinner Boxing Evening" at the Fleece Hotel in St Helens with rugby league personality Alex Murphy as guest of honour.
The early 1970s was certainly the era for new libraries to open in St Helens (and the 2020s, sadly, the era for them to close!) In December 1972 Eccleston's library on Broadway had opened and the new Four Acre Library (which in 1990 became Chester Lane Library / Centre) was scheduled to open next month.
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 26th it was announced that a "new four-building community complex" which included a £55,000 branch library was also being planned for Blackbrook. The scheme included two hostels, one for "old people" and another for trainees at the Adult Training Centre, as well as an all-purpose community building. The library would be built next to the Primrose Hotel and it was hoped that work would begin in a year's time.
This week some patients at Rainhill Hospital had to be evacuated when smoke from a fire in a basement storeroom reached one of the wards. St Helens firemen needed to use breathing apparatus to bring the blaze under control.
On the 27th the Liverpool Echo's 'Children's Corner' said they had received a postal order for £4 from Linda, Jeanne, Pamela and Elizabeth Tolput of Rainford. The girls had raised the money by holding a jumble sale with the proceeds going to the Echo's Cot Fund at the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital. "They must have worked very hard at their jumble sale and, despite rainy weather, achieved this marvellous total", wrote the Echo.
During the present miners' strike, pickets were preventing all coal shipments. But exceptions could be made and on the 27th miners at Sutton Manor Colliery allowed what was described as a mercy shipment to be despatched to a Northern Ireland hospital. Just before lunchtime the National Coal Board had appealed to officials of the National Union of Mineworkers for help after learning that a Londonderry hospital had virtually exhausted its coal supply. The miners immediately agreed to allow 600 tons of coal to be moved to Garston from where it was shipped.
It was "Star Celebrity Night" at the Rivoli Star Social Club in St Helens on the 27th when bingo was put to one side and the Mutton Chop Banjo Band took to the stage. On the same evening The Yetties performed their interpretation of West Country folk music at the Theatre Royal. Then on the following evening the Harry Secombe Show came to Corporation Street.
The General Election was held on the 28th and the Daily Mirror published a photo of Jennifer Holland from St Helens kissing Harold Wilson. This is what they wrote: "Jennifer Holland knew exactly where to put her X yesterday. Right on Harold Wilson's cheek. Blonde Jennifer put her arms around the smiling Labour leader and kissed him as he went on an election-eve walkabout in Prescot, near Liverpool.
"Mr. Wilson was signing autographs when Jennifer dashed from the butcher's shop where she works. Before giving her happy hug, she said: “I've wanted to do this for a long time. I think you're a little love.” Mr. Wilson beamed, then told laughing autograph-hunters: “If my handwriting looks a bit shaky, you will know what caused it!”"
Cowley Girls also held their own mock election with Gillian Topping representing Labour, Janette Patrick the Conservatives and Susan Smart standing for the Liberals. Organiser Joan Hyde, head of the school’s history department, said: "We found that most of the girls knew very little about politics and voting, and this was a way of whipping up interest."
In the real election Leslie Spriggs increased his majority for Labour from 15,078 at the 1970 poll to 21,716. The Liberals just beat the Tories into second place and 61-year-old May Pike of Cedar Street in St Helens – standing as an Independent Labour candidate and who I profiled last week – achieved a creditable 991 votes. Candidates then had to pay £150 deposit, which was refunded if they received 12½% of the vote. That is a higher bar than today when 5% entitles you to your money back. But May Pike gained less than 2% of the total ballots cast and so would have lost her deposit under either system.
In the St Helens Reporter on March 1st the Vicar of St Peter's Church in Parr angrily slammed parents whose children had vandalised his churchyard. The Rev. John Roberts said they didn't seem to care about their children's bad behaviour and had refused to cooperate with him.
He explained how the vandals had smashed vases, scattered flowers about and used chippings on graves as ammunition for catapults. The kids had also made dens and fires in his churchyard; loosened headstones; pulled stones and lumps of concrete from boundary walls and uprooted a gatepost.
Rev. Roberts described how he had recently spoken to the mother of one of the boys involved in the vandalism: "All she said was that she didn't know where he had been, and she refused to tell me the names of the boys he was with. It is really annoying when parents won't cooperate. They are quick enough to come to us if they need us, but when it comes to their children's bad behaviour they just aren't interested.
"I get heartbroken widows coming to me and saying vases on a grave have been broken, chippings removed, or monument stones tampered with. I try to discourage people from erecting elaborate monuments or using chippings, but it often isn't until months later they realise why. If parents would keep their children under control, the graveyard would be much nicer."
The Reporter also described how plans were being made to preserve a four-cottage terrace in Millbrook Lane that a famous biblical scholar had built. Dr Adam Clarke had moved to rural Eccleston in 1815 to write a section on his biblical commentary that he devoted forty years of his life composing. During the eight years that he spent in the township, Dr Clarke built the four cottages, one of which was used as a Methodist chapel.
According to the article in the Reporter, Chapel Lane in Eccleston takes its name from Dr Clarke’s cottages. Suggestions that the buildings were going to be bulldozed had stirred Eccleston and Whiston Councils into applying for a historical interest listing for them, which would hopefully go through within a few months.
Resident Betty Campbell told the paper: "I daren't let my children play out at the front anymore. It's too dangerous. Drivers seem to ignore signs saying there is a crossing patrol ahead. Whenever the lollipop lady steps out to let school children across, the cars pull up fast, and the screech of brakes is terrible."
Another resident, Hilda Mather, said the vibrations from the heavy traffic had led to plaster coming off the walls and ceiling in her home. "The noise is very disturbing and the vibrations are causing damage," she said, adding that she and her husband had been forced to have the front of their house double-glazed to reduce the noise.
And Carol Ashcroft complained that her 2-year-old daughter could not get to sleep at night because of the racket from the road. Last week another resident of Dentons Green Lane, Brian Molyneux, had lost his appeal for a rates rebate despite putting forward figures from a census showing that evening peak-hour traffic had tripled to 1,250 vehicles an hour.
Last March the Daily Mirror had written about the benevolence of a Rainford milkie: "Milkman Alan Grice said a surprise thank-you to his loyal customers yesterday – with 6,000 golden daffodils. He delivered the flowers on his morning pinta round. Every one of Alan's 500 customers found a bouquet of a dozen daffs on the doorstep with the milk.
"His round has blossomed from four families in just two-and-a-half years. So Alan decided to say thank-you to the housewives with flowers." Apparently, Alan had bought fridges for his first four customers to ensure that he retained their custom!
On March 1st 32-year-old Alan from News Lane was back in the news after repeating his daffodil give-away. However, his round had now increased to 750 homes, boosted, no doubt, by all the publicity from last year. Tragically in 1995 at the age of 54, Alan would die in a shooting incident in Bickerstaffe, two years after the death of his wife.
And finally from the 3rd it was all change at the town's two cinemas. The ABC Savoy began screening Bruce Lee's 'Enter The Dragon' and the Capitol started showing 'The Adventures of Barry McKenzie' as a double feature with 'Easy Rider'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the 6-month-old baby abandoned at Blackbrook, the glue-sniffing craze in Parr, the streaking craze hits Prescot and Squeak the Sherdley Park penguin has another narrow squeak.
This week's many stories include the result of the General Election in St Helens, a new library is planned for Blackbrook, complaints that Dentons Green Lane had been turned into a noisy, fume-filled danger zone, the preservation plans for four historic Eccleston cottages and the Vicar of St Peter's Church in Parr criticises the parents of children that vandalise his churchyard.
We begin on the 26th what was described as a "Dinner Boxing Evening" at the Fleece Hotel in St Helens with rugby league personality Alex Murphy as guest of honour.
The early 1970s was certainly the era for new libraries to open in St Helens (and the 2020s, sadly, the era for them to close!)
In December 1972 Eccleston's library on Broadway had opened and the new Four Acre Library (which in 1990 became Chester Lane Library / Centre) was scheduled to open next month.
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 26th it was announced that a "new four-building community complex" which included a £55,000 branch library was also being planned for Blackbrook.
The scheme included two hostels, one for "old people" and another for trainees at the Adult Training Centre, as well as an all-purpose community building.
The library would be built next to the Primrose Hotel and it was hoped that work would begin in a year's time.
This week some patients at Rainhill Hospital had to be evacuated when smoke from a fire in a basement storeroom reached one of the wards.
St Helens firemen needed to use breathing apparatus to bring the blaze under control.
On the 27th the Liverpool Echo's 'Children's Corner' said they had received a postal order for £4 from Linda, Jeanne, Pamela and Elizabeth Tolput of Rainford.
The girls had raised the money by holding a jumble sale with the proceeds going to the Echo's Cot Fund at the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital.
"They must have worked very hard at their jumble sale and, despite rainy weather, achieved this marvellous total", wrote the Echo.
During the present miners' strike, pickets were preventing all coal shipments. But exceptions could be made and on the 27th miners at Sutton Manor Colliery allowed what was described as a mercy shipment to be despatched to a Northern Ireland hospital.
Just before lunchtime the National Coal Board had appealed to officials of the National Union of Mineworkers for help after learning that a Londonderry hospital had virtually exhausted its coal supply.
The miners immediately agreed to allow 600 tons of coal to be moved to Garston from where it was shipped.
It was "Star Celebrity Night" at the Rivoli Star Social Club in St Helens on the 27th when bingo was put to one side and the Mutton Chop Banjo Band took to the stage.
On the same evening The Yetties performed their interpretation of West Country folk music at the Theatre Royal. Then on the following evening the Harry Secombe Show came to Corporation Street.
The General Election was held on the 28th and the Daily Mirror published a photo of Jennifer Holland from St Helens kissing Harold Wilson. This is what they wrote:
"Jennifer Holland knew exactly where to put her X yesterday. Right on Harold Wilson's cheek. Blonde Jennifer put her arms around the smiling Labour leader and kissed him as he went on an election-eve walkabout in Prescot, near Liverpool.
"Mr. Wilson was signing autographs when Jennifer dashed from the butcher's shop where she works. Before giving her happy hug, she said: “I've wanted to do this for a long time. I think you're a little love.” Mr. Wilson beamed, then told laughing autograph-hunters: “If my handwriting looks a bit shaky, you will know what caused it!”"
Cowley Girls also held their own mock election with Gillian Topping representing Labour, Janette Patrick the Conservatives and Susan Smart standing for the Liberals.
Organiser Joan Hyde, head of the school’s history department, said: "We found that most of the girls knew very little about politics and voting, and this was a way of whipping up interest."
In the real election Leslie Spriggs increased his majority for Labour from 15,078 at the 1970 poll to 21,716.
The Liberals just beat the Tories into second place and 61-year-old May Pike of Cedar Street in St Helens – standing as an Independent Labour candidate and who I profiled last week – achieved a creditable 991 votes.
Candidates then had to pay £150 deposit, which was refunded if they received 12½% of the vote.
That is a higher bar than today when 5% entitles you to your money back. But May Pike gained less than 2% of the total ballots cast and so would have lost her deposit under either system.
In the St Helens Reporter on March 1st the Vicar of St Peter's Church in Parr angrily slammed parents whose children had vandalised his churchyard.
The Rev. John Roberts said they didn't seem to care about their children's bad behaviour and had refused to cooperate with him.
He explained how the vandals had smashed vases, scattered flowers about and used chippings on graves as ammunition for catapults.
The kids had also made dens and fires in his churchyard; loosened headstones; pulled stones and lumps of concrete from boundary walls and uprooted a gatepost.
Rev. Roberts described how he had recently spoken to the mother of one of the boys involved in the vandalism:
"All she said was that she didn't know where he had been, and she refused to tell me the names of the boys he was with.
"It is really annoying when parents won't cooperate. They are quick enough to come to us if they need us, but when it comes to their children's bad behaviour they just aren't interested.
"I get heartbroken widows coming to me and saying vases on a grave have been broken, chippings removed, or monument stones tampered with.
"I try to discourage people from erecting elaborate monuments or using chippings, but it often isn't until months later they realise why.
"If parents would keep their children under control, the graveyard would be much nicer."
The Reporter also described how plans were being made to preserve a four-cottage terrace in Millbrook Lane that a famous biblical scholar had built.
Dr Adam Clarke had moved to rural Eccleston in 1815 to write a section on his biblical commentary that he devoted forty years of his life composing.
During the eight years that he spent in the township, Dr Clarke built the four cottages, one of which was used as a Methodist chapel.
According to the article in the Reporter, Chapel Lane in Eccleston takes its name from Dr Clarke's cottages.
Suggestions that the buildings were going to be bulldozed had stirred Eccleston and Whiston Councils into applying for a historical interest listing for them, which would hopefully go through within a few months.
In the summer of 1972 St Helens Council had introduced a one-way system in which outgoing traffic went along Dentons Green Lane (pictured above) and incoming vehicles passed through Greenfield Road.
The change considerably boosted the volume of traffic using Dentons Green Lane and, according to an article in the Reporter, had turned a "once residential area into a noisy, fume-filled danger zone".
Resident Betty Campbell told the paper: "I daren't let my children play out at the front anymore. It's too dangerous. Drivers seem to ignore signs saying there is a crossing patrol ahead.
"Whenever the lollipop lady steps out to let school children across, the cars pull up fast, and the screech of brakes is terrible."
Another resident, Hilda Mather, said the vibrations from the heavy traffic had led to plaster coming off the walls and ceiling in her home.
"The noise is very disturbing and the vibrations are causing damage," she said, adding that she and her husband had been forced to have the front of their house double-glazed to reduce the noise.
And Carol Ashcroft complained that her 2-year-old daughter could not get to sleep at night because of the racket from the road.
Last week another resident of Dentons Green Lane, Brian Molyneux, had lost his appeal for a rates rebate despite putting forward figures from a census showing that evening peak-hour traffic had tripled to 1,250 vehicles an hour.
Last March the Daily Mirror had written about the benevolence of a Rainford milkie:
"Milkman Alan Grice said a surprise thank-you to his loyal customers yesterday – with 6,000 golden daffodils. He delivered the flowers on his morning pinta round. Every one of Alan's 500 customers found a bouquet of a dozen daffs on the doorstep with the milk.
"His round has blossomed from four families in just two-and-a-half years. So Alan decided to say thank-you to the housewives with flowers."
Apparently, Alan had bought fridges for his first four customers to ensure that he retained their custom!
On March 1st 32-year-old Alan from News Lane was back in the news after repeating his daffodil give-away. However, his round had now increased to 750 homes, boosted, no doubt, by all the publicity from last year.
Tragically in 1995 at the age of 54, Alan would die in a shooting incident in Bickerstaffe, two years after the death of his wife.
And finally from the 3rd it was all change at the town's two cinemas. The ABC Savoy began screening Bruce Lee's 'Enter The Dragon' and the Capitol started showing 'The Adventures of Barry McKenzie' as a double feature with 'Easy Rider'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the 6-month-old baby abandoned at Blackbrook, the glue-sniffing craze in Parr, the streaking craze hits Prescot and Squeak the Sherdley Park penguin has another narrow squeak.
We begin on the 26th what was described as a "Dinner Boxing Evening" at the Fleece Hotel in St Helens with rugby league personality Alex Murphy as guest of honour.
The early 1970s was certainly the era for new libraries to open in St Helens (and the 2020s, sadly, the era for them to close!)
In December 1972 Eccleston's library on Broadway had opened and the new Four Acre Library (which in 1990 became Chester Lane Library / Centre) was scheduled to open next month.
In the St Helens Newspaper on the 26th it was announced that a "new four-building community complex" which included a £55,000 branch library was also being planned for Blackbrook.
The scheme included two hostels, one for "old people" and another for trainees at the Adult Training Centre, as well as an all-purpose community building.
The library would be built next to the Primrose Hotel and it was hoped that work would begin in a year's time.
This week some patients at Rainhill Hospital had to be evacuated when smoke from a fire in a basement storeroom reached one of the wards.
St Helens firemen needed to use breathing apparatus to bring the blaze under control.
On the 27th the Liverpool Echo's 'Children's Corner' said they had received a postal order for £4 from Linda, Jeanne, Pamela and Elizabeth Tolput of Rainford.
The girls had raised the money by holding a jumble sale with the proceeds going to the Echo's Cot Fund at the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital.
"They must have worked very hard at their jumble sale and, despite rainy weather, achieved this marvellous total", wrote the Echo.
During the present miners' strike, pickets were preventing all coal shipments. But exceptions could be made and on the 27th miners at Sutton Manor Colliery allowed what was described as a mercy shipment to be despatched to a Northern Ireland hospital.
Just before lunchtime the National Coal Board had appealed to officials of the National Union of Mineworkers for help after learning that a Londonderry hospital had virtually exhausted its coal supply.
The miners immediately agreed to allow 600 tons of coal to be moved to Garston from where it was shipped.
It was "Star Celebrity Night" at the Rivoli Star Social Club in St Helens on the 27th when bingo was put to one side and the Mutton Chop Banjo Band took to the stage.
On the same evening The Yetties performed their interpretation of West Country folk music at the Theatre Royal. Then on the following evening the Harry Secombe Show came to Corporation Street.
The General Election was held on the 28th and the Daily Mirror published a photo of Jennifer Holland from St Helens kissing Harold Wilson. This is what they wrote:
"Jennifer Holland knew exactly where to put her X yesterday. Right on Harold Wilson's cheek. Blonde Jennifer put her arms around the smiling Labour leader and kissed him as he went on an election-eve walkabout in Prescot, near Liverpool.
"Mr. Wilson was signing autographs when Jennifer dashed from the butcher's shop where she works. Before giving her happy hug, she said: “I've wanted to do this for a long time. I think you're a little love.” Mr. Wilson beamed, then told laughing autograph-hunters: “If my handwriting looks a bit shaky, you will know what caused it!”"
Cowley Girls also held their own mock election with Gillian Topping representing Labour, Janette Patrick the Conservatives and Susan Smart standing for the Liberals.
Organiser Joan Hyde, head of the school’s history department, said: "We found that most of the girls knew very little about politics and voting, and this was a way of whipping up interest."
In the real election Leslie Spriggs increased his majority for Labour from 15,078 at the 1970 poll to 21,716.
The Liberals just beat the Tories into second place and 61-year-old May Pike of Cedar Street in St Helens – standing as an Independent Labour candidate and who I profiled last week – achieved a creditable 991 votes.
Candidates then had to pay £150 deposit, which was refunded if they received 12½% of the vote.
That is a higher bar than today when 5% entitles you to your money back. But May Pike gained less than 2% of the total ballots cast and so would have lost her deposit under either system.
In the St Helens Reporter on March 1st the Vicar of St Peter's Church in Parr angrily slammed parents whose children had vandalised his churchyard.
The Rev. John Roberts said they didn't seem to care about their children's bad behaviour and had refused to cooperate with him.
He explained how the vandals had smashed vases, scattered flowers about and used chippings on graves as ammunition for catapults.
The kids had also made dens and fires in his churchyard; loosened headstones; pulled stones and lumps of concrete from boundary walls and uprooted a gatepost.
Rev. Roberts described how he had recently spoken to the mother of one of the boys involved in the vandalism:
"All she said was that she didn't know where he had been, and she refused to tell me the names of the boys he was with.
"It is really annoying when parents won't cooperate. They are quick enough to come to us if they need us, but when it comes to their children's bad behaviour they just aren't interested.
"I get heartbroken widows coming to me and saying vases on a grave have been broken, chippings removed, or monument stones tampered with.
"I try to discourage people from erecting elaborate monuments or using chippings, but it often isn't until months later they realise why.
"If parents would keep their children under control, the graveyard would be much nicer."
The Reporter also described how plans were being made to preserve a four-cottage terrace in Millbrook Lane that a famous biblical scholar had built.
Dr Adam Clarke had moved to rural Eccleston in 1815 to write a section on his biblical commentary that he devoted forty years of his life composing.
During the eight years that he spent in the township, Dr Clarke built the four cottages, one of which was used as a Methodist chapel.
According to the article in the Reporter, Chapel Lane in Eccleston takes its name from Dr Clarke's cottages.
Suggestions that the buildings were going to be bulldozed had stirred Eccleston and Whiston Councils into applying for a historical interest listing for them, which would hopefully go through within a few months.
The change considerably boosted the volume of traffic using Dentons Green Lane and, according to an article in the Reporter, had turned a "once residential area into a noisy, fume-filled danger zone".
Resident Betty Campbell told the paper: "I daren't let my children play out at the front anymore. It's too dangerous. Drivers seem to ignore signs saying there is a crossing patrol ahead.
"Whenever the lollipop lady steps out to let school children across, the cars pull up fast, and the screech of brakes is terrible."
Another resident, Hilda Mather, said the vibrations from the heavy traffic had led to plaster coming off the walls and ceiling in her home.
"The noise is very disturbing and the vibrations are causing damage," she said, adding that she and her husband had been forced to have the front of their house double-glazed to reduce the noise.
And Carol Ashcroft complained that her 2-year-old daughter could not get to sleep at night because of the racket from the road.
Last week another resident of Dentons Green Lane, Brian Molyneux, had lost his appeal for a rates rebate despite putting forward figures from a census showing that evening peak-hour traffic had tripled to 1,250 vehicles an hour.
Last March the Daily Mirror had written about the benevolence of a Rainford milkie:
"Milkman Alan Grice said a surprise thank-you to his loyal customers yesterday – with 6,000 golden daffodils. He delivered the flowers on his morning pinta round. Every one of Alan's 500 customers found a bouquet of a dozen daffs on the doorstep with the milk.
"His round has blossomed from four families in just two-and-a-half years. So Alan decided to say thank-you to the housewives with flowers."
Apparently, Alan had bought fridges for his first four customers to ensure that he retained their custom!
On March 1st 32-year-old Alan from News Lane was back in the news after repeating his daffodil give-away. However, his round had now increased to 750 homes, boosted, no doubt, by all the publicity from last year.
Tragically in 1995 at the age of 54, Alan would die in a shooting incident in Bickerstaffe, two years after the death of his wife.
And finally from the 3rd it was all change at the town's two cinemas. The ABC Savoy began screening Bruce Lee's 'Enter The Dragon' and the Capitol started showing 'The Adventures of Barry McKenzie' as a double feature with 'Easy Rider'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the 6-month-old baby abandoned at Blackbrook, the glue-sniffing craze in Parr, the streaking craze hits Prescot and Squeak the Sherdley Park penguin has another narrow squeak.