FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 29 DEC 1975 - 4 JAN 1976
This week's many stories include the road improvements planned for St Helens town centre, the plague of thefts from council building sites, Rockware's lighter milk bottles, the case of indecent exposure towards a neighbour in Park Road, the sale of land to Pilks for a new access road and the over-addressed Christmas card that proved a poser for the postie.
We begin on the 29th when the council's Housing and Building Committee decided to give the go-ahead for the sale of some local authority land to Pilkington's – if the glass giant agreed to their £15,000 asking price (around £200,000 in today's money). Pilks needed the little over one-acre of land at Sutton Heath to build a major access road to their proposed float glass plant at Ravenhead that had been codenamed UK5.
The sale would be subject to Pilkington's undertaking fencing and landscaping and giving the council right of way on the new road. A spokesman for Pilks said the firm had reached an agreement to purchase most of the site of their proposed 80-acre float glass plant but the timetable for the construction of the works would depend on the economic situation in the country.
I recently asked a retired building manager when it was that security fencing had been introduced on building sites in St Helens. He did not give me a specific answer, which did not entirely surprise me, as these things tend to evolve and not just occur all at once. But for the seven or eight years that I've been writing these 50 Years Ago reports, I've detailed some shocking vandalism and thieving on building sites in St Helens.
It does seem extraordinary that it never seemed to dawn on anybody that the only way to prevent such damage and theft was to screen off sites with fencing, as is routine today. Or, perhaps, it did and they simply did not want to pay for the fencing. This week at a meeting of the council's Housing and Building Committee, a discussion took place on building site theft, with Cllr Harry Williams saying: "The thieves are having a birthday party." Cllr Hughie Littler suggested going back to the old practice of having a full-time night watchman, perhaps occupying a little hut.
Securicor had a contract with St Helens Council to patrol the local authority's building sites at a cost of £8,000 a year. But the patrols appeared to be very occasional during each night and with easy access to the building sites, thieves and vandals were far from being deterred. Recently twenty lengths of timber had been taken and brickwork damaged on a site in New Street.
Also external and internal doors and door casings had been stolen from Elm Road and electric cable had disappeared from a building site at Gerards Bridge. Cllr Williams said: "The council are paying out money and yet there is no return. I want to know whether they are ever brought to task about these thefts."
And Cllr Harold Glover complained that the magistrates courts were far too lenient, saying: "Thieves are not published severely enough, so they are not prevented from stealing again." However, a spokesman for Securicor – whose headquarters in St Helens were then in Reginald Road – said: "We have had no notification of any losses from these sites, and no complaints from the council about our service."
Many sexual offences during the 1970s did not appear to be treated very seriously by the courts. Even the sexual assault of children often led to only a small fine and / or probation or sometimes the granting of a conditional discharge after the perpetrator offered some excuse. There seemed little consideration for the trauma of victims and it would not be until 1997 that the Sex Offenders Register would be created.
In a case of indecent exposure that was heard on the 30th, a 24-year-old man from Park Road in St Helens was only fined £4 by the magistrates. That was for twice exposing himself to the same woman, who was a neighbour of his. I wonder if she felt forced to move as a result of the offences?
On the afternoon of the 31st – after a day and a half of talks to overcome some acrimony – Rockware and Pilkingtons came to a deal, with the latter taking almost 20% of Rockware's shares. That made Pilks the biggest single shareholder in the Pocket Nook glass container maker (pictured above).
For three days from New Year's Day, Percy Penguin's Puppet Show was performed at the Theatre Royal. It was advertised as "a special holiday show for kiddies!”
When I was a boy I had a friend who I discovered had posted a birthday card to me by simply writing "To Stephen" on the envelope and sticking it in the pillar box. Unsurprisingly, I did not receive it! Neither did Lawrence Measures with his misaddressed Christmas card but the St Helens Reporter on January 2nd explained how he had an opportunity to retrieve it.
The paper described how the card had been addressed to "Mr. Lawrence Measures, Grange Park, Nutgrove, Thatto Heath, Toll Bar, St. Helens, Lancashire." The somewhat over-addressed missive lacked any street or house number and had created a poser for the postie. He (probably a young male student at Christmas time) had decided to dispose of the card by pushing it through the letterbox of West Park Rugby Club on Prescot Road. The Reporter said Mr Measures could collect the card from their clubhouse.
Martin's had just opened a newsagent's shop in the LaGrange Arcade and the Reporter said that on Mondays and Tuesdays each week a "Reporter girl" would be there to accept classified adverts for the paper.
They also described how local milkmen would be having a lighter round in future as Rockware Glass had produced the "Pintie", a bottle that weighed only 8 ounces. In 1961 the company had begun developing lightweight pint bottles, which then weighed 17 ounces.
But by 1967 the Pocket Nook pintas had been reduced to 12 ounces, which had then saved the dairy industry £1 million a year. And milk bottle manufacture was a big industry for Rockware, with half-a-million bottles produced every day in their factories in Pocket Nook, Knottingley and Wheatley in Yorkshire and at Irvine in Scotland.
"A tough and disappointing year", was how the chairman of BICC summed up 1975 in a message to his company's workers. The global recession and high inflation of 24% in the UK had taken its toll on BI. But the recent winning of a record £54 million contract to expand Indonesia's telephone network had been a boost for the Prescot cable company.
Enid's Fashions of Pocket Nook Street was advertising their New Year sale in the Reporter in which customers could save up to 50%, with maxis available from £7.50. And Lilian Rogers announced that they had removed from 30 to 51 Duke Street, with all goods reduced. Lilian Elliott, who had been the first woman president of St Helens Chamber of Trade, had founded the female fashion store.
The Reporter announced that contractor Tarmac Ltd was to start work next week on the first phase of improving the A58 in St Helens town centre. Harry Jones, the Borough Engineer, said: "It will improve public transport in an area where an average of 67 buses an hour are having to contend with congestion. It will also help to improve the flow of industrial traffic, which accounts for up to 23 per cent of the total of all vehicles on the road.
"Lastly it will help to remove difficulties experienced by essential services such as fire engines and ambulances which use the road and enable traffic leaving the town centre redevelopment site to use the ring road to disperse westward instead of having to travel via the town centre."
Phase one would see improvements between Church Street and the junction of Parr Street and Sinclair Street. A new roundabout would also be built at the junction of the Ring Road and Church Street and the existing railway bridge on Church Street would be duplicated with a new bridge.
And finally, at the Capitol Cinema this week the 1958 film 'The 7th Voyage of Sinbad' was screened. That was until the 4th, when the thriller 'White Line Fever' replaced it. And at the ABC Savoy from the 4th, 'Jaws' was retained for a second week. "A nail biting drama of high excitement and suspense", was how the film was advertised in the Reporter.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the St Helens Show cutbacks, footballer Ian Callaghan visits McLean and Appleton's garage, there's bad news for the Ravenhead Action Committee and the Leathers Chemicals' appeal against their forced closure begins.
We begin on the 29th when the council's Housing and Building Committee decided to give the go-ahead for the sale of some local authority land to Pilkington's – if the glass giant agreed to their £15,000 asking price (around £200,000 in today's money). Pilks needed the little over one-acre of land at Sutton Heath to build a major access road to their proposed float glass plant at Ravenhead that had been codenamed UK5.
The sale would be subject to Pilkington's undertaking fencing and landscaping and giving the council right of way on the new road. A spokesman for Pilks said the firm had reached an agreement to purchase most of the site of their proposed 80-acre float glass plant but the timetable for the construction of the works would depend on the economic situation in the country.
I recently asked a retired building manager when it was that security fencing had been introduced on building sites in St Helens. He did not give me a specific answer, which did not entirely surprise me, as these things tend to evolve and not just occur all at once. But for the seven or eight years that I've been writing these 50 Years Ago reports, I've detailed some shocking vandalism and thieving on building sites in St Helens.
It does seem extraordinary that it never seemed to dawn on anybody that the only way to prevent such damage and theft was to screen off sites with fencing, as is routine today. Or, perhaps, it did and they simply did not want to pay for the fencing. This week at a meeting of the council's Housing and Building Committee, a discussion took place on building site theft, with Cllr Harry Williams saying: "The thieves are having a birthday party." Cllr Hughie Littler suggested going back to the old practice of having a full-time night watchman, perhaps occupying a little hut.
Securicor had a contract with St Helens Council to patrol the local authority's building sites at a cost of £8,000 a year. But the patrols appeared to be very occasional during each night and with easy access to the building sites, thieves and vandals were far from being deterred. Recently twenty lengths of timber had been taken and brickwork damaged on a site in New Street.
Also external and internal doors and door casings had been stolen from Elm Road and electric cable had disappeared from a building site at Gerards Bridge. Cllr Williams said: "The council are paying out money and yet there is no return. I want to know whether they are ever brought to task about these thefts."
And Cllr Harold Glover complained that the magistrates courts were far too lenient, saying: "Thieves are not published severely enough, so they are not prevented from stealing again." However, a spokesman for Securicor – whose headquarters in St Helens were then in Reginald Road – said: "We have had no notification of any losses from these sites, and no complaints from the council about our service."
Many sexual offences during the 1970s did not appear to be treated very seriously by the courts. Even the sexual assault of children often led to only a small fine and / or probation or sometimes the granting of a conditional discharge after the perpetrator offered some excuse. There seemed little consideration for the trauma of victims and it would not be until 1997 that the Sex Offenders Register would be created.
In a case of indecent exposure that was heard on the 30th, a 24-year-old man from Park Road in St Helens was only fined £4 by the magistrates. That was for twice exposing himself to the same woman, who was a neighbour of his. I wonder if she felt forced to move as a result of the offences?
For three days from New Year's Day, Percy Penguin's Puppet Show was performed at the Theatre Royal. It was advertised as "a special holiday show for kiddies!”
When I was a boy I had a friend who I discovered had posted a birthday card to me by simply writing "To Stephen" on the envelope and sticking it in the pillar box. Unsurprisingly, I did not receive it! Neither did Lawrence Measures with his misaddressed Christmas card but the St Helens Reporter on January 2nd explained how he had an opportunity to retrieve it.
The paper described how the card had been addressed to "Mr. Lawrence Measures, Grange Park, Nutgrove, Thatto Heath, Toll Bar, St. Helens, Lancashire." The somewhat over-addressed missive lacked any street or house number and had created a poser for the postie. He (probably a young male student at Christmas time) had decided to dispose of the card by pushing it through the letterbox of West Park Rugby Club on Prescot Road. The Reporter said Mr Measures could collect the card from their clubhouse.
Martin's had just opened a newsagent's shop in the LaGrange Arcade and the Reporter said that on Mondays and Tuesdays each week a "Reporter girl" would be there to accept classified adverts for the paper.
They also described how local milkmen would be having a lighter round in future as Rockware Glass had produced the "Pintie", a bottle that weighed only 8 ounces. In 1961 the company had begun developing lightweight pint bottles, which then weighed 17 ounces.
But by 1967 the Pocket Nook pintas had been reduced to 12 ounces, which had then saved the dairy industry £1 million a year. And milk bottle manufacture was a big industry for Rockware, with half-a-million bottles produced every day in their factories in Pocket Nook, Knottingley and Wheatley in Yorkshire and at Irvine in Scotland.
"A tough and disappointing year", was how the chairman of BICC summed up 1975 in a message to his company's workers. The global recession and high inflation of 24% in the UK had taken its toll on BI. But the recent winning of a record £54 million contract to expand Indonesia's telephone network had been a boost for the Prescot cable company.
Enid's Fashions of Pocket Nook Street was advertising their New Year sale in the Reporter in which customers could save up to 50%, with maxis available from £7.50. And Lilian Rogers announced that they had removed from 30 to 51 Duke Street, with all goods reduced. Lilian Elliott, who had been the first woman president of St Helens Chamber of Trade, had founded the female fashion store.
The Reporter announced that contractor Tarmac Ltd was to start work next week on the first phase of improving the A58 in St Helens town centre. Harry Jones, the Borough Engineer, said: "It will improve public transport in an area where an average of 67 buses an hour are having to contend with congestion. It will also help to improve the flow of industrial traffic, which accounts for up to 23 per cent of the total of all vehicles on the road.
"Lastly it will help to remove difficulties experienced by essential services such as fire engines and ambulances which use the road and enable traffic leaving the town centre redevelopment site to use the ring road to disperse westward instead of having to travel via the town centre."
Phase one would see improvements between Church Street and the junction of Parr Street and Sinclair Street. A new roundabout would also be built at the junction of the Ring Road and Church Street and the existing railway bridge on Church Street would be duplicated with a new bridge.
And finally, at the Capitol Cinema this week the 1958 film 'The 7th Voyage of Sinbad' was screened. That was until the 4th, when the thriller 'White Line Fever' replaced it. And at the ABC Savoy from the 4th, 'Jaws' was retained for a second week. "A nail biting drama of high excitement and suspense", was how the film was advertised in the Reporter.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the St Helens Show cutbacks, footballer Ian Callaghan visits McLean and Appleton's garage, there's bad news for the Ravenhead Action Committee and the Leathers Chemicals' appeal against their forced closure begins.
This week's many stories include the road improvements planned for St Helens town centre, the plague of thefts from council building sites, Rockware's lighter milk bottles, the case of indecent exposure towards a neighbour in Park Road, the sale of land to Pilks for a new access road and the over-addressed Christmas card that proved a poser for the postie.
We begin on the 29th when the council's Housing and Building Committee decided to give the go-ahead for the sale of some local authority land to Pilkington's – if the glass giant agreed to their £15,000 asking price (around £200,000 in today's money).
Pilks needed the little over one-acre of land at Sutton Heath to build a major access road to their proposed float glass plant at Ravenhead that had been codenamed UK5.
The sale would be subject to Pilkington's undertaking fencing and landscaping and giving the council right of way on the new road.
A spokesman for Pilks said the firm had reached an agreement to purchase most of the site of their proposed 80-acre float glass plant but the timetable for the construction of the works would depend on the economic situation in the country.
I recently asked a retired building manager when it was that security fencing had been introduced on building sites in St Helens.
He did not give me a specific answer, which did not entirely surprise me, as these things tend to evolve and not just occur all at once.
But for the seven or eight years that I've been writing these 50 Years Ago reports, I've detailed some shocking vandalism and thieving on building sites in St Helens.
It does seem extraordinary that it never seemed to dawn on anybody that the only way to prevent such damage and theft was to screen off sites with fencing, as is routine today. Or, perhaps, it did and they simply did not want to pay for the fencing.
This week at a meeting of the council's Housing and Building Committee, a discussion took place on building site theft, with Cllr Harry Williams saying: "The thieves are having a birthday party."
Cllr Hughie Littler suggested going back to the old practice of having a full-time night watchman, perhaps occupying a little hut.
Securicor had a contract with St Helens Council to patrol the local authority's building sites at a cost of £8,000 a year.
But the patrols appeared to be very occasional during each night and with easy access to the building sites, thieves and vandals were far from being deterred.
Recently twenty lengths of timber had been taken and brickwork damaged on a site in New Street.
Also external and internal doors and door casings had been stolen from Elm Road and electric cable had disappeared from a building site at Gerards Bridge.
Cllr Williams said: "The council are paying out money and yet there is no return. I want to know whether they are ever brought to task about these thefts."
And Cllr Harold Glover complained that the magistrates courts were far too lenient, saying: "Thieves are not published severely enough, so they are not prevented from stealing again."
However, a spokesman for Securicor – whose headquarters in St Helens were then in Reginald Road – said: "We have had no notification of any losses from these sites, and no complaints from the council about our service."
Many sexual offences during the 1970s did not appear to be treated very seriously by the courts.
Even the sexual assault of children often led to only a small fine and / or probation or sometimes the granting of a conditional discharge after the perpetrator offered some excuse.
There seemed little consideration for the trauma of victims and it would not be until 1997 that the Sex Offenders Register would be created.
In a case of indecent exposure that was heard on the 30th, a 24-year-old man from Park Road in St Helens was only fined £4 by the magistrates.
That was for twice exposing himself to the same woman, who was a neighbour of his. I wonder if she felt forced to move as a result of the offences?
On the afternoon of the 31st – after a day and a half of talks to overcome some acrimony – Rockware and Pilkingtons came to a deal, with the latter taking almost 20% of Rockware's shares.
That made Pilks the biggest single shareholder in the Pocket Nook glass container maker.
For three days from New Year's Day, Percy Penguin's Puppet Show was performed at the Theatre Royal. It was advertised as "a special holiday show for kiddies!"
When I was a boy I had a friend who I discovered had posted a birthday card to me by simply writing "To Stephen" on the envelope and sticking it in the pillar box. Unsurprisingly, I did not receive it!
Neither did Lawrence Measures with his misaddressed Christmas card but the St Helens Reporter on January 2nd explained how he had an opportunity to retrieve it.
The paper described how the card had been addressed to "Mr. Lawrence Measures, Grange Park, Nutgrove, Thatto Heath, Toll Bar, St. Helens, Lancashire."
The somewhat over-addressed missive lacked any street or house number and had created a poser for the postie.
He (probably a young male student at Christmas time) had decided to dispose of the card by pushing it through the letterbox of West Park Rugby Club on Prescot Road.
The Reporter said Mr Measures could collect the card from their clubhouse.
Martin's had just opened a newsagent's shop in the LaGrange Arcade and the Reporter said that on Mondays and Tuesdays each week a "Reporter girl" would be there to accept classified adverts for the paper.
They also described how local milkmen would be having a lighter round in future as Rockware Glass (pictured above) had produced the "Pintie", a bottle that weighed only 8 ounces.
In 1961 the company had begun developing lightweight pint bottles, which then weighed 17 ounces.
But by 1967 the Pocket Nook pintas had been reduced to 12 ounces, which had then saved the dairy industry £1 million a year.
And milk bottle manufacture was a big industry for Rockware, with half-a-million bottles produced every day in their factories in Pocket Nook, Knottingley and Wheatley in Yorkshire and at Irvine in Scotland.
"A tough and disappointing year", was how the chairman of BICC summed up 1975 in a message to his company's workers.
The global recession and high inflation of 24% in the UK had taken its toll on BI. But the recent winning of a record £54 million contract to expand Indonesia's telephone network had been a boost for the Prescot cable company.
Enid's Fashions of Pocket Nook Street was advertising their New Year sale in the Reporter in which customers could save up to 50%, with maxis available from £7.50.
And Lilian Rogers announced that they had removed from 30 to 51 Duke Street, with all goods reduced.
Lilian Elliott, who had been the first woman president of St Helens Chamber of Trade, had founded the female fashion store.
The Reporter announced that contractor Tarmac Ltd was to start work next week on the first phase of improving the A58 in St Helens town centre. Harry Jones, the Borough Engineer, said:
"It will improve public transport in an area where an average of 67 buses an hour are having to contend with congestion. It will also help to improve the flow of industrial traffic, which accounts for up to 23 per cent of the total of all vehicles on the road.
"Lastly it will help to remove difficulties experienced by essential services such as fire engines and ambulances which use the road and enable traffic leaving the town centre redevelopment site to use the ring road to disperse westward instead of having to travel via the town centre."
Phase one would see improvements between Church Street and the junction of Parr Street and Sinclair Street.
A new roundabout would also be built at the junction of the Ring Road and Church Street and the existing railway bridge on Church Street would be duplicated with a new bridge.
And finally, at the Capitol Cinema this week the 1958 film 'The 7th Voyage of Sinbad' was screened. That was until the 4th, when the thriller 'White Line Fever' replaced it.
And at the ABC Savoy from the 4th, 'Jaws' was retained for a second week.
"A nail biting drama of high excitement and suspense", was how the film was advertised in the Reporter.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the St Helens Show cutbacks, footballer Ian Callaghan visits McLean and Appleton's garage, there's bad news for the Ravenhead Action Committee and the Leathers Chemicals' appeal against their forced closure begins.
We begin on the 29th when the council's Housing and Building Committee decided to give the go-ahead for the sale of some local authority land to Pilkington's – if the glass giant agreed to their £15,000 asking price (around £200,000 in today's money).
Pilks needed the little over one-acre of land at Sutton Heath to build a major access road to their proposed float glass plant at Ravenhead that had been codenamed UK5.
The sale would be subject to Pilkington's undertaking fencing and landscaping and giving the council right of way on the new road.
A spokesman for Pilks said the firm had reached an agreement to purchase most of the site of their proposed 80-acre float glass plant but the timetable for the construction of the works would depend on the economic situation in the country.
I recently asked a retired building manager when it was that security fencing had been introduced on building sites in St Helens.
He did not give me a specific answer, which did not entirely surprise me, as these things tend to evolve and not just occur all at once.
But for the seven or eight years that I've been writing these 50 Years Ago reports, I've detailed some shocking vandalism and thieving on building sites in St Helens.
It does seem extraordinary that it never seemed to dawn on anybody that the only way to prevent such damage and theft was to screen off sites with fencing, as is routine today. Or, perhaps, it did and they simply did not want to pay for the fencing.
This week at a meeting of the council's Housing and Building Committee, a discussion took place on building site theft, with Cllr Harry Williams saying: "The thieves are having a birthday party."
Cllr Hughie Littler suggested going back to the old practice of having a full-time night watchman, perhaps occupying a little hut.
Securicor had a contract with St Helens Council to patrol the local authority's building sites at a cost of £8,000 a year.
But the patrols appeared to be very occasional during each night and with easy access to the building sites, thieves and vandals were far from being deterred.
Recently twenty lengths of timber had been taken and brickwork damaged on a site in New Street.
Also external and internal doors and door casings had been stolen from Elm Road and electric cable had disappeared from a building site at Gerards Bridge.
Cllr Williams said: "The council are paying out money and yet there is no return. I want to know whether they are ever brought to task about these thefts."
And Cllr Harold Glover complained that the magistrates courts were far too lenient, saying: "Thieves are not published severely enough, so they are not prevented from stealing again."
However, a spokesman for Securicor – whose headquarters in St Helens were then in Reginald Road – said: "We have had no notification of any losses from these sites, and no complaints from the council about our service."
Many sexual offences during the 1970s did not appear to be treated very seriously by the courts.
Even the sexual assault of children often led to only a small fine and / or probation or sometimes the granting of a conditional discharge after the perpetrator offered some excuse.
There seemed little consideration for the trauma of victims and it would not be until 1997 that the Sex Offenders Register would be created.
In a case of indecent exposure that was heard on the 30th, a 24-year-old man from Park Road in St Helens was only fined £4 by the magistrates.
That was for twice exposing himself to the same woman, who was a neighbour of his. I wonder if she felt forced to move as a result of the offences?
On the afternoon of the 31st – after a day and a half of talks to overcome some acrimony – Rockware and Pilkingtons came to a deal, with the latter taking almost 20% of Rockware's shares.
That made Pilks the biggest single shareholder in the Pocket Nook glass container maker.
For three days from New Year's Day, Percy Penguin's Puppet Show was performed at the Theatre Royal. It was advertised as "a special holiday show for kiddies!"
When I was a boy I had a friend who I discovered had posted a birthday card to me by simply writing "To Stephen" on the envelope and sticking it in the pillar box. Unsurprisingly, I did not receive it!
Neither did Lawrence Measures with his misaddressed Christmas card but the St Helens Reporter on January 2nd explained how he had an opportunity to retrieve it.
The paper described how the card had been addressed to "Mr. Lawrence Measures, Grange Park, Nutgrove, Thatto Heath, Toll Bar, St. Helens, Lancashire."
The somewhat over-addressed missive lacked any street or house number and had created a poser for the postie.
He (probably a young male student at Christmas time) had decided to dispose of the card by pushing it through the letterbox of West Park Rugby Club on Prescot Road.
The Reporter said Mr Measures could collect the card from their clubhouse.
Martin's had just opened a newsagent's shop in the LaGrange Arcade and the Reporter said that on Mondays and Tuesdays each week a "Reporter girl" would be there to accept classified adverts for the paper.
In 1961 the company had begun developing lightweight pint bottles, which then weighed 17 ounces.
But by 1967 the Pocket Nook pintas had been reduced to 12 ounces, which had then saved the dairy industry £1 million a year.
And milk bottle manufacture was a big industry for Rockware, with half-a-million bottles produced every day in their factories in Pocket Nook, Knottingley and Wheatley in Yorkshire and at Irvine in Scotland.
"A tough and disappointing year", was how the chairman of BICC summed up 1975 in a message to his company's workers.
The global recession and high inflation of 24% in the UK had taken its toll on BI. But the recent winning of a record £54 million contract to expand Indonesia's telephone network had been a boost for the Prescot cable company.
Enid's Fashions of Pocket Nook Street was advertising their New Year sale in the Reporter in which customers could save up to 50%, with maxis available from £7.50.
And Lilian Rogers announced that they had removed from 30 to 51 Duke Street, with all goods reduced.
Lilian Elliott, who had been the first woman president of St Helens Chamber of Trade, had founded the female fashion store.
The Reporter announced that contractor Tarmac Ltd was to start work next week on the first phase of improving the A58 in St Helens town centre. Harry Jones, the Borough Engineer, said:
"It will improve public transport in an area where an average of 67 buses an hour are having to contend with congestion. It will also help to improve the flow of industrial traffic, which accounts for up to 23 per cent of the total of all vehicles on the road.
"Lastly it will help to remove difficulties experienced by essential services such as fire engines and ambulances which use the road and enable traffic leaving the town centre redevelopment site to use the ring road to disperse westward instead of having to travel via the town centre."
Phase one would see improvements between Church Street and the junction of Parr Street and Sinclair Street.
A new roundabout would also be built at the junction of the Ring Road and Church Street and the existing railway bridge on Church Street would be duplicated with a new bridge.
And finally, at the Capitol Cinema this week the 1958 film 'The 7th Voyage of Sinbad' was screened. That was until the 4th, when the thriller 'White Line Fever' replaced it.
And at the ABC Savoy from the 4th, 'Jaws' was retained for a second week.
"A nail biting drama of high excitement and suspense", was how the film was advertised in the Reporter.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the St Helens Show cutbacks, footballer Ian Callaghan visits McLean and Appleton's garage, there's bad news for the Ravenhead Action Committee and the Leathers Chemicals' appeal against their forced closure begins.