FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (22nd - 28th MARCH 1971)
This week's many stories include the hundreds of cured Rainhill Hospital patients looking for a home, Sooty's Birthday Show at the Theatre Royal, a tragic Newton scrapyard explosion, the new Rainford Comp and the monotonous life of a housewife in St Helens.
We begin on the 23rd with what was advertised as the "Township Of Rainhill Annual Parish Meeting". This was held in the Village Hall and chaired by the indomitable Nellie Holley of Rainhill Road – who was also a County Councillor. Mrs Holley was one of the best-known councillors in St Helens. From being elected in the 1950s, Nellie spent over 30 years fighting for those she represented.
On the following day Alderman William Burrows – the chairman of St Helens Education Committee – opened the Hurst Special School in Hard Lane. In 2005 Hurst merged with the recently closed Hamblett School and reopened in new premises in Parr as the Lansbury Bridge School and Sports College.
An inquest into the death of Nicholas Brereton was held on the 24th. The three-year-old from Cherry Street in Newton-le-Willows had been watching men working in a local scrapyard along with three other youngsters. Suddenly a 40-gallon drum of paint thinners exploded and the little boy was engulfed in flames and died later at Alder Hey Hospital. PC William Potts told the hearing that he had questioned the boy's brother, Joseph, aged 6, and the two other children present, both aged 7, and was told that one of them had dropped a lighted stick into the drum.
For six nights this week 'Sooty's Birthday Show' was entertaining the kids at the Theatre Royal in St Helens (pictured above in the 1980s). It was 21 years since Harry Corbett had seen the teddy bear in a toy shop window on Blackpool's North Pier and bought it for his son David. Eventually Corbett reclaimed his gift and incorporated it into one of his conjuring shows that he performed in his spare time. I hope David was suitably recompensed!
At the Theatre Royal children aged between three and seven whose birthday fell on the day of the performance were invited onto the stage to "meet Sooty and receive a birthday surprise". Harry Corbett used to travel to venues by caravan and when he was performing in the St Helens district would park it outside the Wheatsheaf in Rainford. The shows began at 6pm and probably did not last much longer than an hour. And so on the 25th there was a separate performance at 8pm by folk duo Jackie & Bridie, plus the Foggy Dew-O.
Pictured in the St Helens Reporter on the 26th was prize-winning apprentice Brian Pumford from Clock Face Road. The 20-year-old bricklayer worked for Peckers Hill Road firm A. E. Thomas & Son and had impressed lecturers at St Helens College of Technology during his attendance on day-release. Brian and joiner John Ball from Prescot Road had both been nominated to receive awards in the building trade's apprentices' roll of honour. The awards had been based on their exam results, attendance, time-keeping and lecturers' comments while studying at St Helens "Tech".
The recent introduction of comprehensive education had affected the town's schools in a number of ways. Both Cowley boys and girls grammar schools had been converted into comps and other St Helens' secondary schools had extended their age limit from 16 to 18. More small primary schools were being built but the demands of the new system meant there was no place for small secondary schools. So St Mary's with less than 200 pupils had been forced to close, as it did not have the staff to teach the range of required subjects.
Rivington Road and Robins Lane had already gone comprehensive and now it was the turn of Rainford County Secondary School – as it was officially known. From September 1st the establishment in Higher Lane would be known as Rainford Comprehensive School with 850 pupils aged 11 to 18. The reorganisation meant that new staff were needed and on the 26th nine vacancies were advertised in the Guardian.
In September it was anticipated that there would be over 80 pupils in the sixth form and this was expected to grow to 200 by 1975. So a sixth-form tutor was considered a "vital post" – in which a "mature personality is more important than subjects offered". Other positions included heads of department in English, physics, biology, modern languages and director of music. A housemistress was also required – "experienced non-graduate preferred".
Last October the St Helens Reporter had put out this appeal: "Kind-hearted landladies are wanted by a mental hospital – to give cured patients a fresh start in life. Two hundred and fifty patients at Rainhill Hospital are well enough to live outside, it was revealed this week. But no one is willing to give them a home. Relatives refuse to take them in and local authority homes are overcrowded. Now hospital officials have made an urgent plea to local landladies to take in the new lodgers – as paying guests."
Some patients had spent as long as thirty years in the institution, with John Wilson, group secretary of the Rainhill Management Committee saying: "It is a very distressing state of affairs. They are men and women who at some stage in their lives became depressed and unable to cope with things. We feel that if landladies would take them in they could start new lives." Clearly finding suitable homes in the community for 250 friendless people – many institutionalised – was a mammoth task and on the 26th this advert appeared in the Liverpool Echo's Personal column:
"We are looking for accommodation for some of our patients who are ready to leave hospital, but no have no friends or relatives to go to. Many of these patients are working in factories at the moment and there is no reason why they should not take their place in society – except the lack of accommodation. If you feel you could find a place in your home for one of these people and would like more information, contact the Chief Nursing Officer giving details of the accommodation available."
The Echo began a new column on the 26th called 'Housewives' Voice' – a play, of course, on the radio show 'Housewives Choice'. It was simply a platform for married stay-at-home women to state their opinions, although the Echo did have its own separate letters page:
"Sir, – Making porridge, cooking bacon and eggs, roasting the Sunday lunch. Mending socks, ironing shirts, peeling potatoes. Tending grazed knees, cleaning windows, taking a pram full of little ones to the shops. Where's it all getting me? I long to escape and just for one idyllic afternoon, fly from the roof of my neat little semi and be as free as a bird. What would Freud say, I wonder."
It was reported on the 27th that Harry Allison, of Stanley Crescent in Prescot, was to be the next president of the National Union of Teachers. Mr. Allison had been headmaster of Prescot County Primary School for the past 19 years.
I don't know if the St Helens branch of the Burma Star Association is still active in the town but they held a dance on the 27th at St Theresa's Church Hall in Devon Street.
And this week's final bonus item with no direct St Helens connection is Beatle related. The national papers were currently full of Paul McCartney's successful High Court action to dissolve the Beatles' partnership. So the Liverpool Echo visited the offices of their fan club to find out how the Fab Four's fans were taking the news:
"All the High Court actions in the world can't keep the Beatles fans down. At the offices of the Beatles Fan Club in Castle Street – just round the corner from the Cavern – they're still getting 200 letters a day. Letters like the one from a 76-years-old man in Sutton Coldfield who begged the famous four to make up their differences. “Think of England,” he pleaded. Or the impassioned letter from a Norwegian fan who asked, “is there no hope they will get back together again?”
"Although it's not quite up to the 800 letters a day the club received at the height of “Beatlemania,” in the mid-Sixties, it's still enough to keep secretary Freda Norris, one assistant and eight part-time helpers hard at it five days a week. They've only just finished sorting out the mail that piled up during the postal strike. “It usually takes about three hours to open a normal day's mail but when the strike was over we had a whole sackful to sort out and it's been coming in thick and fast ever since,” said Freda.
"Freda was a founder of the club nine years when the Beatles were still relatively unknown outside of Liverpool. Although she obviously relishes the balmy days when everyone was Beatle mad, she's still far from pessimistic about the future. “I shall definitely be carrying on and nobody has ever suggested otherwise. We are the fans' last link with the group.” She is the first to admit that times have changed but says that in some ways it's for the better. The fans, for instance, have grown up and become more sensible.
"“In the old days you'd get stupid letters asking what sort of toothpaste George used or what colour Paul liked. To-day they're much more serious – especially the Americans,” she says. If anything she thinks the fans are more loyal now that they've “grown up.” She sees the success of John, Paul and George's recent solo discs as an indication of this. Times have changed for Freda too. She has to combine her work with being a wife and a mother.
"This week she was going down to the Beatles “Apple” H.Q. in London for the day to finalise details for the club's April Newsletter. “In the old days I would probably have spent two or three weeks down there. Now I catch the first train in the morning and come back that evening. I might find time though to look up Ringo,” she added."
Next week's stories will include a major new Pilkington pay deal, the West Park schoolboys who took an overdose of sleeping pills as a dare, inquests into three tragedies and the men heavily fined for selling solid fuel under weight.
We begin on the 23rd with what was advertised as the "Township Of Rainhill Annual Parish Meeting". This was held in the Village Hall and chaired by the indomitable Nellie Holley of Rainhill Road – who was also a County Councillor. Mrs Holley was one of the best-known councillors in St Helens. From being elected in the 1950s, Nellie spent over 30 years fighting for those she represented.
On the following day Alderman William Burrows – the chairman of St Helens Education Committee – opened the Hurst Special School in Hard Lane. In 2005 Hurst merged with the recently closed Hamblett School and reopened in new premises in Parr as the Lansbury Bridge School and Sports College.
An inquest into the death of Nicholas Brereton was held on the 24th. The three-year-old from Cherry Street in Newton-le-Willows had been watching men working in a local scrapyard along with three other youngsters. Suddenly a 40-gallon drum of paint thinners exploded and the little boy was engulfed in flames and died later at Alder Hey Hospital. PC William Potts told the hearing that he had questioned the boy's brother, Joseph, aged 6, and the two other children present, both aged 7, and was told that one of them had dropped a lighted stick into the drum.
At the Theatre Royal children aged between three and seven whose birthday fell on the day of the performance were invited onto the stage to "meet Sooty and receive a birthday surprise". Harry Corbett used to travel to venues by caravan and when he was performing in the St Helens district would park it outside the Wheatsheaf in Rainford. The shows began at 6pm and probably did not last much longer than an hour. And so on the 25th there was a separate performance at 8pm by folk duo Jackie & Bridie, plus the Foggy Dew-O.
Pictured in the St Helens Reporter on the 26th was prize-winning apprentice Brian Pumford from Clock Face Road. The 20-year-old bricklayer worked for Peckers Hill Road firm A. E. Thomas & Son and had impressed lecturers at St Helens College of Technology during his attendance on day-release. Brian and joiner John Ball from Prescot Road had both been nominated to receive awards in the building trade's apprentices' roll of honour. The awards had been based on their exam results, attendance, time-keeping and lecturers' comments while studying at St Helens "Tech".
The recent introduction of comprehensive education had affected the town's schools in a number of ways. Both Cowley boys and girls grammar schools had been converted into comps and other St Helens' secondary schools had extended their age limit from 16 to 18. More small primary schools were being built but the demands of the new system meant there was no place for small secondary schools. So St Mary's with less than 200 pupils had been forced to close, as it did not have the staff to teach the range of required subjects.
Rivington Road and Robins Lane had already gone comprehensive and now it was the turn of Rainford County Secondary School – as it was officially known. From September 1st the establishment in Higher Lane would be known as Rainford Comprehensive School with 850 pupils aged 11 to 18. The reorganisation meant that new staff were needed and on the 26th nine vacancies were advertised in the Guardian.
In September it was anticipated that there would be over 80 pupils in the sixth form and this was expected to grow to 200 by 1975. So a sixth-form tutor was considered a "vital post" – in which a "mature personality is more important than subjects offered". Other positions included heads of department in English, physics, biology, modern languages and director of music. A housemistress was also required – "experienced non-graduate preferred".
Last October the St Helens Reporter had put out this appeal: "Kind-hearted landladies are wanted by a mental hospital – to give cured patients a fresh start in life. Two hundred and fifty patients at Rainhill Hospital are well enough to live outside, it was revealed this week. But no one is willing to give them a home. Relatives refuse to take them in and local authority homes are overcrowded. Now hospital officials have made an urgent plea to local landladies to take in the new lodgers – as paying guests."
Some patients had spent as long as thirty years in the institution, with John Wilson, group secretary of the Rainhill Management Committee saying: "It is a very distressing state of affairs. They are men and women who at some stage in their lives became depressed and unable to cope with things. We feel that if landladies would take them in they could start new lives." Clearly finding suitable homes in the community for 250 friendless people – many institutionalised – was a mammoth task and on the 26th this advert appeared in the Liverpool Echo's Personal column:
"We are looking for accommodation for some of our patients who are ready to leave hospital, but no have no friends or relatives to go to. Many of these patients are working in factories at the moment and there is no reason why they should not take their place in society – except the lack of accommodation. If you feel you could find a place in your home for one of these people and would like more information, contact the Chief Nursing Officer giving details of the accommodation available."
The Echo began a new column on the 26th called 'Housewives' Voice' – a play, of course, on the radio show 'Housewives Choice'. It was simply a platform for married stay-at-home women to state their opinions, although the Echo did have its own separate letters page:
"Sir, – Making porridge, cooking bacon and eggs, roasting the Sunday lunch. Mending socks, ironing shirts, peeling potatoes. Tending grazed knees, cleaning windows, taking a pram full of little ones to the shops. Where's it all getting me? I long to escape and just for one idyllic afternoon, fly from the roof of my neat little semi and be as free as a bird. What would Freud say, I wonder."
It was reported on the 27th that Harry Allison, of Stanley Crescent in Prescot, was to be the next president of the National Union of Teachers. Mr. Allison had been headmaster of Prescot County Primary School for the past 19 years.
I don't know if the St Helens branch of the Burma Star Association is still active in the town but they held a dance on the 27th at St Theresa's Church Hall in Devon Street.
"All the High Court actions in the world can't keep the Beatles fans down. At the offices of the Beatles Fan Club in Castle Street – just round the corner from the Cavern – they're still getting 200 letters a day. Letters like the one from a 76-years-old man in Sutton Coldfield who begged the famous four to make up their differences. “Think of England,” he pleaded. Or the impassioned letter from a Norwegian fan who asked, “is there no hope they will get back together again?”
"Although it's not quite up to the 800 letters a day the club received at the height of “Beatlemania,” in the mid-Sixties, it's still enough to keep secretary Freda Norris, one assistant and eight part-time helpers hard at it five days a week. They've only just finished sorting out the mail that piled up during the postal strike. “It usually takes about three hours to open a normal day's mail but when the strike was over we had a whole sackful to sort out and it's been coming in thick and fast ever since,” said Freda.
"Freda was a founder of the club nine years when the Beatles were still relatively unknown outside of Liverpool. Although she obviously relishes the balmy days when everyone was Beatle mad, she's still far from pessimistic about the future. “I shall definitely be carrying on and nobody has ever suggested otherwise. We are the fans' last link with the group.” She is the first to admit that times have changed but says that in some ways it's for the better. The fans, for instance, have grown up and become more sensible.
"“In the old days you'd get stupid letters asking what sort of toothpaste George used or what colour Paul liked. To-day they're much more serious – especially the Americans,” she says. If anything she thinks the fans are more loyal now that they've “grown up.” She sees the success of John, Paul and George's recent solo discs as an indication of this. Times have changed for Freda too. She has to combine her work with being a wife and a mother.
"This week she was going down to the Beatles “Apple” H.Q. in London for the day to finalise details for the club's April Newsletter. “In the old days I would probably have spent two or three weeks down there. Now I catch the first train in the morning and come back that evening. I might find time though to look up Ringo,” she added."
Next week's stories will include a major new Pilkington pay deal, the West Park schoolboys who took an overdose of sleeping pills as a dare, inquests into three tragedies and the men heavily fined for selling solid fuel under weight.
This week's many stories include the hundreds of cured Rainhill Hospital patients looking for a home, Sooty's Birthday Show at the Theatre Royal, a tragic Newton scrapyard explosion, the new Rainford Comp and the monotonous life of a housewife in St Helens.
We begin on the 23rd with what was advertised as the "Township Of Rainhill Annual Parish Meeting".
This was held in the Village Hall and chaired by the indomitable Nellie Holley of Rainhill Road – who was also a County Councillor.
Mrs Holley was one of the best-known councillors in St Helens. From being elected in the 1950s, Nellie spent over 30 years fighting for those she represented.
On the following day Alderman William Burrows – the chairman of St Helens Education Committee – opened the Hurst Special School in Hard Lane.
In 2005 Hurst merged with the recently closed Hamblett School and reopened in new premises in Parr as the Lansbury Bridge School and Sports College.
An inquest into the death of Nicholas Brereton was held on the 24th. The three-year-old from Cherry Street in Newton-le-Willows had been watching men working in a local scrapyard along with three other youngsters.
Suddenly a 40-gallon drum of paint thinners exploded and the little boy was engulfed in flames and died later at Alder Hey Hospital.
PC William Potts told the hearing that he had questioned the boy's brother, Joseph, aged 6, and the two other children present, both aged 7, and was told that one of them had dropped a lighted stick into the drum.
For six nights this week 'Sooty's Birthday Show' was entertaining the kids at the Theatre Royal in St Helens.
It was 21 years since Harry Corbett had seen the teddy bear in a toy shop window on Blackpool's North Pier and bought it for his son David.
Eventually Corbett reclaimed his gift and incorporated it into one of his conjuring shows that he performed in his spare time. I hope David was suitably recompensed!
At the Theatre Royal children aged between three and seven whose birthday fell on the day of the performance were invited onto the stage to "meet Sooty and receive a birthday surprise".
Harry Corbett used to travel to venues by caravan and when he was performing in the St Helens district would park it outside the Wheatsheaf in Rainford.
The shows began at 6pm and probably did not last much longer than an hour. And so on the 25th there was a separate performance at 8pm by folk duo Jackie & Bridie, plus the Foggy Dew-O.
Pictured in the St Helens Reporter on the 26th was prize-winning apprentice Brian Pumford from Clock Face Road.
The 20-year-old bricklayer worked for Peckers Hill Road firm A. E. Thomas & Son and had impressed lecturers at St Helens College of Technology during his attendance on day-release.
Brian and joiner John Ball from Prescot Road had both been nominated to receive awards in the building trade's apprentices' roll of honour.
The awards had been based on their exam results, attendance, time-keeping and lecturers' comments while studying at St Helens "Tech".
The recent introduction of comprehensive education had affected the town's schools in a number of ways.
Both Cowley boys and girls grammar schools had been converted into comps and other St Helens' secondary schools had extended their age limit from 16 to 18.
More small primary schools were being built but the demands of the new system meant there was no place for small secondary schools.
So St Mary's with less than 200 pupils had been forced to close, as it did not have the staff to teach the range of required subjects.
Rivington Road and Robins Lane had already gone comprehensive and now it was the turn of Rainford County Secondary School – as it was officially known.
From September 1st the establishment in Higher Lane would be known as Rainford Comprehensive School with 850 pupils aged 11 to 18.
The reorganisation meant that new staff were needed and on the 26th nine vacancies were advertised in the Guardian.
In September it was anticipated that there would be over 80 pupils in the sixth form and this was expected to grow to 200 by 1975.
So a sixth-form tutor was considered a "vital post" – in which a "mature personality is more important than subjects offered".
Other positions included heads of department in English, physics, biology, modern languages and director of music. A housemistress was also required – "experienced non-graduate preferred".
Last October the St Helens Reporter had put out this appeal:
"Kind-hearted landladies are wanted by a mental hospital – to give cured patients a fresh start in life. Two hundred and fifty patients at Rainhill Hospital are well enough to live outside, it was revealed this week.
"But no one is willing to give them a home. Relatives refuse to take them in and local authority homes are overcrowded. Now hospital officials have made an urgent plea to local landladies to take in the new lodgers – as paying guests."
Some patients had spent as long as thirty years in the institution, with John Wilson, group secretary of the Rainhill Management Committee saying:
"It is a very distressing state of affairs. They are men and women who at some stage in their lives became depressed and unable to cope with things. We feel that if landladies would take them in they could start new lives."
Clearly finding suitable homes in the community for 250 friendless people – many institutionalised – was a mammoth task and on the 26th this advert appeared in the Liverpool Echo's Personal column:
"We are looking for accommodation for some of our patients who are ready to leave hospital, but no have no friends or relatives to go to.
"Many of these patients are working in factories at the moment and there is no reason why they should not take their place in society – except the lack of accommodation.
"If you feel you could find a place in your home for one of these people and would like more information, contact the Chief Nursing Officer giving details of the accommodation available."
The Echo began a new column on the 26th called 'Housewives' Voice' – a play, of course, on the radio show 'Housewives Choice'.
It was simply a platform for married stay-at-home women to state their opinions, although the Echo did have its own separate letters page.
Elizabeth Lloyd from St Helens lamented her rather monotonous life as a housewife:
"Sir, - Making porridge, cooking bacon and eggs, roasting the Sunday lunch. Mending socks, ironing shirts, peeling potatoes. Tending grazed knees, cleaning windows, taking a pram full of little ones to the shops.
"Where's it all getting me? I long to escape and just for one idyllic afternoon, fly from the roof of my neat little semi and be as free as a bird. What would Freud say, I wonder."
It was reported on the 27th that Harry Allison, of Stanley Crescent in Prescot, was to be the next president of the National Union of Teachers.
Mr. Allison had been headmaster of Prescot County Primary School for the past 19 years.
I don't know if the St Helens branch of the Burma Star Association is still active in the town but they held a dance on the 27th at St Theresa's Church Hall in Devon Street.
And this week's final bonus item with no direct St Helens connection is Beatle related.
The national papers were currently full of Paul McCartney's successful High Court action to dissolve the Beatles' partnership.
So the Liverpool Echo visited the offices of their fan club to find out how the Fab Four's fans were taking the news:
"All the High Court actions in the world can't keep the Beatles fans down. At the offices of the Beatles Fan Club in Castle Street – just round the corner from the Cavern – they're still getting 200 letters a day.
Letters like the one from a 76-years-old man in Sutton Coldfield who begged the famous four to make up their differences. “Think of England,” he pleaded.
Or the impassioned letter from a Norwegian fan who asked, “is there no hope they will get back together again?”
Although it's not quite up to the 800 letters a day the club received at the height of “Beatlemania,” in the mid-Sixties, it's still enough to keep secretary Freda Norris, one assistant and eight part-time helpers hard at it five days a week.
They've only just finished sorting out the mail that piled up during the postal strike.
“It usually takes about three hours to open a normal day's mail but when the strike was over we had a whole sackful to sort out and it's been coming in thick and fast ever since,” said Freda.
Freda was a founder of the club nine years when the Beatles were still relatively unknown outside of Liverpool.
Although she obviously relishes the balmy days when everyone was Beatle mad, she's still far from pessimistic about the future.
“I shall definitely be carrying on and nobody has ever suggested otherwise. We are the fans' last link with the group.”
She is the first to admit that times have changed but says that in some ways it's for the better. The fans, for instance, have grown up and become more sensible.
“In the old days you'd get stupid letters asking what sort of toothpaste George used or what colour Paul liked.
“To-day they're much more serious – especially the Americans,” she says. If anything she thinks the fans are more loyal now that they've “grown up.”
She sees the success of John, Paul and George's recent solo discs as an indication of this. Times have changed for Freda too. She has to combine her work with being a wife and a mother.
This week she was going down to the Beatles “Apple” H.Q. in London for the day to finalise details for the club's April Newsletter.
“In the old days I would probably have spent two or three weeks down there. Now I catch the first train in the morning and come back that evening. I might find time though to look up Ringo,” she added."
Next week's stories will include a major new Pilkington pay deal, the West Park schoolboys who took an overdose of sleeping pills as a dare, inquests into three tragedies and the men heavily fined for selling solid fuel under weight.
We begin on the 23rd with what was advertised as the "Township Of Rainhill Annual Parish Meeting".
This was held in the Village Hall and chaired by the indomitable Nellie Holley of Rainhill Road – who was also a County Councillor.
Mrs Holley was one of the best-known councillors in St Helens. From being elected in the 1950s, Nellie spent over 30 years fighting for those she represented.
On the following day Alderman William Burrows – the chairman of St Helens Education Committee – opened the Hurst Special School in Hard Lane.
In 2005 Hurst merged with the recently closed Hamblett School and reopened in new premises in Parr as the Lansbury Bridge School and Sports College.
An inquest into the death of Nicholas Brereton was held on the 24th. The three-year-old from Cherry Street in Newton-le-Willows had been watching men working in a local scrapyard along with three other youngsters.
Suddenly a 40-gallon drum of paint thinners exploded and the little boy was engulfed in flames and died later at Alder Hey Hospital.
PC William Potts told the hearing that he had questioned the boy's brother, Joseph, aged 6, and the two other children present, both aged 7, and was told that one of them had dropped a lighted stick into the drum.
It was 21 years since Harry Corbett had seen the teddy bear in a toy shop window on Blackpool's North Pier and bought it for his son David.
Eventually Corbett reclaimed his gift and incorporated it into one of his conjuring shows that he performed in his spare time. I hope David was suitably recompensed!
At the Theatre Royal children aged between three and seven whose birthday fell on the day of the performance were invited onto the stage to "meet Sooty and receive a birthday surprise".
Harry Corbett used to travel to venues by caravan and when he was performing in the St Helens district would park it outside the Wheatsheaf in Rainford.
The shows began at 6pm and probably did not last much longer than an hour. And so on the 25th there was a separate performance at 8pm by folk duo Jackie & Bridie, plus the Foggy Dew-O.
Pictured in the St Helens Reporter on the 26th was prize-winning apprentice Brian Pumford from Clock Face Road.
The 20-year-old bricklayer worked for Peckers Hill Road firm A. E. Thomas & Son and had impressed lecturers at St Helens College of Technology during his attendance on day-release.
Brian and joiner John Ball from Prescot Road had both been nominated to receive awards in the building trade's apprentices' roll of honour.
The awards had been based on their exam results, attendance, time-keeping and lecturers' comments while studying at St Helens "Tech".
The recent introduction of comprehensive education had affected the town's schools in a number of ways.
Both Cowley boys and girls grammar schools had been converted into comps and other St Helens' secondary schools had extended their age limit from 16 to 18.
More small primary schools were being built but the demands of the new system meant there was no place for small secondary schools.
So St Mary's with less than 200 pupils had been forced to close, as it did not have the staff to teach the range of required subjects.
Rivington Road and Robins Lane had already gone comprehensive and now it was the turn of Rainford County Secondary School – as it was officially known.
From September 1st the establishment in Higher Lane would be known as Rainford Comprehensive School with 850 pupils aged 11 to 18.
The reorganisation meant that new staff were needed and on the 26th nine vacancies were advertised in the Guardian.
In September it was anticipated that there would be over 80 pupils in the sixth form and this was expected to grow to 200 by 1975.
So a sixth-form tutor was considered a "vital post" – in which a "mature personality is more important than subjects offered".
Other positions included heads of department in English, physics, biology, modern languages and director of music. A housemistress was also required – "experienced non-graduate preferred".
Last October the St Helens Reporter had put out this appeal:
"Kind-hearted landladies are wanted by a mental hospital – to give cured patients a fresh start in life. Two hundred and fifty patients at Rainhill Hospital are well enough to live outside, it was revealed this week.
"But no one is willing to give them a home. Relatives refuse to take them in and local authority homes are overcrowded. Now hospital officials have made an urgent plea to local landladies to take in the new lodgers – as paying guests."
Some patients had spent as long as thirty years in the institution, with John Wilson, group secretary of the Rainhill Management Committee saying:
"It is a very distressing state of affairs. They are men and women who at some stage in their lives became depressed and unable to cope with things. We feel that if landladies would take them in they could start new lives."
Clearly finding suitable homes in the community for 250 friendless people – many institutionalised – was a mammoth task and on the 26th this advert appeared in the Liverpool Echo's Personal column:
"We are looking for accommodation for some of our patients who are ready to leave hospital, but no have no friends or relatives to go to.
"Many of these patients are working in factories at the moment and there is no reason why they should not take their place in society – except the lack of accommodation.
"If you feel you could find a place in your home for one of these people and would like more information, contact the Chief Nursing Officer giving details of the accommodation available."
The Echo began a new column on the 26th called 'Housewives' Voice' – a play, of course, on the radio show 'Housewives Choice'.
It was simply a platform for married stay-at-home women to state their opinions, although the Echo did have its own separate letters page.
Elizabeth Lloyd from St Helens lamented her rather monotonous life as a housewife:
"Sir, - Making porridge, cooking bacon and eggs, roasting the Sunday lunch. Mending socks, ironing shirts, peeling potatoes. Tending grazed knees, cleaning windows, taking a pram full of little ones to the shops.
"Where's it all getting me? I long to escape and just for one idyllic afternoon, fly from the roof of my neat little semi and be as free as a bird. What would Freud say, I wonder."
It was reported on the 27th that Harry Allison, of Stanley Crescent in Prescot, was to be the next president of the National Union of Teachers.
Mr. Allison had been headmaster of Prescot County Primary School for the past 19 years.
I don't know if the St Helens branch of the Burma Star Association is still active in the town but they held a dance on the 27th at St Theresa's Church Hall in Devon Street.
The national papers were currently full of Paul McCartney's successful High Court action to dissolve the Beatles' partnership.
So the Liverpool Echo visited the offices of their fan club to find out how the Fab Four's fans were taking the news:
"All the High Court actions in the world can't keep the Beatles fans down. At the offices of the Beatles Fan Club in Castle Street – just round the corner from the Cavern – they're still getting 200 letters a day.
Letters like the one from a 76-years-old man in Sutton Coldfield who begged the famous four to make up their differences. “Think of England,” he pleaded.
Or the impassioned letter from a Norwegian fan who asked, “is there no hope they will get back together again?”
Although it's not quite up to the 800 letters a day the club received at the height of “Beatlemania,” in the mid-Sixties, it's still enough to keep secretary Freda Norris, one assistant and eight part-time helpers hard at it five days a week.
They've only just finished sorting out the mail that piled up during the postal strike.
“It usually takes about three hours to open a normal day's mail but when the strike was over we had a whole sackful to sort out and it's been coming in thick and fast ever since,” said Freda.
Freda was a founder of the club nine years when the Beatles were still relatively unknown outside of Liverpool.
Although she obviously relishes the balmy days when everyone was Beatle mad, she's still far from pessimistic about the future.
“I shall definitely be carrying on and nobody has ever suggested otherwise. We are the fans' last link with the group.”
She is the first to admit that times have changed but says that in some ways it's for the better. The fans, for instance, have grown up and become more sensible.
“In the old days you'd get stupid letters asking what sort of toothpaste George used or what colour Paul liked.
“To-day they're much more serious – especially the Americans,” she says. If anything she thinks the fans are more loyal now that they've “grown up.”
She sees the success of John, Paul and George's recent solo discs as an indication of this. Times have changed for Freda too. She has to combine her work with being a wife and a mother.
This week she was going down to the Beatles “Apple” H.Q. in London for the day to finalise details for the club's April Newsletter.
“In the old days I would probably have spent two or three weeks down there. Now I catch the first train in the morning and come back that evening. I might find time though to look up Ringo,” she added."
Next week's stories will include a major new Pilkington pay deal, the West Park schoolboys who took an overdose of sleeping pills as a dare, inquests into three tragedies and the men heavily fined for selling solid fuel under weight.