FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (23rd - 29th MARCH 1970)
This week's stories include the miracle of the missing Chihuahua dog, the new Snoopy Club in the Reporter, concern for the future of Notre Dame girls' school, the Rainhill telephone saga and the 86-year-old Sutton Manor woman who was a "prisoner of cold, damp and despair".
We begin on the 23rd, which was Cowley Girls Founders Day. This meant a trip to the Town Hall to take part in a service and listen to speeches from the Mayor and special guest Professor John Ferguson.
Later that day the Liverpool Echo reported that Rainford Council's Planning Committee had decided to approve plans to create an additional infant classroom at Crank Hill C of E School. Rainford's full council also met on the 23rd to set the village rates for the next financial year. The councillors decided to do something unusual and instead of increasing the rates they cut them by fivepence in the pound. It was then an urban district council with much autonomy from St Helens. Many of their powers would soon be lost, however, when it was downgraded to a parish council.
Lennons Supermarkets was advertising in the Echo on the 23rd for male school leavers to learn the butchery trade with "free protective clothing provided." Applicants had to write to their Butchery Controller at Lennons' Corporation Street head office. Such ads excluding female applicants would, of course, be illegal these days.
Throughout this week Disney's 'Alice in Wonderland' was playing at the Capitol, while at the Savoy, Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark were starring in 'Goodbye, Mr Chips'.
On the 24th the Cammell Laird Brass Band was on the stage at the Theatre Royal. All the players were employed by the ship building company in Birkenhead with the ensemble formed about 1957 to play music at the launching of new ships. The band was short-lived, ending in 1972. On the following evening the Theatre Royal held a 'Country and Western Night' with the Hillsiders and the Stringdusters performing. The Hillsiders career had begun in Liverpool in 1964 and would continue until 1999.
St Helens, Widnes and District Licensed Victuallers Association made a presentation to St Helens Hospital on the 26th. It was a Meccanaids Ambulift costing £230 (about £4,000 in today’s money), which would enable the nurses to lift patients in the geriatric ward more easily.
When I first started writing these articles two years ago the Plaza Club in Duke Street (shown above) had a solitary exotic dancer appearing at their Thursday evening stag nights. This grew to four and then expanded to eight. Now on the 26th there were ten young women supposedly dancing "exotically", with "Manchester's No. 1 comic" Terry Miles also on stage and no doubt getting a good view!
The St Helens Reporter's front-page lead story on the 27th was written by Alan Whalley and concerned the plight of an 86-year-old woman in Jubits Lane. It began: "Granny Shacklady's dilapidated, mouse-infested cottage is snarled up in a wrangle that makes her a prisoner of cold, damp and despair. And until a deadlock between St. Helens town council and her landlord is broken, houseproud pensioner Mrs. Isabella Shacklady will have to battle on to keep the vermin at bay in her slum-standard house."
Essentially her landlord wanted to demolish her cottage along with two other properties in the same terrace and then redevelop the site. However he needed the council to approve the plans and rehouse Mrs Shacklady and there'd been a delay in sorting it all out. The house had no hot water or proper toilet facilities and children had smashed two front windows. Mrs Shacklady suffered from arthritis and told Alan Whalley: "I hardly ever feel well. This place is so cold and so damp that the wallpaper is always peeling off."
Another big story concerned the future of Notre Dame school if the government enacted a report recommending that direct grants to religious organisations be abolished. Headmistress Sister Muriel had told parents at the school prize day: "Our very existence is being threatened." The Catholic grammar school for girls was founded in 1858 and the loss of government grants would mean it either having to join the comprehensive system or somehow go it alone.
The miraculous story of Patsy the Chihuahua who had been missing from her Windle home for a fortnight during the severe Arctic weather was also given much prominence. Tom Anderton had found the 3-year-old exhausted dog trembling in a ditch near the Bottle and Glass Inn in Rainford. The gamekeeper on Lord Derby's estate at Knowsley almost shot the animal thinking it was an injured rabbit. Realising his mistake Tom took Patsy to his home where his wife Sylvia and three young children brushed the mud off the little dog's coat and warmed her in front of the fire.
Two days later the family discovered that Patsy's real owner was Ellen Owen of Blind Foot Road. However Mrs Owen decided that her Chihuahua could stay with the family. "The children are really thrilled with her", said Sylvia Anderton. "When Tom brought her in, she was in a really shocking condition – covered in mud, and really terrified. She refused to eat a thing until the weekend. We never expected her to live the night. My youngest daughter, Beverly, couldn't sleep at all. She is only four, and she kept coming downstairs trying to feed Patsy with chocolate buttons. It seems impossible that such a little dog could have lived in the open through the terrible weather we've had."
Do you remember the "Children's Corners", or similarly named columns, that used to be in local newspapers? They were usually hosted by an "uncle" or "auntie", although what appears to have been the first host of the St Helens Reporter's 'Children's Circle' (c. 1910) went by the name of "Daddy" and had the motto "Love One Another"! Later it was known as the 'Children's Reporter' run by Uncle Ben and Aunt Bessie. The St Helens Newspaper had their own version conducted by Auntie Pollie and the Liverpool Echo's 'Children's Corner' in 1970 was hosted by Auntie Joan.
This week the Reporter launched their new column for kids, which dispensed with the uncle or auntie handle and targeted youngsters from 4 to 11. It was called 'The Snoopy Club' but had nothing to do with the pet beagle of Charlie Brown – instead Snoopy was a glove puppet penguin who could type! His first column began:
"Hello children. My name is Snoopy, and I want to tell you about the new children’s club that we are starting. All children between the ages of four years and 11 years old may join. But you must complete the membership form, which you will find alongside. When I receive your completed form, you can enter any of the exciting competitions that I have planned for you." However there was no mention of any badge, unlike when the paper ran the 'Children's Reporter' club.
There was an advertorial in the paper celebrating the golden jubilee of engineering firm Lyon and Pye. They had 100 employees on a 2-acre site in Prescot Road and had been formed by Frank Lyon and Joseph Pye in 1920. The pair capitalised on the post-WW1 car sales boom by attaching steel and aluminium panelling to motor bodies that had been made out of wood!
The Reporter stated that Lyon and Pye was believed to have been the first firm to introduce welding to St Helens. A reminder of how important apprenticeships used to be was the fact that out of their present staff of 100, seventeen were apprentices who undertook 12 months part-time training in Prescot.
With telephone communication being so easy these days it's hard to imagine a time when you had to wait several months to have a phone installed in your home. Although the GPO was doing its best to reduce the long waiting list, the large amount of post-war house building was creating extra demand for telephones. This is illustrated in the Liverpool Echo's 'Helping Hand' column on the 28th when someone calling themselves 'D.J.C., Rainhill' asked the paper for assistance with their phone problem.
On May 5th 1969 D.J.C. had written to the GPO at Liverpool requesting that his / her shared party line be changed over to an exclusive line. An acknowledgement card was received but nothing further was heard. More letters were sent by D.J.C. in July 1969 and February 1970 but apart from receiving another acknowledgement, there was no response from the GPO.
So the Echo's 'Helping Hand' team investigated and were told by the GPO that they would be writing to D.J.C. to explain the situation. Although they might be able to make his / her line exclusive, it would probably only be for a short time. They said that was because Rainhill was such a rapidly developing area that they were expecting a high demand for telephones and did not have sufficient exclusive lines available.
And finally during the evening of the 28th baritone opera singer John Heddle Nash performed in the Theatre Royal in 'Songs From the Shows'.
Next week's stories will include the tearing down of "Skid Row" inside a St Helens' brickworks, plans for a huge zoo in Knowsley Park, the first St Helens horse rides in the Grand National, the first Whalley's World is published and a councillor criticises savage rent rises for council houses in Jubits Lane and Four Acre.
We begin on the 23rd, which was Cowley Girls Founders Day. This meant a trip to the Town Hall to take part in a service and listen to speeches from the Mayor and special guest Professor John Ferguson.
Later that day the Liverpool Echo reported that Rainford Council's Planning Committee had decided to approve plans to create an additional infant classroom at Crank Hill C of E School. Rainford's full council also met on the 23rd to set the village rates for the next financial year. The councillors decided to do something unusual and instead of increasing the rates they cut them by fivepence in the pound. It was then an urban district council with much autonomy from St Helens. Many of their powers would soon be lost, however, when it was downgraded to a parish council.
Lennons Supermarkets was advertising in the Echo on the 23rd for male school leavers to learn the butchery trade with "free protective clothing provided." Applicants had to write to their Butchery Controller at Lennons' Corporation Street head office. Such ads excluding female applicants would, of course, be illegal these days.
Throughout this week Disney's 'Alice in Wonderland' was playing at the Capitol, while at the Savoy, Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark were starring in 'Goodbye, Mr Chips'.
On the 24th the Cammell Laird Brass Band was on the stage at the Theatre Royal. All the players were employed by the ship building company in Birkenhead with the ensemble formed about 1957 to play music at the launching of new ships. The band was short-lived, ending in 1972. On the following evening the Theatre Royal held a 'Country and Western Night' with the Hillsiders and the Stringdusters performing. The Hillsiders career had begun in Liverpool in 1964 and would continue until 1999.
St Helens, Widnes and District Licensed Victuallers Association made a presentation to St Helens Hospital on the 26th. It was a Meccanaids Ambulift costing £230 (about £4,000 in today’s money), which would enable the nurses to lift patients in the geriatric ward more easily.
The St Helens Reporter's front-page lead story on the 27th was written by Alan Whalley and concerned the plight of an 86-year-old woman in Jubits Lane. It began: "Granny Shacklady's dilapidated, mouse-infested cottage is snarled up in a wrangle that makes her a prisoner of cold, damp and despair. And until a deadlock between St. Helens town council and her landlord is broken, houseproud pensioner Mrs. Isabella Shacklady will have to battle on to keep the vermin at bay in her slum-standard house."
Essentially her landlord wanted to demolish her cottage along with two other properties in the same terrace and then redevelop the site. However he needed the council to approve the plans and rehouse Mrs Shacklady and there'd been a delay in sorting it all out. The house had no hot water or proper toilet facilities and children had smashed two front windows. Mrs Shacklady suffered from arthritis and told Alan Whalley: "I hardly ever feel well. This place is so cold and so damp that the wallpaper is always peeling off."
Another big story concerned the future of Notre Dame school if the government enacted a report recommending that direct grants to religious organisations be abolished. Headmistress Sister Muriel had told parents at the school prize day: "Our very existence is being threatened." The Catholic grammar school for girls was founded in 1858 and the loss of government grants would mean it either having to join the comprehensive system or somehow go it alone.
The miraculous story of Patsy the Chihuahua who had been missing from her Windle home for a fortnight during the severe Arctic weather was also given much prominence. Tom Anderton had found the 3-year-old exhausted dog trembling in a ditch near the Bottle and Glass Inn in Rainford. The gamekeeper on Lord Derby's estate at Knowsley almost shot the animal thinking it was an injured rabbit. Realising his mistake Tom took Patsy to his home where his wife Sylvia and three young children brushed the mud off the little dog's coat and warmed her in front of the fire.
Two days later the family discovered that Patsy's real owner was Ellen Owen of Blind Foot Road. However Mrs Owen decided that her Chihuahua could stay with the family. "The children are really thrilled with her", said Sylvia Anderton. "When Tom brought her in, she was in a really shocking condition – covered in mud, and really terrified. She refused to eat a thing until the weekend. We never expected her to live the night. My youngest daughter, Beverly, couldn't sleep at all. She is only four, and she kept coming downstairs trying to feed Patsy with chocolate buttons. It seems impossible that such a little dog could have lived in the open through the terrible weather we've had."
This week the Reporter launched their new column for kids, which dispensed with the uncle or auntie handle and targeted youngsters from 4 to 11. It was called 'The Snoopy Club' but had nothing to do with the pet beagle of Charlie Brown – instead Snoopy was a glove puppet penguin who could type! His first column began:
"Hello children. My name is Snoopy, and I want to tell you about the new children’s club that we are starting. All children between the ages of four years and 11 years old may join. But you must complete the membership form, which you will find alongside. When I receive your completed form, you can enter any of the exciting competitions that I have planned for you." However there was no mention of any badge, unlike when the paper ran the 'Children's Reporter' club.
There was an advertorial in the paper celebrating the golden jubilee of engineering firm Lyon and Pye. They had 100 employees on a 2-acre site in Prescot Road and had been formed by Frank Lyon and Joseph Pye in 1920. The pair capitalised on the post-WW1 car sales boom by attaching steel and aluminium panelling to motor bodies that had been made out of wood!
The Reporter stated that Lyon and Pye was believed to have been the first firm to introduce welding to St Helens. A reminder of how important apprenticeships used to be was the fact that out of their present staff of 100, seventeen were apprentices who undertook 12 months part-time training in Prescot.
With telephone communication being so easy these days it's hard to imagine a time when you had to wait several months to have a phone installed in your home. Although the GPO was doing its best to reduce the long waiting list, the large amount of post-war house building was creating extra demand for telephones. This is illustrated in the Liverpool Echo's 'Helping Hand' column on the 28th when someone calling themselves 'D.J.C., Rainhill' asked the paper for assistance with their phone problem.
On May 5th 1969 D.J.C. had written to the GPO at Liverpool requesting that his / her shared party line be changed over to an exclusive line. An acknowledgement card was received but nothing further was heard. More letters were sent by D.J.C. in July 1969 and February 1970 but apart from receiving another acknowledgement, there was no response from the GPO.
So the Echo's 'Helping Hand' team investigated and were told by the GPO that they would be writing to D.J.C. to explain the situation. Although they might be able to make his / her line exclusive, it would probably only be for a short time. They said that was because Rainhill was such a rapidly developing area that they were expecting a high demand for telephones and did not have sufficient exclusive lines available.
And finally during the evening of the 28th baritone opera singer John Heddle Nash performed in the Theatre Royal in 'Songs From the Shows'.
Next week's stories will include the tearing down of "Skid Row" inside a St Helens' brickworks, plans for a huge zoo in Knowsley Park, the first St Helens horse rides in the Grand National, the first Whalley's World is published and a councillor criticises savage rent rises for council houses in Jubits Lane and Four Acre.
This week's stories include the miracle of the missing Chihuahua dog, the new Snoopy Club in the Reporter, concern for the future of Notre Dame girls' school, the Rainhill telephone saga and the 86-year-old Sutton Manor woman who was a "prisoner of cold, damp and despair".
We begin on the 23rd, which was Cowley Girls Founders Day.
This meant a trip to the Town Hall to take part in a service and listen to speeches from the Mayor and special guest Professor John Ferguson.
Later that day the Liverpool Echo reported that Rainford Council's Planning Committee had decided to approve plans to create an additional infant classroom at Crank Hill C of E School.
Rainford's full council also met on the 23rd to set the village rates for the next financial year.
The councillors decided to do something unusual and instead of increasing the rates they cut them by fivepence in the pound.
It was then an urban district council with much autonomy from St Helens.
Many of their powers would soon be lost, however, when it was downgraded to a parish council.
Lennons Supermarkets was advertising in the Echo on the 23rd for male school leavers to learn the butchery trade with "free protective clothing provided."
Applicants had to write to their Butchery Controller at Lennons' Corporation Street head office. Such ads excluding female applicants would, of course, be illegal these days.
Throughout this week Disney's 'Alice in Wonderland' was playing at the Capitol, while at the Savoy, Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark were starring in 'Goodbye, Mr Chips'.
On the 24th the Cammell Laird Brass Band was on the stage at the Theatre Royal.
All the players were employed by the ship building company in Birkenhead with the ensemble formed about 1957 to play music at the launching of new ships. The band was short-lived, ending in 1972.
On the following evening the Theatre Royal held a 'Country and Western Night' with the Hillsiders and the Stringdusters performing.
The Hillsiders career had begun in Liverpool in 1964 and would continue until 1999.
St Helens, Widnes and District Licensed Victuallers Association made a presentation to St Helens Hospital on the 26th.
It was a Meccanaids Ambulift costing £230 (about £4,000 in today’s money), which would enable the nurses to lift patients in the geriatric ward more easily.
When I first started writing these articles two years ago the Plaza Club in Duke Street (shown above) had a solitary exotic dancer appearing at their Thursday evening stag nights.
This grew to four and then expanded to eight. Now on the 26th there were ten young women supposedly dancing "exotically", with "Manchester's No. 1 comic" Terry Miles also on stage and no doubt getting a good view!
The St Helens Reporter's front-page lead story on the 27th was written by Alan Whalley and concerned the plight of an 86-year-old woman in Jubits Lane.
It began: "Granny Shacklady's dilapidated, mouse-infested cottage is snarled up in a wrangle that makes her a prisoner of cold, damp and despair.
"And until a deadlock between St. Helens town council and her landlord is broken, houseproud pensioner Mrs. Isabella Shacklady will have to battle on to keep the vermin at bay in her slum-standard house."
Essentially her landlord wanted to demolish her cottage along with two other properties in the same terrace and then redevelop the site.
However he needed the council to approve the plans and rehouse Mrs Shacklady and there'd been a delay in sorting it all out.
The house had no hot water or proper toilet facilities and children had smashed two front windows.
Mrs Shacklady suffered from arthritis and told Alan Whalley: "I hardly ever feel well. This place is so cold and so damp that the wallpaper is always peeling off."
Another big story concerned the future of Notre Dame school if the government enacted a report recommending that direct grants to religious organisations be abolished.
Headmistress Sister Muriel had told parents at the school prize day: "Our very existence is being threatened."
The Catholic grammar school for girls was founded in 1858 and the loss of government grants would mean it either having to join the comprehensive system or somehow go it alone.
The miraculous story of Patsy the Chihuahua who had been missing from her Windle home for a fortnight during the severe Arctic weather was also given much prominence.
Tom Anderton had found the 3-year-old exhausted dog trembling in a ditch near the Bottle and Glass Inn in Rainford.
The gamekeeper on Lord Derby's estate at Knowsley almost shot the animal thinking it was an injured rabbit.
Realising his mistake Tom took Patsy to his home where his wife Sylvia and three young children brushed the mud off the little dog's coat and warmed her in front of the fire.
Two days later the family discovered that Patsy's real owner was Ellen Owen of Blind Foot Road. However Mrs Owen decided that her Chihuahua could stay with the family.
"The children are really thrilled with her", said Sylvia Anderton. "When Tom brought her in, she was in a really shocking condition – covered in mud, and really terrified.
"She refused to eat a thing until the weekend. We never expected her to live the night. My youngest daughter, Beverly, couldn't sleep at all. She is only four, and she kept coming downstairs trying to feed Patsy with chocolate buttons.
"It seems impossible that such a little dog could have lived in the open through the terrible weather we've had."
Do you remember the "Children's Corners", or similarly named columns, that used to be in local newspapers?
They were usually hosted by an "uncle" or "auntie", although what appears to have been the first host of the St Helens Reporter's 'Children's Circle' (c. 1910) went by the name of "Daddy" and had the motto "Love One Another"!
Later it was known as the 'Children's Reporter' run by Uncle Ben and Aunt Bessie.
The St Helens Newspaper had their own version conducted by Auntie Pollie and the Liverpool Echo's 'Children's Corner' in 1970 was hosted by Auntie Joan.
This week the Reporter launched their new column for kids, which dispensed with the uncle or auntie handle and targeted youngsters from 4 to 11.
It was called 'The Snoopy Club' but had nothing to do with the pet beagle of Charlie Brown – instead Snoopy was a glove puppet penguin who could type! His first column began:
"Hello children. My name is Snoopy, and I want to tell you about the new children’s club that we are starting. All children between the ages of four years and 11 years old may join.
"But you must complete the membership form, which you will find alongside. When I receive your completed form, you can enter any of the exciting competitions that I have planned for you."
However there was no mention of any badge, unlike when the paper ran the 'Children's Reporter' club.
There was an advertorial in the paper celebrating the golden jubilee of engineering firm Lyon and Pye.
They had 100 employees on a 2-acre site in Prescot Road and had been formed by Frank Lyon and Joseph Pye in 1920.
The pair capitalised on the post-WW1 car sales boom by attaching steel and aluminium panelling to motor bodies that had been made out of wood!
The Reporter stated that Lyon and Pye was believed to have been the first firm to introduce welding to St Helens.
A reminder of how important apprenticeships used to be was the fact that out of their present staff of 100, seventeen were apprentices who undertook 12 months part-time training in Prescot.
With telephone communication being so easy these days it's hard to imagine a time when you had to wait several months to have a phone installed in your home.
Although the GPO was doing its best to reduce the long waiting list, the large amount of post-war house building was creating extra demand for telephones.
This is illustrated in the Liverpool Echo's 'Helping Hand' column on the 28th when someone calling themselves 'D.J.C., Rainhill' asked the paper for assistance with their phone problem.
On May 5th 1969 D.J.C. had written to the GPO at Liverpool requesting that his / her shared party line be changed over to an exclusive line.
An acknowledgement card was received but nothing further was heard.
More letters were sent by D.J.C. in July 1969 and February 1970 but apart from receiving another acknowledgement, there was no response from the GPO.
So the Echo's 'Helping Hand' team investigated and were told by the GPO that they would be writing to D.J.C. to explain the situation.
Although they might be able to make his / her line exclusive, it would probably only be for a short time.
They said that was because Rainhill was such a rapidly developing area that they were expecting a high demand for telephones and did not have sufficient exclusive lines available.
And finally during the evening of the 28th baritone opera singer John Heddle Nash performed in the Theatre Royal in 'Songs From the Shows'.
Next week's stories will include the tearing down of "Skid Row" inside a St Helens' brickworks, plans for a huge zoo in Knowsley Park, the first St Helens horse rides in the Grand National, the first Whalley's World is published and a councillor criticises savage rent rises for council houses in Jubits Lane and Four Acre.
We begin on the 23rd, which was Cowley Girls Founders Day.
This meant a trip to the Town Hall to take part in a service and listen to speeches from the Mayor and special guest Professor John Ferguson.
Later that day the Liverpool Echo reported that Rainford Council's Planning Committee had decided to approve plans to create an additional infant classroom at Crank Hill C of E School.
Rainford's full council also met on the 23rd to set the village rates for the next financial year.
The councillors decided to do something unusual and instead of increasing the rates they cut them by fivepence in the pound.
It was then an urban district council with much autonomy from St Helens.
Many of their powers would soon be lost, however, when it was downgraded to a parish council.
Lennons Supermarkets was advertising in the Echo on the 23rd for male school leavers to learn the butchery trade with "free protective clothing provided."
Applicants had to write to their Butchery Controller at Lennons' Corporation Street head office. Such ads excluding female applicants would, of course, be illegal these days.
Throughout this week Disney's 'Alice in Wonderland' was playing at the Capitol, while at the Savoy, Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark were starring in 'Goodbye, Mr Chips'.
On the 24th the Cammell Laird Brass Band was on the stage at the Theatre Royal.
All the players were employed by the ship building company in Birkenhead with the ensemble formed about 1957 to play music at the launching of new ships. The band was short-lived, ending in 1972.
On the following evening the Theatre Royal held a 'Country and Western Night' with the Hillsiders and the Stringdusters performing.
The Hillsiders career had begun in Liverpool in 1964 and would continue until 1999.
St Helens, Widnes and District Licensed Victuallers Association made a presentation to St Helens Hospital on the 26th.
It was a Meccanaids Ambulift costing £230 (about £4,000 in today’s money), which would enable the nurses to lift patients in the geriatric ward more easily.
This grew to four and then expanded to eight. Now on the 26th there were ten young women supposedly dancing "exotically", with "Manchester's No. 1 comic" Terry Miles also on stage and no doubt getting a good view!
The St Helens Reporter's front-page lead story on the 27th was written by Alan Whalley and concerned the plight of an 86-year-old woman in Jubits Lane.
It began: "Granny Shacklady's dilapidated, mouse-infested cottage is snarled up in a wrangle that makes her a prisoner of cold, damp and despair.
"And until a deadlock between St. Helens town council and her landlord is broken, houseproud pensioner Mrs. Isabella Shacklady will have to battle on to keep the vermin at bay in her slum-standard house."
Essentially her landlord wanted to demolish her cottage along with two other properties in the same terrace and then redevelop the site.
However he needed the council to approve the plans and rehouse Mrs Shacklady and there'd been a delay in sorting it all out.
The house had no hot water or proper toilet facilities and children had smashed two front windows.
Mrs Shacklady suffered from arthritis and told Alan Whalley: "I hardly ever feel well. This place is so cold and so damp that the wallpaper is always peeling off."
Another big story concerned the future of Notre Dame school if the government enacted a report recommending that direct grants to religious organisations be abolished.
Headmistress Sister Muriel had told parents at the school prize day: "Our very existence is being threatened."
The Catholic grammar school for girls was founded in 1858 and the loss of government grants would mean it either having to join the comprehensive system or somehow go it alone.
The miraculous story of Patsy the Chihuahua who had been missing from her Windle home for a fortnight during the severe Arctic weather was also given much prominence.
Tom Anderton had found the 3-year-old exhausted dog trembling in a ditch near the Bottle and Glass Inn in Rainford.
The gamekeeper on Lord Derby's estate at Knowsley almost shot the animal thinking it was an injured rabbit.
Realising his mistake Tom took Patsy to his home where his wife Sylvia and three young children brushed the mud off the little dog's coat and warmed her in front of the fire.
Two days later the family discovered that Patsy's real owner was Ellen Owen of Blind Foot Road. However Mrs Owen decided that her Chihuahua could stay with the family.
"The children are really thrilled with her", said Sylvia Anderton. "When Tom brought her in, she was in a really shocking condition – covered in mud, and really terrified.
"She refused to eat a thing until the weekend. We never expected her to live the night. My youngest daughter, Beverly, couldn't sleep at all. She is only four, and she kept coming downstairs trying to feed Patsy with chocolate buttons.
"It seems impossible that such a little dog could have lived in the open through the terrible weather we've had."
They were usually hosted by an "uncle" or "auntie", although what appears to have been the first host of the St Helens Reporter's 'Children's Circle' (c. 1910) went by the name of "Daddy" and had the motto "Love One Another"!
Later it was known as the 'Children's Reporter' run by Uncle Ben and Aunt Bessie.
The St Helens Newspaper had their own version conducted by Auntie Pollie and the Liverpool Echo's 'Children's Corner' in 1970 was hosted by Auntie Joan.
This week the Reporter launched their new column for kids, which dispensed with the uncle or auntie handle and targeted youngsters from 4 to 11.
It was called 'The Snoopy Club' but had nothing to do with the pet beagle of Charlie Brown – instead Snoopy was a glove puppet penguin who could type! His first column began:
"Hello children. My name is Snoopy, and I want to tell you about the new children’s club that we are starting. All children between the ages of four years and 11 years old may join.
"But you must complete the membership form, which you will find alongside. When I receive your completed form, you can enter any of the exciting competitions that I have planned for you."
However there was no mention of any badge, unlike when the paper ran the 'Children's Reporter' club.
There was an advertorial in the paper celebrating the golden jubilee of engineering firm Lyon and Pye.
They had 100 employees on a 2-acre site in Prescot Road and had been formed by Frank Lyon and Joseph Pye in 1920.
The pair capitalised on the post-WW1 car sales boom by attaching steel and aluminium panelling to motor bodies that had been made out of wood!
The Reporter stated that Lyon and Pye was believed to have been the first firm to introduce welding to St Helens.
A reminder of how important apprenticeships used to be was the fact that out of their present staff of 100, seventeen were apprentices who undertook 12 months part-time training in Prescot.
With telephone communication being so easy these days it's hard to imagine a time when you had to wait several months to have a phone installed in your home.
Although the GPO was doing its best to reduce the long waiting list, the large amount of post-war house building was creating extra demand for telephones.
This is illustrated in the Liverpool Echo's 'Helping Hand' column on the 28th when someone calling themselves 'D.J.C., Rainhill' asked the paper for assistance with their phone problem.
On May 5th 1969 D.J.C. had written to the GPO at Liverpool requesting that his / her shared party line be changed over to an exclusive line.
An acknowledgement card was received but nothing further was heard.
More letters were sent by D.J.C. in July 1969 and February 1970 but apart from receiving another acknowledgement, there was no response from the GPO.
So the Echo's 'Helping Hand' team investigated and were told by the GPO that they would be writing to D.J.C. to explain the situation.
Although they might be able to make his / her line exclusive, it would probably only be for a short time.
They said that was because Rainhill was such a rapidly developing area that they were expecting a high demand for telephones and did not have sufficient exclusive lines available.
And finally during the evening of the 28th baritone opera singer John Heddle Nash performed in the Theatre Royal in 'Songs From the Shows'.
Next week's stories will include the tearing down of "Skid Row" inside a St Helens' brickworks, plans for a huge zoo in Knowsley Park, the first St Helens horse rides in the Grand National, the first Whalley's World is published and a councillor criticises savage rent rises for council houses in Jubits Lane and Four Acre.