FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (25th - 31st JULY 1972)
This week's stories include the vandalism in the town's parks, the jobs crisis for young people in St Helens, 14,000 Pilks' workers take part in a one-day strike, the St Helens MP tells the House of Commons about the stinky brook and a decision is made to name the St Helens district – St Helens. Really!!!
We begin on the 25th when the council's Amenities Committee conducted their annual inspection of the town's parks and appealed to the public to report acts of vandalism. The committee's chairman, Cllr. Harry Williams, praised the beauty and facilities of those parks that they'd visited but added:
"They are being consistently and deliberately vandalised. Vandalism in our parks and recreational facilities is something that we have struggled for many many years to overcome. Enormous expense is expended in replacing plants, shrubbery and fencing, and amenities for our children and elderly people are seriously curtailed by the expense incurred. We cannot keep pace with replacements." The new park being developed at Ashtons Green had, remarked Cllr. Williams, suffered badly from damage to trees and plants.
Last March the St Helens Reporter was looking for a new name for the district of St Helens, once the planned local government shake-up took place. The town – along with places such as Rainford, Rainhill, Haydock, Ashton and Newton – were being merged into District 11(C) of the Merseyside Metropolitan County. The newspaper did not fancy becoming the "District 11(C) Reporter" and so offered £5 to the best name that readers suggested.
Names that readers proposed included Helensborough and St Helensville, although Mary Page of Grange Park took the paper to task for suggesting an alternative monicker to St Helens, writing: "How could you think of another name, so lovely, so aristocratic. Shame on you."
This week on the 26th, the inaugural meeting of the 11C Joint Committee was held at St Helens Town Hall and one of their tasks was to decide on a new name. The Liverpool Echo described how "months of conjecture" over what 11C should become was finally settled when the committee took Mary Page's advice and decided that "St Helens" should be the name of the expanded town. Kind of obvious really!
On the 28th, a total of 14,500 Pilkington staff went on strike in protest at the Industrial Relations Act. The Reporter wrote: "The heart of St. Helens stopped beating at 6 am." It was a one-day token strike, with calls for a series of additional lightning strikes rejected by shop stewards. The Industrial Relations Act weakened the power of trade unions by giving employers the power to insert "no strike" clauses in their employees' contracts and allowed workers to opt out of joining a union.
The Reporter also wrote on the 28th that the summer school leavers in the town were being encouraged to return to full-time education in a bid to beat, what they termed, "the biggest jobs crisis for young people that St. Helens has known in recent years". The latest unemployment figures were not yet available but last month there had been 332 people under 18 in St Helens who were unemployed.
Since then the schools had broken up for the summer holidays, putting hundreds more youths on the jobs market. A spokesman for the Youth Employment Service said there was an acute shortage of vacancies for young people and the register of unemployed was much higher than they would normally expect.
This year thousands of residents of St Helens had had their gas cookers and other appliances converted to take North Sea gas. But when the Gas Board arrived at Helen Pugh's house in Alexandra Drive, their workmen were taken aback with what they found. The 83-year-old had an old-fashioned kitchen range that contained a fire, oven, grill, three cooking rings and a water heater. A Gas Board spokesman told the Reporter:
"It's virtually unique. It's the first we have come across in a million conversions." Mrs Pugh said her range had never let her down in the 39 years that she'd owned it and the gas board were able to convert it to take natural gas. Mrs Pugh added: "It's the best bargain we have ever had. And it's working champion on this new gas."
The Reporter also published this piece under the headline "MP Tells House Of The Town's Smelly Brook": "Mr. Leslie Spriggs, MP for St. Helens, took a Sunday sniff at the Sankey Brook. He told Parliament later that the obnoxious smell coming from the stream would drive prospective industrialists from the town. Mr. Spriggs was speaking during a Commons debate on the North West Region.
"He said later: “I want the Government to spend some of the money they are using to clean up the environment on St. Helens and the brook in particular.” Mr. Spriggs made the sniff-and-see journey through Sutton while he was in the town on constituency business. “I wanted to see how things were going on,” he said. “I didn't need to get out of the car. The smell got into the car to me. It's damnable. My sympathy goes to the people of St. Helens who have to breathe the air that was so objectionable to me the other Sunday.”"
Pictured in the Reporter at Robins Lane Secondary School's speech day were punctual pupils Satindra Dawar and Karen Porter who received watches for their 100% attendance. The retiring headmaster Joseph Woods also presented Albert Homer with a book token for not missing a class.
The Reporter also dismissed rumours that the St Helens Greyhound Track would be closing later in the year. Its managing director, Mr R. Cooton, said: "People have been saying that Tescos, Lennons, Woolworth and others have bought us out – it's completely false". However, the Reporter wrote that it was possible that the 6-acre track might relocate from Park Road to another site in three years time when Mr Cooton retired. He'd been its managing director for 38 years and stated that the average attendance at the twice-weekly meetings was currently 500.
A knock-down sale in more than one sense was advertised in the Reporter. Taylor Brothers' furnishings store in Market Street was going to be demolished as part of the town centre redevelopment. Their advert said: "We prefer to deliver to your home at a reduced price saving you ££££ sooner than remove it to our new store, which will be part of the Market Centre Development on Church Street."
However, carrying out the town centre improvements was taking longer than expected. The Council announced this week that the planned opening of the new St Mary's market complex had been put back. Traders had been due to move into the first stage of the development this week but work was well behind schedule. That was because workers were operating an overtime ban in support of a national pay claim. The building unions were demanding a national minimum wage of £35 for a 30-hour week. The council was unable to say when it would be possible for the traders to move in to the new market.
The Rainford Carnival was due to be held again on August 26th and local schoolchildren had been invited to design a poster promoting the event. The competition drew entries from 351 youngsters with the winners being: Five to seven years old: Gillian Taylor (Corpus Christi); Seven to nine years: Ian Over (Rainford CE); Nine to eleven years: Kelvin Bushell (Rainford CE); Eleven to fourteen years: Anne Rimmer (Rainford High) and over fourteen: Stephen Jervis (Rainford High). Each winner received a prize of £2 and over the next few weeks selected posters would be displayed in parts of Rainford.
On New Year's Day a group of lads had entered a United Glass warehouse in Elton Head Road in Sutton and had lots of fun driving fork-lift trucks. They held races inside the building, smashed up 2,800 cardboard cartons and caused over £200 worth of damage to the trucks. This week three of them, aged 13, 14 and 15, faced the music in St Helens Juvenile Court and were sentenced to pay compensation and attend Prescot Attendance Centre.
Also in the Juvenile Court was an 11-year-old boy who admitted setting fire to over £700 worth of property – including 84 wooden panels and 18 flights of staircase – on a building site off Park Road in order to see the fire engines come. The boy also asked for five other offences, including four of setting fire to property, to be considered. He was placed under a supervision order for two years and to go to the Prescot Attendance Centre for a total of 12 hours.
And finally, Rothery Radio held a "Home Appliance Clinic" at their Baldwin Street store on the 29th. "Free check-up on any old electrical appliance", said their advert, next to an illustration of a mini-skirted nurse who was inspecting a vacuum cleaner!
Next week's stories will include a public inquiry into plans to demolish 200 houses in the King Street area, an update on the Chain Lane flues dispute, the bad state of a Thatto Heath health clinic and a campaign to save Moss Bank's heritage.
We begin on the 25th when the council's Amenities Committee conducted their annual inspection of the town's parks and appealed to the public to report acts of vandalism. The committee's chairman, Cllr. Harry Williams, praised the beauty and facilities of those parks that they'd visited but added:
"They are being consistently and deliberately vandalised. Vandalism in our parks and recreational facilities is something that we have struggled for many many years to overcome. Enormous expense is expended in replacing plants, shrubbery and fencing, and amenities for our children and elderly people are seriously curtailed by the expense incurred. We cannot keep pace with replacements." The new park being developed at Ashtons Green had, remarked Cllr. Williams, suffered badly from damage to trees and plants.
Last March the St Helens Reporter was looking for a new name for the district of St Helens, once the planned local government shake-up took place. The town – along with places such as Rainford, Rainhill, Haydock, Ashton and Newton – were being merged into District 11(C) of the Merseyside Metropolitan County. The newspaper did not fancy becoming the "District 11(C) Reporter" and so offered £5 to the best name that readers suggested.
Names that readers proposed included Helensborough and St Helensville, although Mary Page of Grange Park took the paper to task for suggesting an alternative monicker to St Helens, writing: "How could you think of another name, so lovely, so aristocratic. Shame on you."
This week on the 26th, the inaugural meeting of the 11C Joint Committee was held at St Helens Town Hall and one of their tasks was to decide on a new name. The Liverpool Echo described how "months of conjecture" over what 11C should become was finally settled when the committee took Mary Page's advice and decided that "St Helens" should be the name of the expanded town. Kind of obvious really!
On the 28th, a total of 14,500 Pilkington staff went on strike in protest at the Industrial Relations Act. The Reporter wrote: "The heart of St. Helens stopped beating at 6 am." It was a one-day token strike, with calls for a series of additional lightning strikes rejected by shop stewards. The Industrial Relations Act weakened the power of trade unions by giving employers the power to insert "no strike" clauses in their employees' contracts and allowed workers to opt out of joining a union.
The Reporter also wrote on the 28th that the summer school leavers in the town were being encouraged to return to full-time education in a bid to beat, what they termed, "the biggest jobs crisis for young people that St. Helens has known in recent years". The latest unemployment figures were not yet available but last month there had been 332 people under 18 in St Helens who were unemployed.
Since then the schools had broken up for the summer holidays, putting hundreds more youths on the jobs market. A spokesman for the Youth Employment Service said there was an acute shortage of vacancies for young people and the register of unemployed was much higher than they would normally expect.
This year thousands of residents of St Helens had had their gas cookers and other appliances converted to take North Sea gas. But when the Gas Board arrived at Helen Pugh's house in Alexandra Drive, their workmen were taken aback with what they found. The 83-year-old had an old-fashioned kitchen range that contained a fire, oven, grill, three cooking rings and a water heater. A Gas Board spokesman told the Reporter:
"It's virtually unique. It's the first we have come across in a million conversions." Mrs Pugh said her range had never let her down in the 39 years that she'd owned it and the gas board were able to convert it to take natural gas. Mrs Pugh added: "It's the best bargain we have ever had. And it's working champion on this new gas."
The Reporter also published this piece under the headline "MP Tells House Of The Town's Smelly Brook": "Mr. Leslie Spriggs, MP for St. Helens, took a Sunday sniff at the Sankey Brook. He told Parliament later that the obnoxious smell coming from the stream would drive prospective industrialists from the town. Mr. Spriggs was speaking during a Commons debate on the North West Region.
"He said later: “I want the Government to spend some of the money they are using to clean up the environment on St. Helens and the brook in particular.” Mr. Spriggs made the sniff-and-see journey through Sutton while he was in the town on constituency business. “I wanted to see how things were going on,” he said. “I didn't need to get out of the car. The smell got into the car to me. It's damnable. My sympathy goes to the people of St. Helens who have to breathe the air that was so objectionable to me the other Sunday.”"
The Reporter also dismissed rumours that the St Helens Greyhound Track would be closing later in the year. Its managing director, Mr R. Cooton, said: "People have been saying that Tescos, Lennons, Woolworth and others have bought us out – it's completely false". However, the Reporter wrote that it was possible that the 6-acre track might relocate from Park Road to another site in three years time when Mr Cooton retired. He'd been its managing director for 38 years and stated that the average attendance at the twice-weekly meetings was currently 500.
A knock-down sale in more than one sense was advertised in the Reporter. Taylor Brothers' furnishings store in Market Street was going to be demolished as part of the town centre redevelopment. Their advert said: "We prefer to deliver to your home at a reduced price saving you ££££ sooner than remove it to our new store, which will be part of the Market Centre Development on Church Street."
However, carrying out the town centre improvements was taking longer than expected. The Council announced this week that the planned opening of the new St Mary's market complex had been put back. Traders had been due to move into the first stage of the development this week but work was well behind schedule. That was because workers were operating an overtime ban in support of a national pay claim. The building unions were demanding a national minimum wage of £35 for a 30-hour week. The council was unable to say when it would be possible for the traders to move in to the new market.
The Rainford Carnival was due to be held again on August 26th and local schoolchildren had been invited to design a poster promoting the event. The competition drew entries from 351 youngsters with the winners being: Five to seven years old: Gillian Taylor (Corpus Christi); Seven to nine years: Ian Over (Rainford CE); Nine to eleven years: Kelvin Bushell (Rainford CE); Eleven to fourteen years: Anne Rimmer (Rainford High) and over fourteen: Stephen Jervis (Rainford High). Each winner received a prize of £2 and over the next few weeks selected posters would be displayed in parts of Rainford.
On New Year's Day a group of lads had entered a United Glass warehouse in Elton Head Road in Sutton and had lots of fun driving fork-lift trucks. They held races inside the building, smashed up 2,800 cardboard cartons and caused over £200 worth of damage to the trucks. This week three of them, aged 13, 14 and 15, faced the music in St Helens Juvenile Court and were sentenced to pay compensation and attend Prescot Attendance Centre.
Also in the Juvenile Court was an 11-year-old boy who admitted setting fire to over £700 worth of property – including 84 wooden panels and 18 flights of staircase – on a building site off Park Road in order to see the fire engines come. The boy also asked for five other offences, including four of setting fire to property, to be considered. He was placed under a supervision order for two years and to go to the Prescot Attendance Centre for a total of 12 hours.
And finally, Rothery Radio held a "Home Appliance Clinic" at their Baldwin Street store on the 29th. "Free check-up on any old electrical appliance", said their advert, next to an illustration of a mini-skirted nurse who was inspecting a vacuum cleaner!
Next week's stories will include a public inquiry into plans to demolish 200 houses in the King Street area, an update on the Chain Lane flues dispute, the bad state of a Thatto Heath health clinic and a campaign to save Moss Bank's heritage.
This week's stories include the vandalism in the town's parks, the jobs crisis for young people in St Helens, 14,000 Pilks' workers take part in a one-day strike, the St Helens MP tells the House of Commons about the stinky brook and a decision is made to name the St Helens district – St Helens. Really!!!
We begin on the 25th when the council's Amenities Committee conducted their annual inspection of the town's parks and appealed to the public to report acts of vandalism.
The committee's chairman, Cllr. Harry Williams, praised the beauty and facilities of those parks that they'd visited but added:
"They are being consistently and deliberately vandalised. Vandalism in our parks and recreational facilities is something that we have struggled for many many years to overcome. Enormous expense is expended in replacing plants, shrubbery and fencing, and amenities for our children and elderly people are seriously curtailed by the expense incurred. We cannot keep pace with replacements."
The new park being developed at Ashtons Green had, remarked Cllr. Williams, suffered badly from damage to trees and plants.
Last March the St Helens Reporter was looking for a new name for the district of St Helens, once the planned local government shake-up took place.
The town – along with places such as Rainford, Rainhill, Haydock, Ashton and Newton – were being merged into District 11(C) of the Merseyside Metropolitan County.
The newspaper did not fancy becoming the "District 11(C) Reporter" and so offered £5 to the best name that readers suggested.
Names that readers proposed included Helensborough and St Helensville, although Mary Page of Grange Park took the paper to task for suggesting an alternative monicker to St Helens, writing:
"How could you think of another name, so lovely, so aristocratic. Shame on you."
This week on the 26th, the inaugural meeting of the 11C Joint Committee was held at St Helens Town Hall and one of their tasks was to decide on a new name.
The Liverpool Echo described how "months of conjecture" over what 11C should become was finally settled when the committee took Mary Page's advice and decided that "St Helens" should be the name of the expanded town. Kind of obvious really!
On the 28th, a total of 14,500 Pilkington staff went on strike in protest at the Industrial Relations Act. The Reporter wrote: "The heart of St. Helens stopped beating at 6 am."
It was a one-day token strike, with calls for a series of additional lightning strikes rejected by shop stewards.
The Industrial Relations Act weakened the power of trade unions by giving employers the power to insert "no strike" clauses in their employees' contracts and allowed workers to opt out of joining a union.
The Reporter also wrote on the 28th that the summer school leavers in the town were being encouraged to return to full-time education in a bid to beat, what they termed, "the biggest jobs crisis for young people that St. Helens has known in recent years".
The latest unemployment figures were not yet available but last month there had been 332 people under 18 in St Helens who were unemployed.
Since then the schools had broken up for the summer holidays, putting hundreds more youths on the jobs market.
A spokesman for the Youth Employment Service said there was an acute shortage of vacancies for young people and the register of unemployed was much higher than they would normally expect.
This year thousands of residents of St Helens had had their gas cookers and other appliances converted to take North Sea gas.
But when the Gas Board arrived at Helen Pugh's house in Alexandra Drive, their workmen were taken aback with what they found.
The 83-year-old had an old-fashioned kitchen range that contained a fire, oven, grill, three cooking rings and a water heater. A Gas Board spokesman told the Reporter:
"It's virtually unique. It's the first we have come across in a million conversions."
Mrs Pugh said her range had never let her down in the 39 years that she'd owned it and the gas board were able to convert it to take natural gas.
Mrs Pugh added: "It's the best bargain we have ever had. And it's working champion on this new gas."
The Reporter also published this piece under the headline "MP Tells House Of The Town's Smelly Brook":
"Mr. Leslie Spriggs, MP for St. Helens, took a Sunday sniff at the Sankey Brook. He told Parliament later that the obnoxious smell coming from the stream would drive prospective industrialists from the town. Mr. Spriggs was speaking during a Commons debate on the North West Region.
"He said later: “I want the Government to spend some of the money they are using to clean up the environment on St. Helens and the brook in particular.”
"Mr. Spriggs made the sniff-and-see journey through Sutton while he was in the town on constituency business.
"“I wanted to see how things were going on,” he said. “I didn't need to get out of the car. The smell got into the car to me. It's damnable. My sympathy goes to the people of St. Helens who have to breathe the air that was so objectionable to me the other Sunday.”"
Pictured in the Reporter at Robins Lane Secondary School's speech day were punctual pupils Satindra Dawar and Karen Porter who received watches for their 100% attendance.
The retiring headmaster Joseph Woods also presented Albert Homer with a book token for not missing a class.
The Reporter also dismissed rumours that the St Helens Greyhound Track would be closing later in the year.
Its managing director, Mr R. Cooton, said: "People have been saying that Tescos, Lennons, Woolworth and others have bought us out – it's completely false".
However, the Reporter wrote that it was possible that the 6-acre track might relocate from Park Road to another site in three years time when Mr Cooton retired.
He'd been its managing director for 38 years and stated that the average attendance at the twice-weekly meetings was currently 500.
A knock-down sale in more than one sense was advertised in the Reporter.
Taylor Brothers' furnishings store in Market Street was going to be demolished as part of the town centre redevelopment. Their advert said:
"We prefer to deliver to your home at a reduced price saving you ££££ sooner than remove it to our new store, which will be part of the Market Centre Development on Church Street."
However, carrying out the town centre improvements was taking longer than expected.
The Council announced this week that the planned opening of the new St Mary's market complex had been put back.
Traders had been due to move into the first stage of the development this week but work was well behind schedule.
That was because workers were operating an overtime ban in support of a national pay claim.
The building unions were demanding a national minimum wage of £35 for a 30-hour week.
The council was unable to say when it would be possible for the traders to move in to the new market.
The Rainford Carnival was due to be held again on August 26th and local schoolchildren had been invited to design a poster promoting the event.
The competition drew entries from 351 youngsters with the winners being:
Five to seven years old: Gillian Taylor (Corpus Christi); Seven to nine years: Ian Over (Rainford CE); Nine to eleven years: Kelvin Bushell (Rainford CE); Eleven to fourteen years: Anne Rimmer (Rainford High) and over fourteen: Stephen Jervis (Rainford High).
Each winner received a prize of £2 and over the next few weeks selected posters would be displayed in parts of Rainford.
On New Year's Day a group of lads had entered a United Glass warehouse in Elton Head Road in Sutton and had lots of fun driving fork-lift trucks.
They held races inside the building, smashed up 2,800 cardboard cartons and caused over £200 worth of damage to the trucks.
This week three of them, aged 13, 14 and 15, faced the music in St Helens Juvenile Court and were sentenced to pay compensation and attend Prescot Attendance Centre.
Also in the Juvenile Court was an 11-year-old boy who admitted setting fire to over £700 worth of property – including 84 wooden panels and 18 flights of staircase – on a building site off Park Road in order to see the fire engines come.
The boy also asked for five other offences, including four of setting fire to property, to be considered.
He was placed under a supervision order for two years and to go to the Prescot Attendance Centre for a total of 12 hours.
And finally, Rothery Radio held a "Home Appliance Clinic" at their Baldwin Street store on the 29th.
"Free check-up on any old electrical appliance", said their advert, next to an illustration of a mini-skirted nurse who was inspecting a vacuum cleaner!
Next week's stories will include a public inquiry into plans to demolish 200 houses in the King Street area, an update on the Chain Lane flues dispute, the bad state of a Thatto Heath health clinic and a campaign to save Moss Bank's heritage.
We begin on the 25th when the council's Amenities Committee conducted their annual inspection of the town's parks and appealed to the public to report acts of vandalism.
The committee's chairman, Cllr. Harry Williams, praised the beauty and facilities of those parks that they'd visited but added:
"They are being consistently and deliberately vandalised. Vandalism in our parks and recreational facilities is something that we have struggled for many many years to overcome. Enormous expense is expended in replacing plants, shrubbery and fencing, and amenities for our children and elderly people are seriously curtailed by the expense incurred. We cannot keep pace with replacements."
The new park being developed at Ashtons Green had, remarked Cllr. Williams, suffered badly from damage to trees and plants.
Last March the St Helens Reporter was looking for a new name for the district of St Helens, once the planned local government shake-up took place.
The town – along with places such as Rainford, Rainhill, Haydock, Ashton and Newton – were being merged into District 11(C) of the Merseyside Metropolitan County.
The newspaper did not fancy becoming the "District 11(C) Reporter" and so offered £5 to the best name that readers suggested.
Names that readers proposed included Helensborough and St Helensville, although Mary Page of Grange Park took the paper to task for suggesting an alternative monicker to St Helens, writing:
"How could you think of another name, so lovely, so aristocratic. Shame on you."
This week on the 26th, the inaugural meeting of the 11C Joint Committee was held at St Helens Town Hall and one of their tasks was to decide on a new name.
The Liverpool Echo described how "months of conjecture" over what 11C should become was finally settled when the committee took Mary Page's advice and decided that "St Helens" should be the name of the expanded town. Kind of obvious really!
On the 28th, a total of 14,500 Pilkington staff went on strike in protest at the Industrial Relations Act. The Reporter wrote: "The heart of St. Helens stopped beating at 6 am."
It was a one-day token strike, with calls for a series of additional lightning strikes rejected by shop stewards.
The Industrial Relations Act weakened the power of trade unions by giving employers the power to insert "no strike" clauses in their employees' contracts and allowed workers to opt out of joining a union.
The Reporter also wrote on the 28th that the summer school leavers in the town were being encouraged to return to full-time education in a bid to beat, what they termed, "the biggest jobs crisis for young people that St. Helens has known in recent years".
The latest unemployment figures were not yet available but last month there had been 332 people under 18 in St Helens who were unemployed.
Since then the schools had broken up for the summer holidays, putting hundreds more youths on the jobs market.
A spokesman for the Youth Employment Service said there was an acute shortage of vacancies for young people and the register of unemployed was much higher than they would normally expect.
This year thousands of residents of St Helens had had their gas cookers and other appliances converted to take North Sea gas.
But when the Gas Board arrived at Helen Pugh's house in Alexandra Drive, their workmen were taken aback with what they found.
The 83-year-old had an old-fashioned kitchen range that contained a fire, oven, grill, three cooking rings and a water heater. A Gas Board spokesman told the Reporter:
"It's virtually unique. It's the first we have come across in a million conversions."
Mrs Pugh said her range had never let her down in the 39 years that she'd owned it and the gas board were able to convert it to take natural gas.
Mrs Pugh added: "It's the best bargain we have ever had. And it's working champion on this new gas."
The Reporter also published this piece under the headline "MP Tells House Of The Town's Smelly Brook":
"Mr. Leslie Spriggs, MP for St. Helens, took a Sunday sniff at the Sankey Brook. He told Parliament later that the obnoxious smell coming from the stream would drive prospective industrialists from the town. Mr. Spriggs was speaking during a Commons debate on the North West Region.
"He said later: “I want the Government to spend some of the money they are using to clean up the environment on St. Helens and the brook in particular.”
"Mr. Spriggs made the sniff-and-see journey through Sutton while he was in the town on constituency business.
"“I wanted to see how things were going on,” he said. “I didn't need to get out of the car. The smell got into the car to me. It's damnable. My sympathy goes to the people of St. Helens who have to breathe the air that was so objectionable to me the other Sunday.”"
The retiring headmaster Joseph Woods also presented Albert Homer with a book token for not missing a class.
The Reporter also dismissed rumours that the St Helens Greyhound Track would be closing later in the year.
Its managing director, Mr R. Cooton, said: "People have been saying that Tescos, Lennons, Woolworth and others have bought us out – it's completely false".
However, the Reporter wrote that it was possible that the 6-acre track might relocate from Park Road to another site in three years time when Mr Cooton retired.
He'd been its managing director for 38 years and stated that the average attendance at the twice-weekly meetings was currently 500.
A knock-down sale in more than one sense was advertised in the Reporter.
Taylor Brothers' furnishings store in Market Street was going to be demolished as part of the town centre redevelopment. Their advert said:
"We prefer to deliver to your home at a reduced price saving you ££££ sooner than remove it to our new store, which will be part of the Market Centre Development on Church Street."
However, carrying out the town centre improvements was taking longer than expected.
The Council announced this week that the planned opening of the new St Mary's market complex had been put back.
Traders had been due to move into the first stage of the development this week but work was well behind schedule.
That was because workers were operating an overtime ban in support of a national pay claim.
The building unions were demanding a national minimum wage of £35 for a 30-hour week.
The council was unable to say when it would be possible for the traders to move in to the new market.
The Rainford Carnival was due to be held again on August 26th and local schoolchildren had been invited to design a poster promoting the event.
The competition drew entries from 351 youngsters with the winners being:
Five to seven years old: Gillian Taylor (Corpus Christi); Seven to nine years: Ian Over (Rainford CE); Nine to eleven years: Kelvin Bushell (Rainford CE); Eleven to fourteen years: Anne Rimmer (Rainford High) and over fourteen: Stephen Jervis (Rainford High).
Each winner received a prize of £2 and over the next few weeks selected posters would be displayed in parts of Rainford.
On New Year's Day a group of lads had entered a United Glass warehouse in Elton Head Road in Sutton and had lots of fun driving fork-lift trucks.
They held races inside the building, smashed up 2,800 cardboard cartons and caused over £200 worth of damage to the trucks.
This week three of them, aged 13, 14 and 15, faced the music in St Helens Juvenile Court and were sentenced to pay compensation and attend Prescot Attendance Centre.
Also in the Juvenile Court was an 11-year-old boy who admitted setting fire to over £700 worth of property – including 84 wooden panels and 18 flights of staircase – on a building site off Park Road in order to see the fire engines come.
The boy also asked for five other offences, including four of setting fire to property, to be considered.
He was placed under a supervision order for two years and to go to the Prescot Attendance Centre for a total of 12 hours.
And finally, Rothery Radio held a "Home Appliance Clinic" at their Baldwin Street store on the 29th.
"Free check-up on any old electrical appliance", said their advert, next to an illustration of a mini-skirted nurse who was inspecting a vacuum cleaner!
Next week's stories will include a public inquiry into plans to demolish 200 houses in the King Street area, an update on the Chain Lane flues dispute, the bad state of a Thatto Heath health clinic and a campaign to save Moss Bank's heritage.