FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK (27th FEB. - 5th MARCH 1973)
This week's 14 stories include the prison sentence for pouring boiling hot water on Parr dogs, the Portico baby that was born ten weeks premature goes home, the dog lasso rescue in Jackson Street, a strike at Whiston Hospital, the Covered Market customer confusion and an end is in sight for the annual Islands Brow floods.
We begin on the 27th when firemen spent fifteen minutes freeing a Liverpool man who had been trapped in his 30-cwt van. The vehicle had been involved in an accident on the East Lancs Road at Carr Mill and the driver was later described as being satisfactory in St Helens Hospital.
On the 28th police and the fire brigade toured Rainhill asking residents to keep away from the Stoney Lane area after the fracture of a gas main. Also on that day Lord Harry Pilkington announced that he would be retiring as Pilkingtons chairman in September, with the unrelated Sir Alastair Pilkington then taking over the glass giant's reins.
In January I described how some sadistic individual from the Fleet Lane area of Parr had been pouring boiling water on dogs. Several animals had subsequently been put down, including Bimbo belonging to Audrey Molyneux of Inman Avenue. Her 12-year-old spaniel-type mongrel had been missing for three days and when he briefly returned home Mrs Molyneux noticed some fur was missing. Bimbo then disappeared again and after four days came back in a worse state, unable to lie down and refusing to let anyone near him. "He seemed terrified of human beings", reported Mrs Molyneux.
A local vet thought other dogs in the area could have been similarly attacked without their owners' knowledge because dogs' fur could mask scalds for days. And that proved to be the case, as on March 2nd a 23-year-old man from Sexton Avenue in St Helens was found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to four dogs by scalding them with hot water and imprisoned for three months. His wife was found guilty of aiding and abetting and was placed on probation for two years. Both were disqualified from keeping a dog for five years.
Also on the 2nd an £8,000 articulated tanker was stolen from outside Burkill's Café on the East Lancs at Carr Mill. A green-coloured Atkinson towing unit had been hauling the 40-foot-long orange and white tanker.
The St Helens Reporter was published on the 2nd and stated that a new primary school was going to be built in Sutton at a cost of £107,000. The school would be sited in Eaves Lane and accommodate 280 pupils. The paper said it would be run on an open plan basis without formal classrooms and be completed in 1974.
In describing a court case that had taken place in St Helens this week, the Reporter revealed how a baby from Scholes Lane had been kept in hospital for five days after suffering from alcohol poisoning. A much nicer baby story from the same district concerned Mark Hewitt, who had been born on Christmas Eve in Whiston Hospital ten weeks premature. Then he weighed little more than a 2lb bag of sugar. Mark's chances of survival were considered so slim that the child had been quickly baptised. But this week after tipping the scales at 5lb 9oz, Mark was discharged to his home in Scholes Park in Portico. "It's marvellous having him home at last", said relieved mum Sylvia Hewitt.
Farmworker Neville Parr told the Reporter how earlier in the week he had been just one step from death on Lower Shades Farm in Rainford. The 22-year-old from Dentons Green had stopped his tractor just inches away from a tiny hole in the ground – but then discovered it opened up into a chasm 14 ft. deep. Another turn of the tractor wheels and Neville would have toppled into the hole with the machine and harvester lying on top of him. Only a thin crust of soft topsoil had kept him from plummeting down the cavern.
There was good news in the Reporter for Ruth Large and her neighbours in Islands Brow. A new sewage system was being installed that would hopefully mean the end of their annual floods. "There has always been a flood problem outside my home," said Mrs Large. "I've been here since 1939 and I can't remember a year without floods. I can't get out when the gateway is under water unless I use a plank.
"People wanting to use the road – including children going to school – have to climb over the railway, the main St. Helens to Wigan line. Obviously this is dangerous, because it's a busy line." The water collected under a railway bridge in Islands Brow but the firm laying the new sewage system said the water that originated from Pilkington’s waste tips would eventually flow down their pipes.
"Traders in St. Helens covered market are like Scarlet Pimpernels. Customers seek them here and seek them there, but the market traders are still where they've always been." That was the introduction to an article in the paper, which described customer confusion over the new market arrangements. Dennis Green – who kept a footwear stall in the covered market in Bridge Street (pictured above) – complained that his clientele did not know what was happening and he was losing trade:
"Customers think we've gone to St. Mary's Market. But we are staying here for at least another two years, until the Tontine Street market is ready." And Jim Chorley who ran a toy stall in the covered market agreed: "People are always asking me when am I moving, or telling me they thought I'd moved. Since stallholders started going to the new market it has become a bit confusing for shoppers."
The Reporter also described how leading fireman Eric Holland of Clipsley Lane in Haydock had used a lasso to rescue an injured dog that had been trapped in an underground tunnel. The little crossbred terrier was lying on a two-foot wide ledge 30 yards inside a culvert that conducted the Sankey Brook under Jackson Street. Fireman edged out along the ledge but the frightened dog snapped at anyone that came near.
They were about to give up and call the RSPCA but then Fireman Holland stuck his lasso on to the end of a stick, advanced towards the dog cautiously and managed to cast his rope over it. In seconds the animal had been pulled clear. Hopefully, the publicity would have led to the dog's owner coming forward – or an alternative offer of a home. The animal had no identification on it and would have been put down after seven days if unclaimed.
There was a headline in the Liverpool Echo on the 2nd that could easily have been published today. It said "Hospitals At Crisis Point" and its accompanying article said: "As the hospital workers' industrial action gathered momentum on Merseyside, the situation was reaching crises proportions, said a spokesman for the Liverpool Regional Hospitals Board to-day."
Three days later ancillary staff at Whiston Hospital went on an indefinite strike. Of particular concern was that the workers that laundered patients' bed linen would be amongst those withdrawing their labour. That created issues with hygiene and as a result both Whiston and St Helens hospitals had decided to only accept emergency cases until the dispute had been resolved. Although St Helens Hospital staff were not striking, they used Whiston's cleaning facilities for some of their laundry and so disruption was expected.
And finally, on the 4th a 24-hour strike by Unigate milkmen over pay led to no deliveries being made in Rainford, St Helens and Newton-le-Willows.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the friendless patients in Rainhill Hospital, a St Helens fire chief slams inconsiderate parking, another leak from Leathers Chemicals and a big step forward is taken in plans to pedestrianise St Helens town centre.
We begin on the 27th when firemen spent fifteen minutes freeing a Liverpool man who had been trapped in his 30-cwt van. The vehicle had been involved in an accident on the East Lancs Road at Carr Mill and the driver was later described as being satisfactory in St Helens Hospital.
On the 28th police and the fire brigade toured Rainhill asking residents to keep away from the Stoney Lane area after the fracture of a gas main. Also on that day Lord Harry Pilkington announced that he would be retiring as Pilkingtons chairman in September, with the unrelated Sir Alastair Pilkington then taking over the glass giant's reins.
In January I described how some sadistic individual from the Fleet Lane area of Parr had been pouring boiling water on dogs. Several animals had subsequently been put down, including Bimbo belonging to Audrey Molyneux of Inman Avenue. Her 12-year-old spaniel-type mongrel had been missing for three days and when he briefly returned home Mrs Molyneux noticed some fur was missing. Bimbo then disappeared again and after four days came back in a worse state, unable to lie down and refusing to let anyone near him. "He seemed terrified of human beings", reported Mrs Molyneux.
A local vet thought other dogs in the area could have been similarly attacked without their owners' knowledge because dogs' fur could mask scalds for days. And that proved to be the case, as on March 2nd a 23-year-old man from Sexton Avenue in St Helens was found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to four dogs by scalding them with hot water and imprisoned for three months. His wife was found guilty of aiding and abetting and was placed on probation for two years. Both were disqualified from keeping a dog for five years.
Also on the 2nd an £8,000 articulated tanker was stolen from outside Burkill's Café on the East Lancs at Carr Mill. A green-coloured Atkinson towing unit had been hauling the 40-foot-long orange and white tanker.
The St Helens Reporter was published on the 2nd and stated that a new primary school was going to be built in Sutton at a cost of £107,000. The school would be sited in Eaves Lane and accommodate 280 pupils. The paper said it would be run on an open plan basis without formal classrooms and be completed in 1974.
In describing a court case that had taken place in St Helens this week, the Reporter revealed how a baby from Scholes Lane had been kept in hospital for five days after suffering from alcohol poisoning. A much nicer baby story from the same district concerned Mark Hewitt, who had been born on Christmas Eve in Whiston Hospital ten weeks premature. Then he weighed little more than a 2lb bag of sugar. Mark's chances of survival were considered so slim that the child had been quickly baptised. But this week after tipping the scales at 5lb 9oz, Mark was discharged to his home in Scholes Park in Portico. "It's marvellous having him home at last", said relieved mum Sylvia Hewitt.
Farmworker Neville Parr told the Reporter how earlier in the week he had been just one step from death on Lower Shades Farm in Rainford. The 22-year-old from Dentons Green had stopped his tractor just inches away from a tiny hole in the ground – but then discovered it opened up into a chasm 14 ft. deep. Another turn of the tractor wheels and Neville would have toppled into the hole with the machine and harvester lying on top of him. Only a thin crust of soft topsoil had kept him from plummeting down the cavern.
There was good news in the Reporter for Ruth Large and her neighbours in Islands Brow. A new sewage system was being installed that would hopefully mean the end of their annual floods. "There has always been a flood problem outside my home," said Mrs Large. "I've been here since 1939 and I can't remember a year without floods. I can't get out when the gateway is under water unless I use a plank.
"People wanting to use the road – including children going to school – have to climb over the railway, the main St. Helens to Wigan line. Obviously this is dangerous, because it's a busy line." The water collected under a railway bridge in Islands Brow but the firm laying the new sewage system said the water that originated from Pilkington’s waste tips would eventually flow down their pipes.
"Customers think we've gone to St. Mary's Market. But we are staying here for at least another two years, until the Tontine Street market is ready." And Jim Chorley who ran a toy stall in the covered market agreed: "People are always asking me when am I moving, or telling me they thought I'd moved. Since stallholders started going to the new market it has become a bit confusing for shoppers."
The Reporter also described how leading fireman Eric Holland of Clipsley Lane in Haydock had used a lasso to rescue an injured dog that had been trapped in an underground tunnel. The little crossbred terrier was lying on a two-foot wide ledge 30 yards inside a culvert that conducted the Sankey Brook under Jackson Street. Fireman edged out along the ledge but the frightened dog snapped at anyone that came near.
They were about to give up and call the RSPCA but then Fireman Holland stuck his lasso on to the end of a stick, advanced towards the dog cautiously and managed to cast his rope over it. In seconds the animal had been pulled clear. Hopefully, the publicity would have led to the dog's owner coming forward – or an alternative offer of a home. The animal had no identification on it and would have been put down after seven days if unclaimed.
There was a headline in the Liverpool Echo on the 2nd that could easily have been published today. It said "Hospitals At Crisis Point" and its accompanying article said: "As the hospital workers' industrial action gathered momentum on Merseyside, the situation was reaching crises proportions, said a spokesman for the Liverpool Regional Hospitals Board to-day."
Three days later ancillary staff at Whiston Hospital went on an indefinite strike. Of particular concern was that the workers that laundered patients' bed linen would be amongst those withdrawing their labour. That created issues with hygiene and as a result both Whiston and St Helens hospitals had decided to only accept emergency cases until the dispute had been resolved. Although St Helens Hospital staff were not striking, they used Whiston's cleaning facilities for some of their laundry and so disruption was expected.
And finally, on the 4th a 24-hour strike by Unigate milkmen over pay led to no deliveries being made in Rainford, St Helens and Newton-le-Willows.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the friendless patients in Rainhill Hospital, a St Helens fire chief slams inconsiderate parking, another leak from Leathers Chemicals and a big step forward is taken in plans to pedestrianise St Helens town centre.
This week's 14 stories include the prison sentence for pouring boiling hot water on Parr dogs, the Portico baby that was born ten weeks premature goes home, the dog lasso rescue in Jackson Street, a strike at Whiston Hospital, the Covered Market customer confusion and an end is in sight for the annual Islands Brow floods.
We begin on the 27th when firemen spent fifteen minutes freeing a Liverpool man who had been trapped in his 30-cwt van.
The vehicle had been involved in an accident on the East Lancs Road at Carr Mill and the driver was later described as being satisfactory in St Helens Hospital.
On the 28th police and the fire brigade toured Rainhill asking residents to keep away from the Stoney Lane area after the fracture of a gas main.
Also on that day Lord Harry Pilkington announced that he would be retiring as Pilkingtons chairman in September, with the unrelated Sir Alastair Pilkington then taking over the glass giant's reins.
In January I described how some sadistic individual from the Fleet Lane area of Parr had been pouring boiling water on dogs.
Several animals had subsequently been put down, including Bimbo belonging to Audrey Molyneux of Inman Avenue.
Her 12-year-old spaniel-type mongrel had been missing for three days and when he briefly returned home Mrs Molyneux noticed some fur was missing.
Bimbo then disappeared again and after four days came back in a worse state, unable to lie down and refusing to let anyone near him. "He seemed terrified of human beings", reported Mrs Molyneux.
A local vet thought other dogs in the area could have been similarly attacked without their owners' knowledge because dogs' fur could mask scalds for days.
And that proved to be the case, as on March 2nd a 23-year-old man from Sexton Avenue in St Helens was found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to four dogs by scalding them with hot water and imprisoned for three months.
His wife was found guilty of aiding and abetting and was placed on probation for two years. Both were disqualified from keeping a dog for five years.
Also on the 2nd an £8,000 articulated tanker was stolen from outside Burkill's Café on the East Lancs at Carr Mill.
A green-coloured Atkinson towing unit had been hauling the 40-foot-long orange and white tanker.
The St Helens Reporter was published on the 2nd and stated that a new primary school was going to be built in Sutton at a cost of £107,000.
The school would be sited in Eaves Lane and accommodate 280 pupils. The paper said it would be run on an open plan basis without formal classrooms and be completed in 1974.
In describing a court case that had taken place in St Helens this week, the Reporter revealed how a baby from Scholes Lane had been kept in hospital for five days after suffering from alcohol poisoning.
A much nicer baby story from the same district concerned Mark Hewitt, who had been born on Christmas Eve in Whiston Hospital ten weeks premature.
Then he weighed little more than a 2lb bag of sugar. Mark's chances of survival were considered so slim that the child had been quickly baptised.
But this week after tipping the scales at 5lb 9oz, Mark was discharged to his home in Scholes Park in Portico. "It's marvellous having him home at last", said relieved mum Sylvia Hewitt.
Farmworker Neville Parr told the Reporter how earlier in the week he had been just one step from death on Lower Shades Farm in Rainford.
The 22-year-old from Dentons Green had stopped his tractor just inches away from a tiny hole in the ground – but then discovered it opened up into a chasm 14 ft. deep.
Another turn of the tractor wheels and Neville would have toppled into the hole with the machine and harvester lying on top of him. Only a thin crust of soft topsoil had kept him from plummeting down the cavern.
There was good news in the Reporter for Ruth Large and her neighbours in Islands Brow.
A new sewage system was being installed that would hopefully mean the end of their annual floods.
"There has always been a flood problem outside my home," said Mrs Large. "I've been here since 1939 and I can't remember a year without floods. I can't get out when the gateway is under water unless I use a plank.
"People wanting to use the road – including children going to school – have to climb over the railway, the main St. Helens to Wigan line. Obviously this is dangerous, because it's a busy line."
The water collected under a railway bridge in Islands Brow but the firm laying the new sewage system said the water that originated from Pilkington's waste tips would eventually flow down their pipes.
"Traders in St. Helens covered market are like Scarlet Pimpernels. Customers seek them here and seek them there, but the market traders are still where they've always been."
That was the introduction to an article in the paper, which described customer confusion over the new market arrangements.
Dennis Green – who kept a footwear stall in the covered market in Bridge Street (pictured above) – complained that his clientele did not know what was happening and he was losing trade:
"Customers think we've gone to St. Mary's Market. But we are staying here for at least another two years, until the Tontine Street market is ready." And Jim Chorley who ran a toy stall in the covered market agreed:
"People are always asking me when am I moving, or telling me they thought I'd moved. Since stallholders started going to the new market it has become a bit confusing for shoppers."
The Reporter also described how leading fireman Eric Holland of Clipsley Lane in Haydock had used a lasso to rescue an injured dog that had been trapped in an underground tunnel.
The little crossbred terrier was lying on a two-foot wide ledge 30 yards inside a culvert that conducted the Sankey Brook under Jackson Street.
Fireman edged out along the ledge but the frightened dog snapped at anyone that came near.
They were about to give up and call the RSPCA but then Fireman Holland stuck his lasso on to the end of a stick, advanced towards the dog cautiously and managed to cast his rope over it. In seconds the animal had been pulled clear.
Hopefully, the publicity would have led to the dog's owner coming forward – or an alternative offer of a home. The animal had no identification on it and would have been put down after seven days if unclaimed.
There was a headline in the Liverpool Echo on the 2nd that could easily have been published today. It said "Hospitals At Crisis Point" and its accompanying article said:
"As the hospital workers' industrial action gathered momentum on Merseyside, the situation was reaching crises proportions, said a spokesman for the Liverpool Regional Hospitals Board to-day."
Three days later ancillary staff at Whiston Hospital went on an indefinite strike.
Of particular concern was that the workers that laundered patients' bed linen would be amongst those withdrawing their labour.
That created issues with hygiene and as a result both Whiston and St Helens hospitals had decided to only accept emergency cases until the dispute had been resolved.
Although St Helens Hospital staff were not striking, they used Whiston's cleaning facilities for some of their laundry and so disruption was expected.
And finally, on the 4th a 24-hour strike by Unigate milkmen over pay led to no deliveries being made in Rainford, St Helens and Newton-le-Willows.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the friendless patients in Rainhill Hospital, a St Helens fire chief slams inconsiderate parking, another leak from Leathers Chemicals and a big step forward is taken in plans to pedestrianise St Helens town centre.
We begin on the 27th when firemen spent fifteen minutes freeing a Liverpool man who had been trapped in his 30-cwt van.
The vehicle had been involved in an accident on the East Lancs Road at Carr Mill and the driver was later described as being satisfactory in St Helens Hospital.
On the 28th police and the fire brigade toured Rainhill asking residents to keep away from the Stoney Lane area after the fracture of a gas main.
Also on that day Lord Harry Pilkington announced that he would be retiring as Pilkingtons chairman in September, with the unrelated Sir Alastair Pilkington then taking over the glass giant's reins.
In January I described how some sadistic individual from the Fleet Lane area of Parr had been pouring boiling water on dogs.
Several animals had subsequently been put down, including Bimbo belonging to Audrey Molyneux of Inman Avenue.
Her 12-year-old spaniel-type mongrel had been missing for three days and when he briefly returned home Mrs Molyneux noticed some fur was missing.
Bimbo then disappeared again and after four days came back in a worse state, unable to lie down and refusing to let anyone near him. "He seemed terrified of human beings", reported Mrs Molyneux.
A local vet thought other dogs in the area could have been similarly attacked without their owners' knowledge because dogs' fur could mask scalds for days.
And that proved to be the case, as on March 2nd a 23-year-old man from Sexton Avenue in St Helens was found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to four dogs by scalding them with hot water and imprisoned for three months.
His wife was found guilty of aiding and abetting and was placed on probation for two years. Both were disqualified from keeping a dog for five years.
Also on the 2nd an £8,000 articulated tanker was stolen from outside Burkill's Café on the East Lancs at Carr Mill.
A green-coloured Atkinson towing unit had been hauling the 40-foot-long orange and white tanker.
The St Helens Reporter was published on the 2nd and stated that a new primary school was going to be built in Sutton at a cost of £107,000.
The school would be sited in Eaves Lane and accommodate 280 pupils. The paper said it would be run on an open plan basis without formal classrooms and be completed in 1974.
In describing a court case that had taken place in St Helens this week, the Reporter revealed how a baby from Scholes Lane had been kept in hospital for five days after suffering from alcohol poisoning.
A much nicer baby story from the same district concerned Mark Hewitt, who had been born on Christmas Eve in Whiston Hospital ten weeks premature.
Then he weighed little more than a 2lb bag of sugar. Mark's chances of survival were considered so slim that the child had been quickly baptised.
But this week after tipping the scales at 5lb 9oz, Mark was discharged to his home in Scholes Park in Portico. "It's marvellous having him home at last", said relieved mum Sylvia Hewitt.
Farmworker Neville Parr told the Reporter how earlier in the week he had been just one step from death on Lower Shades Farm in Rainford.
The 22-year-old from Dentons Green had stopped his tractor just inches away from a tiny hole in the ground – but then discovered it opened up into a chasm 14 ft. deep.
Another turn of the tractor wheels and Neville would have toppled into the hole with the machine and harvester lying on top of him. Only a thin crust of soft topsoil had kept him from plummeting down the cavern.
There was good news in the Reporter for Ruth Large and her neighbours in Islands Brow.
A new sewage system was being installed that would hopefully mean the end of their annual floods.
"There has always been a flood problem outside my home," said Mrs Large. "I've been here since 1939 and I can't remember a year without floods. I can't get out when the gateway is under water unless I use a plank.
"People wanting to use the road – including children going to school – have to climb over the railway, the main St. Helens to Wigan line. Obviously this is dangerous, because it's a busy line."
The water collected under a railway bridge in Islands Brow but the firm laying the new sewage system said the water that originated from Pilkington's waste tips would eventually flow down their pipes.
"Traders in St. Helens covered market are like Scarlet Pimpernels. Customers seek them here and seek them there, but the market traders are still where they've always been."
That was the introduction to an article in the paper, which described customer confusion over the new market arrangements.
"Customers think we've gone to St. Mary's Market. But we are staying here for at least another two years, until the Tontine Street market is ready." And Jim Chorley who ran a toy stall in the covered market agreed:
"People are always asking me when am I moving, or telling me they thought I'd moved. Since stallholders started going to the new market it has become a bit confusing for shoppers."
The Reporter also described how leading fireman Eric Holland of Clipsley Lane in Haydock had used a lasso to rescue an injured dog that had been trapped in an underground tunnel.
The little crossbred terrier was lying on a two-foot wide ledge 30 yards inside a culvert that conducted the Sankey Brook under Jackson Street.
Fireman edged out along the ledge but the frightened dog snapped at anyone that came near.
They were about to give up and call the RSPCA but then Fireman Holland stuck his lasso on to the end of a stick, advanced towards the dog cautiously and managed to cast his rope over it. In seconds the animal had been pulled clear.
Hopefully, the publicity would have led to the dog's owner coming forward – or an alternative offer of a home. The animal had no identification on it and would have been put down after seven days if unclaimed.
There was a headline in the Liverpool Echo on the 2nd that could easily have been published today. It said "Hospitals At Crisis Point" and its accompanying article said:
"As the hospital workers' industrial action gathered momentum on Merseyside, the situation was reaching crises proportions, said a spokesman for the Liverpool Regional Hospitals Board to-day."
Three days later ancillary staff at Whiston Hospital went on an indefinite strike.
Of particular concern was that the workers that laundered patients' bed linen would be amongst those withdrawing their labour.
That created issues with hygiene and as a result both Whiston and St Helens hospitals had decided to only accept emergency cases until the dispute had been resolved.
Although St Helens Hospital staff were not striking, they used Whiston's cleaning facilities for some of their laundry and so disruption was expected.
And finally, on the 4th a 24-hour strike by Unigate milkmen over pay led to no deliveries being made in Rainford, St Helens and Newton-le-Willows.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next week's stories will include the friendless patients in Rainhill Hospital, a St Helens fire chief slams inconsiderate parking, another leak from Leathers Chemicals and a big step forward is taken in plans to pedestrianise St Helens town centre.