150 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 12 - 18 OCTOBER 1876
This week's many stories include the origins of Sacred Heart Church, the dog attack on a little girl, the prolific boots thief, the dolly tubs and buckets for sale at the old Baldwin Street workhouse, the Royal Commission on Noxious Vapours visits St Helens, the man that jumped on the back of a bobby in Hardshaw Street and the death of the spelling bee leads to the birth of a singing bee.
Male shoplifters were at a disadvantage over women. Females had shawls, which were handy for concealing stolen items. Although Edward Hughes might have got away with his crime of stealing two pairs of boots from Mr Massey's shop in Naylor Street after simply placing them under his arm and walking out of the shop.
But the man who was described as elderly was greedy and on the following day returned to the scene of his crime to pinch another pair. However, this time the shop assistant spotted him and had Edward arrested. He was found to be wearing one of the stolen pairs of boots, with the second pair located in a pawnshop.
And another pair had been nicked from the market on the previous Saturday and had also been pawned. On the 13th the prolific boots thief appeared in court and was sent to prison for two months.
At the same hearing, James McQuirk applied to the magistrates for an order compelling his neighbour's dog to be destroyed. The animal was described as ferocious and had attacked McQuirk's little girl. That was after she had visited the house belonging to the dog's owner in order to play with his child.
She had been bitten on her face, hand and arm. The owner said he had bought the 18lb bulldog after being burgled a couple of times but thought the child must have annoyed it for the dog to have bitten her. However, evidence was shown that the dog had bitten other children within the unnamed neighbourhood and the magistrates agreed that it should be destroyed.
At the back of their minds would have been the incident earlier in the year when a rabid dog had attacked a number of people in Hardshaw Street, leading to one child later dying of what was then called hydrophobia. Although there was no suggestion that the animal in this case was rabid, dogs biting people was causing tremendous alarm and an order had recently been in place in St Helens for all canines out in public to be on chains.
A meeting was held in the Public Hall in Hardshaw Street this week to discuss the building of a Catholic Church in Greenbank. The district sandwiched between Canal Street and Liverpool Road was mainly populated by Irish immigrants and with its poor housing and lack of what these days is called social mobility, Greenbank was renowned for its high crime rate.
A church within their midst would not solve the populace's problems – but it could certainly help. The meeting was a preliminary one to kickstart fundraising for an 800-seater building that would likely cost between £5,000 and £6,000. The land for the site had already been purchased near to the church's existing school at the top of Liverpool Road that had opened in 1868.
The meeting heard that the proposed place of worship would be in the Gothic style of architecture, somewhat resembling Holy Cross Church, although it would not be quite as large. About £636 was pledged in the meeting and collectors were appointed. When built the new church would be called Sacred Heart.
It was quite common for the brother of an arrested person to attempt to free them from the police. But what John Manning from Haydock did was unusual. PC Douglas had arrested John's brother for being drunk and as they were walking up Hardshaw Street towards the police station, John jumped on the bobby's back and kicked him several times. But his attempt at rescuing his sibling failed and only resulted in him appearing in court charged with assault, for which he was fined 20 shillings and costs.
Fined the same amount was James Holland, who was charged with violently assaulting his wife, Mary. Spousal violence was then so common that the newspaper report on the case was just over two lines long.
I wrote last year how John Johnson & Son from Bolton were advertising that they planned to open a "tobacco and cigar manufactory" in Naylor Street in St Helens. The firm was also an importer of tobacco and in the St Helens Newspaper on the 14th of this week they wrote that they were moving to Shaw Street opposite the railway station. During the 1880s machinery for making cigarettes in bulk became available but in 1876 people mainly smoked pipes or cigars.
The Co-operative Stores in Baldwin Street was constructed on the site of an old workhouse (pictured above). That had been built in the 1790s as a joint scheme by the Windle and Eccleston townships to care for their paupers. Since its closure in the 1840s, the building had been leased to John Anderton for use as a lodging house and John Bold sold washing materials from it.
He had an advert in the St Helens Newspaper offering "good dolly tubs, five shillings each". Bold said he also sold churns and stable buckets with many items "made to order on the shortest notice".
The Lancashire Agricultural Chemical Company had premises at St Helens Junction and were advertising "high class manures" for sale. Does that mean it ponged nicer than other manures?
The Newspaper ran an editorial discussing the popularity of "bees". The paper wrote: "In transatlantic parlance, of which far too much is creeping into our mother tongue, the word bee means the getting together a number of persons for mutual labour or amusement."
Earlier in the year I wrote how spelling bees had suddenly become popular within the St Helens district. However, the paper wrote that they had now died out, which the Newspaper described as not surprising as they considered them "unfitted for a public audience".
Other bees had also perished but the singing bee was still alive and they thought it might still have some future. We would probably call such an event an amateur talent show but the Newspaper warned audiences to expect some downsides to the experience:
"Occasionally, of course, an indulgent audience would have to prepare for a treat of screeching instead of singing, and would be liable to have their nerves, now and then, put through that indescribable, yet well-known series of convulsions, familiarly called “pins and needles;” but this aside much lasting good would come both to individuals and families by a proper use of the Singing Bee. We never were a musical nation; might not the Singing Bee, if made popular, be a step in the right direction."
On the 16th members of the Royal Commission On Noxious Vapours that was sitting in Liverpool paid a brief visit to St Helens. I don't think such an investigative committee would these days operate in the manner they did then. First of all they agreed to be met at St Helens Junction Station by David Gamble.
The former mayor of the town was still a very important figure in municipal matters but he was hardly impartial on the question of clean air. He owned a chemical works in Gerards Bridge, which along with a dozen or so other alkali works, were the primary polluters of the St Helens atmosphere.
There were one or two other industrialists within the welcoming party and Gamble drove the committee members round part of St Helens and then gave them lunch at the Town Hall. At least the St Helens Medical Officer of Health was present at the meal. Dr Robert McNichol was a critic of the shocking pollution and, hopefully, had the opportunity to express his views.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the extravagance claim against the Prescot Guardians, criticism of St Helens Free Library, a discussion on the bread ration at Whiston Workhouse and the harsh punishment for a troublesome resident of Gillars Green.
Male shoplifters were at a disadvantage over women. Females had shawls, which were handy for concealing stolen items. Although Edward Hughes might have got away with his crime of stealing two pairs of boots from Mr Massey's shop in Naylor Street after simply placing them under his arm and walking out of the shop.
But the man who was described as elderly was greedy and on the following day returned to the scene of his crime to pinch another pair. However, this time the shop assistant spotted him and had Edward arrested. He was found to be wearing one of the stolen pairs of boots, with the second pair located in a pawnshop.
And another pair had been nicked from the market on the previous Saturday and had also been pawned. On the 13th the prolific boots thief appeared in court and was sent to prison for two months.
At the same hearing, James McQuirk applied to the magistrates for an order compelling his neighbour's dog to be destroyed. The animal was described as ferocious and had attacked McQuirk's little girl. That was after she had visited the house belonging to the dog's owner in order to play with his child.
She had been bitten on her face, hand and arm. The owner said he had bought the 18lb bulldog after being burgled a couple of times but thought the child must have annoyed it for the dog to have bitten her. However, evidence was shown that the dog had bitten other children within the unnamed neighbourhood and the magistrates agreed that it should be destroyed.
At the back of their minds would have been the incident earlier in the year when a rabid dog had attacked a number of people in Hardshaw Street, leading to one child later dying of what was then called hydrophobia. Although there was no suggestion that the animal in this case was rabid, dogs biting people was causing tremendous alarm and an order had recently been in place in St Helens for all canines out in public to be on chains.
A meeting was held in the Public Hall in Hardshaw Street this week to discuss the building of a Catholic Church in Greenbank. The district sandwiched between Canal Street and Liverpool Road was mainly populated by Irish immigrants and with its poor housing and lack of what these days is called social mobility, Greenbank was renowned for its high crime rate.
A church within their midst would not solve the populace's problems – but it could certainly help. The meeting was a preliminary one to kickstart fundraising for an 800-seater building that would likely cost between £5,000 and £6,000. The land for the site had already been purchased near to the church's existing school at the top of Liverpool Road that had opened in 1868.
The meeting heard that the proposed place of worship would be in the Gothic style of architecture, somewhat resembling Holy Cross Church, although it would not be quite as large. About £636 was pledged in the meeting and collectors were appointed. When built the new church would be called Sacred Heart.
It was quite common for the brother of an arrested person to attempt to free them from the police. But what John Manning from Haydock did was unusual. PC Douglas had arrested John's brother for being drunk and as they were walking up Hardshaw Street towards the police station, John jumped on the bobby's back and kicked him several times. But his attempt at rescuing his sibling failed and only resulted in him appearing in court charged with assault, for which he was fined 20 shillings and costs.
Fined the same amount was James Holland, who was charged with violently assaulting his wife, Mary. Spousal violence was then so common that the newspaper report on the case was just over two lines long.
I wrote last year how John Johnson & Son from Bolton were advertising that they planned to open a "tobacco and cigar manufactory" in Naylor Street in St Helens. The firm was also an importer of tobacco and in the St Helens Newspaper on the 14th of this week they wrote that they were moving to Shaw Street opposite the railway station. During the 1880s machinery for making cigarettes in bulk became available but in 1876 people mainly smoked pipes or cigars.
He had an advert in the St Helens Newspaper offering "good dolly tubs, five shillings each". Bold said he also sold churns and stable buckets with many items "made to order on the shortest notice".
The Lancashire Agricultural Chemical Company had premises at St Helens Junction and were advertising "high class manures" for sale. Does that mean it ponged nicer than other manures?
The Newspaper ran an editorial discussing the popularity of "bees". The paper wrote: "In transatlantic parlance, of which far too much is creeping into our mother tongue, the word bee means the getting together a number of persons for mutual labour or amusement."
Earlier in the year I wrote how spelling bees had suddenly become popular within the St Helens district. However, the paper wrote that they had now died out, which the Newspaper described as not surprising as they considered them "unfitted for a public audience".
Other bees had also perished but the singing bee was still alive and they thought it might still have some future. We would probably call such an event an amateur talent show but the Newspaper warned audiences to expect some downsides to the experience:
"Occasionally, of course, an indulgent audience would have to prepare for a treat of screeching instead of singing, and would be liable to have their nerves, now and then, put through that indescribable, yet well-known series of convulsions, familiarly called “pins and needles;” but this aside much lasting good would come both to individuals and families by a proper use of the Singing Bee. We never were a musical nation; might not the Singing Bee, if made popular, be a step in the right direction."
On the 16th members of the Royal Commission On Noxious Vapours that was sitting in Liverpool paid a brief visit to St Helens. I don't think such an investigative committee would these days operate in the manner they did then. First of all they agreed to be met at St Helens Junction Station by David Gamble.
The former mayor of the town was still a very important figure in municipal matters but he was hardly impartial on the question of clean air. He owned a chemical works in Gerards Bridge, which along with a dozen or so other alkali works, were the primary polluters of the St Helens atmosphere.
There were one or two other industrialists within the welcoming party and Gamble drove the committee members round part of St Helens and then gave them lunch at the Town Hall. At least the St Helens Medical Officer of Health was present at the meal. Dr Robert McNichol was a critic of the shocking pollution and, hopefully, had the opportunity to express his views.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the extravagance claim against the Prescot Guardians, criticism of St Helens Free Library, a discussion on the bread ration at Whiston Workhouse and the harsh punishment for a troublesome resident of Gillars Green.
This week's many stories include the origins of Sacred Heart Church, the dog attack on a little girl, the prolific boots thief, the dolly tubs and buckets for sale at the old Baldwin Street workhouse, the Royal Commission on Noxious Vapours visits St Helens, the man that jumped on the back of a bobby in Hardshaw Street and the death of the spelling bee leads to the birth of a singing bee.
Male shoplifters were at a disadvantage over women. Females had shawls, which were handy for concealing stolen items.
Although Edward Hughes might have got away with his crime of stealing two pairs of boots from Mr Massey's shop in Naylor Street after simply placing them under his arm and walking out of the shop.
But the man who was described as elderly was greedy and on the following day returned to the scene of his crime to pinch another pair.
However, this time the shop assistant spotted him and had Edward arrested.
He was found to be wearing one of the stolen pairs of boots, with the second pair located in a pawnshop.
And another pair had been nicked from the market on the previous Saturday and had also been pawned.
On the 13th the prolific boots thief appeared in court and was sent to prison for two months.
At the same hearing, James McQuirk applied to the magistrates for an order compelling his neighbour's dog to be destroyed.
The animal was described as ferocious and had attacked McQuirk's little girl. That was after she had visited the house belonging to the dog's owner in order to play with his child.
She had been bitten on her face, hand and arm. The owner said he had bought the 18lb bulldog after being burgled a couple of times but thought the child must have annoyed it for the dog to have bitten her.
However, evidence was shown that the dog had bitten other children within the unnamed neighbourhood and the magistrates agreed that it should be destroyed.
At the back of their minds would have been the incident earlier in the year when a rabid dog had attacked a number of people in Hardshaw Street, leading to one child later dying of what was then called hydrophobia.
Although there was no suggestion that the animal in this case was rabid, dogs biting people was causing tremendous alarm and an order had recently been in place in St Helens for all canines out in public to be on chains.
A meeting was held in the Public Hall in Hardshaw Street this week to discuss the building of a Catholic Church in Greenbank.
The district sandwiched between Canal Street and Liverpool Road was mainly populated by Irish immigrants and with its poor housing and lack of what these days is called social mobility, Greenbank was renowned for its high crime rate.
A church within their midst would not solve the populace's problems – but it could certainly help.
The meeting was a preliminary one to kickstart fundraising for an 800-seater building that would likely cost between £5,000 and £6,000.
The land for the site had already been purchased near to the church's existing school at the top of Liverpool Road that had opened in 1868.
The meeting heard that the proposed place of worship would be in the Gothic style of architecture, somewhat resembling Holy Cross Church, although it would not be quite as large.
About £636 was pledged in the meeting and collectors were appointed. When built the new church would be called Sacred Heart.
It was quite common for the brother of an arrested person to attempt to free them from the police. But what John Manning from Haydock did was unusual.
PC Douglas had arrested John's brother for being drunk and as they were walking up Hardshaw Street towards the police station, John jumped on the bobby's back and kicked him several times.
But his attempt at rescuing his sibling failed and only resulted in him appearing in court charged with assault, for which he was fined 20 shillings and costs.
Fined the same amount was James Holland, who was charged with violently assaulting his wife, Mary.
Spousal violence was then so common that the newspaper report on the case was just over two lines long.
I wrote last year how John Johnson & Son from Bolton were advertising that they planned to open a "tobacco and cigar manufactory" in Naylor Street in St Helens.
The firm was also an importer of tobacco and in the St Helens Newspaper on the 14th of this week they wrote that they were moving to Shaw Street opposite the railway station.
During the 1880s machinery for making cigarettes in bulk became available but in 1876 people mainly smoked pipes or cigars.
The Co-operative Stores in Baldwin Street was constructed on the site of an old workhouse (pictured above).
That had been built in the 1790s as a joint scheme by the Windle and Eccleston townships to care for their paupers.
Since its closure in the 1840s, the building had been leased to John Anderton for use as a lodging house and John Bold sold washing materials from it.
He had an advert in the St Helens Newspaper offering "good dolly tubs, five shillings each".
Bold said he also sold churns and stable buckets with many items "made to order on the shortest notice".
The Lancashire Agricultural Chemical Company had premises at St Helens Junction and were advertising "high class manures" for sale. Does that mean it ponged nicer than other manures?
The Newspaper ran an editorial discussing the popularity of "bees". The paper wrote:
"In transatlantic parlance, of which far too much is creeping into our mother tongue, the word bee means the getting together a number of persons for mutual labour or amusement."
Earlier in the year I wrote how spelling bees had suddenly become popular within the St Helens district.
However, the paper wrote that they had now died out, which the Newspaper described as not surprising as they considered them "unfitted for a public audience".
Other bees had also perished but the singing bee was still alive and they thought it might still have some future.
We would probably call such an event an amateur talent show but the Newspaper warned audiences to expect some downsides to the experience:
"Occasionally, of course, an indulgent audience would have to prepare for a treat of screeching instead of singing, and would be liable to have their nerves, now and then, put through that indescribable, yet well-known series of convulsions, familiarly called “pins and needles;” but this aside much lasting good would come both to individuals and families by a proper use of the Singing Bee.
"We never were a musical nation; might not the Singing Bee, if made popular, be a step in the right direction."
On the 16th members of the Royal Commission On Noxious Vapours that was sitting in Liverpool paid a brief visit to St Helens.
I don't think such an investigative committee would these days operate in the manner they did then.
First of all they agreed to be met at St Helens Junction Station by David Gamble.
The former mayor of the town was still a very important figure in municipal matters but he was hardly impartial on the question of clean air.
He owned a chemical works in Gerards Bridge, which along with a dozen or so other alkali works, were the primary polluters of the St Helens atmosphere.
There were one or two other industrialists within the welcoming party and Gamble drove the committee members round part of St Helens and then gave them lunch at the Town Hall.
At least the St Helens Medical Officer of Health was present at the meal.
Dr Robert McNichol was a critic of the shocking pollution and, hopefully, had the opportunity to express his views.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the extravagance claim against the Prescot Guardians, criticism of St Helens Free Library, a discussion on the bread ration at Whiston Workhouse and the harsh punishment for a troublesome resident of Gillars Green.
Male shoplifters were at a disadvantage over women. Females had shawls, which were handy for concealing stolen items.
Although Edward Hughes might have got away with his crime of stealing two pairs of boots from Mr Massey's shop in Naylor Street after simply placing them under his arm and walking out of the shop.
But the man who was described as elderly was greedy and on the following day returned to the scene of his crime to pinch another pair.
However, this time the shop assistant spotted him and had Edward arrested.
He was found to be wearing one of the stolen pairs of boots, with the second pair located in a pawnshop.
And another pair had been nicked from the market on the previous Saturday and had also been pawned.
On the 13th the prolific boots thief appeared in court and was sent to prison for two months.
At the same hearing, James McQuirk applied to the magistrates for an order compelling his neighbour's dog to be destroyed.
The animal was described as ferocious and had attacked McQuirk's little girl. That was after she had visited the house belonging to the dog's owner in order to play with his child.
She had been bitten on her face, hand and arm. The owner said he had bought the 18lb bulldog after being burgled a couple of times but thought the child must have annoyed it for the dog to have bitten her.
However, evidence was shown that the dog had bitten other children within the unnamed neighbourhood and the magistrates agreed that it should be destroyed.
At the back of their minds would have been the incident earlier in the year when a rabid dog had attacked a number of people in Hardshaw Street, leading to one child later dying of what was then called hydrophobia.
Although there was no suggestion that the animal in this case was rabid, dogs biting people was causing tremendous alarm and an order had recently been in place in St Helens for all canines out in public to be on chains.
A meeting was held in the Public Hall in Hardshaw Street this week to discuss the building of a Catholic Church in Greenbank.
The district sandwiched between Canal Street and Liverpool Road was mainly populated by Irish immigrants and with its poor housing and lack of what these days is called social mobility, Greenbank was renowned for its high crime rate.
A church within their midst would not solve the populace's problems – but it could certainly help.
The meeting was a preliminary one to kickstart fundraising for an 800-seater building that would likely cost between £5,000 and £6,000.
The land for the site had already been purchased near to the church's existing school at the top of Liverpool Road that had opened in 1868.
The meeting heard that the proposed place of worship would be in the Gothic style of architecture, somewhat resembling Holy Cross Church, although it would not be quite as large.
About £636 was pledged in the meeting and collectors were appointed. When built the new church would be called Sacred Heart.
It was quite common for the brother of an arrested person to attempt to free them from the police. But what John Manning from Haydock did was unusual.
PC Douglas had arrested John's brother for being drunk and as they were walking up Hardshaw Street towards the police station, John jumped on the bobby's back and kicked him several times.
But his attempt at rescuing his sibling failed and only resulted in him appearing in court charged with assault, for which he was fined 20 shillings and costs.
Fined the same amount was James Holland, who was charged with violently assaulting his wife, Mary.
Spousal violence was then so common that the newspaper report on the case was just over two lines long.
I wrote last year how John Johnson & Son from Bolton were advertising that they planned to open a "tobacco and cigar manufactory" in Naylor Street in St Helens.
The firm was also an importer of tobacco and in the St Helens Newspaper on the 14th of this week they wrote that they were moving to Shaw Street opposite the railway station.
During the 1880s machinery for making cigarettes in bulk became available but in 1876 people mainly smoked pipes or cigars.
That had been built in the 1790s as a joint scheme by the Windle and Eccleston townships to care for their paupers.
Since its closure in the 1840s, the building had been leased to John Anderton for use as a lodging house and John Bold sold washing materials from it.
He had an advert in the St Helens Newspaper offering "good dolly tubs, five shillings each".
Bold said he also sold churns and stable buckets with many items "made to order on the shortest notice".
The Lancashire Agricultural Chemical Company had premises at St Helens Junction and were advertising "high class manures" for sale. Does that mean it ponged nicer than other manures?
The Newspaper ran an editorial discussing the popularity of "bees". The paper wrote:
"In transatlantic parlance, of which far too much is creeping into our mother tongue, the word bee means the getting together a number of persons for mutual labour or amusement."
Earlier in the year I wrote how spelling bees had suddenly become popular within the St Helens district.
However, the paper wrote that they had now died out, which the Newspaper described as not surprising as they considered them "unfitted for a public audience".
Other bees had also perished but the singing bee was still alive and they thought it might still have some future.
We would probably call such an event an amateur talent show but the Newspaper warned audiences to expect some downsides to the experience:
"Occasionally, of course, an indulgent audience would have to prepare for a treat of screeching instead of singing, and would be liable to have their nerves, now and then, put through that indescribable, yet well-known series of convulsions, familiarly called “pins and needles;” but this aside much lasting good would come both to individuals and families by a proper use of the Singing Bee.
"We never were a musical nation; might not the Singing Bee, if made popular, be a step in the right direction."
On the 16th members of the Royal Commission On Noxious Vapours that was sitting in Liverpool paid a brief visit to St Helens.
I don't think such an investigative committee would these days operate in the manner they did then.
First of all they agreed to be met at St Helens Junction Station by David Gamble.
The former mayor of the town was still a very important figure in municipal matters but he was hardly impartial on the question of clean air.
He owned a chemical works in Gerards Bridge, which along with a dozen or so other alkali works, were the primary polluters of the St Helens atmosphere.
There were one or two other industrialists within the welcoming party and Gamble drove the committee members round part of St Helens and then gave them lunch at the Town Hall.
At least the St Helens Medical Officer of Health was present at the meal.
Dr Robert McNichol was a critic of the shocking pollution and, hopefully, had the opportunity to express his views.
St Helens Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the extravagance claim against the Prescot Guardians, criticism of St Helens Free Library, a discussion on the bread ration at Whiston Workhouse and the harsh punishment for a troublesome resident of Gillars Green.