An Illustrated History of Old Sutton in St.Helens
Part 29 (of 41) - Sutton Tragedies Part 2 (of 2)
a) Strange Confession of the Distraught Mum | b) Legendary Curse of St.Anne's Wellc) The B24 Battery Cob Crash | d) The Tragic Demise of Sutton Nash's 'Owd Tolly'
e) The Rabid Railway Shunter from Herbert Street | f) Tragic Suicide of Annie Makin
Header image: A Sutton bobby poses for the camera with locals in Junction Lane around 1900
a) The 'Strange Confession' of the Distraught Mum
As Sutton's industrial works built up during the nineteenth century, so substantial water supplies were required for cooling and other uses. So a number of reservoirs were created, mainly in the St.Helens Junction district. As described in this story, they created opportunities for play when they were covered in ice that could lead to tragedy. However, the reservoirs didn't have to be frozen to be death traps.On the evening of May 17th, 1900, 49-year-old Sarah Walton of 15, Sutton Moss, was walking her two youngest children across the fields by the unfenced reservoir that supplied Sutton Rolling Mill, when seven-year-old Lily fell in. The screaming mother jumped into the water to try and save her daughter and was followed by three-year-old Agnes May. Passers-by, Edward Williams and Archibald Thompson, heard her cries and pulled all three out of the water. Dr. Bates was summoned from his Junction Lane practice but could only pronounce both children dead.
It is no use me saying anything.I have done the deed.
The strange confession of Mrs. Walton quickly leaked out in theneighbourhood, and occasioned a sensation.
Sutton's Sergeant Jackson then gave evidence that he believed Sarah was suffering "very great mental distress" when she'd made her self-incriminating statement of drowning her daughters and so the jury decided to return an open verdict. This saga was brought to an end on June 15th when the case against Sarah Walton was discharged at St.Helens Police Court. Town clerk G.W. Bailey had forwarded all depositions in the case to the Solicitor to the Treasurer who felt that she was under a hallucination when she confessed to drowning her girls. The devoted mother had spent 16 days in custody, mainly in prison, but finally justice was done although her ordeal was not quite over.
Although returned to her family by the courts, Sarah is thought to have spent a long time in Rainhill Asylum, recovering from the mental trauma, before eventually returning home. If you can furnish further details of exactly what happened to Sarah after 1900, please do contact me. Just maybe there's a happy story waiting to be told!
b) The Legendary Curse of St. Annes Well
When we talk of St.Anne's in Sutton, we automatically think of the Roman Catholic church that John Smith built in 1849 for Dominic Barberi, which now also bears the name of the beatified Passionist priest. However, hundreds of years earlier there was another St.Annes located to the west or south-west of what we now call Sherdley Park and which suffered from Henry VIII's draconian Dissolution of the Monasteries. However, the manner of the appropriation has long been the subject of conjecture as to whether there was both a conspiracy and a curse. We'll never know the truth but according to reports, there were certainly a number of tragedies.St.Annes or Sutton Priory was quite small with never more than a dozen priests but with an extensive estate leased to well-off farmers. This brought in a good revenue for the monks who worked a small farm nearby with much of their produce given to the Sutton poor.
They also had a well in a field located nearly a mile from the Sutton Priory and half-a-mile from present-day Rainhill station. It was six feet deep and five feet nine inches square and was said to have remarkable healing and curative powers. Large numbers of people travelled from great distances to bathe in the well and a small three roomed house was built over it. Two of the monks lived there to give assistance to those seeking relief from their afflictions. The cure of skin diseases was a speciality of the well, which like the priory, had St.Anne as its patron saint. Indeed the monks claimed that their patroness had one day manifested herself there and bathed in the waters of the well.
By the 1530s the prior was Father Delwaney who fell into dispute with Hugh Darcy, the steward or estate manager of Sir Thomas Bold, the neighbouring landowner. They disagreed over access rights to the well and the boundary between the two estates. The dispute came to a head one day with a row that ended with Darcy suggesting that the prior would not be in position for much longer. This puzzled Fr. Delwaney but it was the reign of King Henry VIII who, at the suggestion of Thomas Cromwell, was busy dissolving monasteries.
A couple of days after Darcy's prediction, two of the king's commissioners, Dr. Layton and Dr. Lea, accompanied by several officers rode up to the priory to take possession. They presented to the prior the orders of Cromwell, the Vicar General, that they were to be removed from Sutton and taken to an abbey at Parr, with each monk allowed just one gown and £2. Fr. Delwaney was also instructed to take the officers to the well so that they could take possession of that as well.
St.Helens Leader article on St.Anne's Well c.1877 - click image for complete .pdf version
Upon arrival at the holy well, the prior found that Darcy was waiting for them and was clearly known to the commissioners. The steward sneered at the priest, who was so enraged by his actions that the prior had to be held back from attacking him. He's then said to have cursed Darcy in the name of St.Anne, predicting that he would be dead within a year and a day. The steward to Thomas Bold then walked away, laughing contemptuously, as Father Delwaney collapsed into the arms of one of his monks. He was removed to the cottage over the well but despite the attention of a 'human leech', was dead within three hours.
The king subsequently granted Hugh Darcy the farm on which the well stood and he demolished the building over it. For a while everything seemed to be going well for him but within three months of Delwaney's death, the steward's only son died of a mysterious illness. Soon afterwards, the bereaved father suffered financial losses through poor investments and he subsequently took to drink, which cost him his job with Thomas Bold. One night after a heavy drinking session at a tavern near Micklehead, Darcy walked back to his home in Rainhill. However, he never arrived and in the morning his concerned wife woke their neighbours who searched for him. The shortest road home was a footpath by St.Anne's Well and Hugh Darcy's body was found in the waters with his head crushed in.
So the curse of the prior had come true and the former warden had received his just deserts. Alternatively, Fr. Delwaney may have had a heart attack and Darcy's son may have died from a childhood disease, that afflicted so many youngsters in those days. Plus the highly intoxicated Darcy may have fallen into the well, caving in his head in the process. Coincidences and simple explanations are not, of course, as romantic a chain of events as the retribution of a deceased monk. It all depends on how much you believe in myths and legends!
In recent times there's been an archaeological dig to study the remnants of St.Annes Well, although the precise location of the former priory is, I'm told, unknown at this time.
Sourced from a St.Helens Leader article 'Local Traditions and Legends VIII St.Anne's Well' - undated but 1877 or '78. Click here for the complete article - courtesy St.Helens Local History & Archives Library.
c) The B24 Battery Cob Crash
The Battery Cob at Northfield Farm in Clock Face was built in 1871 by the 2nd Lancashire Engineer Volunteers. The army paid an annual rent of £5 and used it during the Boer War and World War 1 as a rifle range. It was quite small, measuring just 30 yards long by 15 yards wide and was triangular in section with an 8 ft wide flat top and was elevated to 32 feet. There were also three smaller mounds of earth some 30 to 50 yards away. As well as having a military purpose, the Cob also served as an adventure playground for numerous Sutton and Bold youngsters who whiled away their summer holidays there!
Images of the Battery Cob air crash and T/Sgt Leo E Lovasik, one of the B24's crew
Disaster struck the Battery Cob on August 30th, 1943, when just after 5pm a B-24 Liberator bomber crashed into it, killing all nine on-board personnel. The USAAF 392nd Bomb Group plane had departed Burtonwood just minutes earlier intending to return to its base at Wendling in Norfolk. Exactly why it crashed isn't known but eye-witness Frank Gomme who was about nine at the time believes it may have been as a result of a collision:
I'd just passed the Battery Cob and was near Bold Road when I heard a loud spluttering sound. I turned to see this American B-24 Liberator passing over the old poson-gas factory in Reginald Road. It seemed to strike something in low-level flight and then continued towards the Battery Cob. The aircraft's wheels were down and they hit the Cob causing the plane to spin on to its back and burst into flames. 
(St.Helens Star 9/1/2003)In February 1944 at Widnes Police Court, the three were given awards for their bravery, although all of the crew and passengers had died in the impact. Soon after the end of the war, Eddie Sefton who was the owner of Northfield Farm, levelled the Battery Cob.
d) The Tragic Demise of Sutton Nash's 'Owd Tolly'
When Arthur Helsby was laid to rest in Sutton Churchyard on July 10th, 1930, a huge crowd of over 2,000 mourners sang 'Abide With Me' led by Rev. W. E. Colegrove. The Vicar of Sutton eulogised over the man who'd been a music teacher at Sutton National Schools for almost three decades and had also been the choirmaster and organist at All Saints Church in Ellamsbridge Road for many years:
He is lovingly lamented. There are not scores, but hundreds, who are thankful they knew him...His friends have lost one who was constant and true - one with deep insight and true sympathy, one who made life sweeter through knowing him. 
(St.Helens Reporter 11/7/1930) 
They were a grand lot of teachers in our boys school, now I reckon they will all have passed on, "God bless them all". But there was one exception, none of us liked him and some hated him...he was always referred to by the name of "Owd Tolly" amongst all us boys. 
In his memoirs written in 1987, Frank related how he and his classmates were fearful when told that they were moving up into Standard VII, Mr. Helsby's class, as he had quite a reputation for using the strap on his pupils if they couldn't answer his questions. Soon Frank's fears were realised:
...he said "hold out your hand, Bamber, I cannot waste time on you" and with that he hit me across the hand and then said "Hold the other one out", he hit me again with force and when I leaned forward to hold my hands together and then place them under my armpits, he struck me across the back and continued along the class giving others a single strap across the hand when they failed to describe the correct note. I well remember that lesson, there was more weeping than singing that lesson. 
In 1901 he married Louisa Ann Bate and they lived at 192 Robins Lane where they had three boys. Initially he taught at the junior school at Sutton National in Ellamsbridge Road before transferring to the boys school. Helsby rose to become the deputy to longstanding head-teacher James Plews and ran the choir and played the organ at All Saints Church.
Joan Heyes (née Williams), who now lives in Sydney, used to visit All Saints after school to listen to the organ being played. She lived with the Withington family, to whom she was related, initially in Ellen Street and later in Mill Lane. Emily Withington received private organ lessons from Mr. Helsby on Thursday afternoons. Joan, now 93-years young, recalls regularly climbing the church steps and standing at the side of the long bench that Emily sat on. Tutor Arthur Helsby stood at the other end of the bench but never acknowledged Joan's presence in any way.
Depite his unpopularity with some, 'Owd Tolley' was so well-known and had participated in so many aspects of Sutton life that it came as a huge shock to the local community when word spread of his death. The St.Helelens Reporter said the news of his suicide had caused "a sensation". 58-year-old Helsby had walked from his Robins Lane home to Marshalls Cross Road bridge, then made his way down to the railway line before deliberately lying down on the tracks in front of an oncoming engine.
Coroner Sam Brighouse said Helsby's mind had become "deranged through ill-health" as his son described to the inquest how his father had met with a cycling accident some thirty years earlier in which he'd received serious head injuries. Arthur Francis Helby, a fitter, said that as a result his Dad endured severe headaches and he'd only recently returned to the school after a period off work.
On his final day after a restless night, Arthur Helsby Snr. informed his wife Louisa that he "felt poorly and complained of his head being bad". During the day he sat about the house and watched his son repairing his motor vehicle. The family thought that he'd then gone to his room for a rest but at 6pm they received word that Arthur had been struck by a goods train travelling towards St.Helens Junction from Lea Green. Coroner Brighouse added that Helsby was not in a fit state of mind to appreciate that his actions were "wrong in the sight of God and against the law of the land".
The final word on 'Owd Tolly' has to come from Frank Bamber who concludes his chapter on his Sutton Nash schooldays by summing up his thoughts on his former teacher:
He was to my way of thinking an extremely unhappy man, a man who never smiled or broke into happy laughter. He looked on the black side of life, never the bright side. He missed the good things of life, may he find it on the other side. 
(Extracts from 'Clog Clatters of Old Sutton' by Frank Bamber, courtesy of Sutton Historic Society.
St.Helens Reporter extract courtesy St.Helens Local History & Archives Library)
St.Helens Reporter extract courtesy St.Helens Local History & Archives Library)
e) The Rabid Railway Shunter from Herbert Street
One of the most feared conditions of the nineteenth century was rabies. Otherwise known as hydrophobia, distressed rabid or 'mad' dogs would often bite those who they came into contact with and thus pass on the deadly disease. Rapid dogs didn't always foam excessively at the mouth and a boisterous animal could easily be mistaken for an afflicted canine. So panic soon became as big a threat as the contagion itself.On August 6th, 1824 the Liverpool Mercury ran a near-full page editorial with the less than snappy title: 'HYDROPHOBIA, REAL OR IMAGINARY, AND THE MEASURES ADOPTED IN CONSEQUENCE OF THE PREVAILING PANIC'. They wrote that:
The dread of Hydrophobia was never, in our recollection, so prevalent and general as at this time. It appears to have spread simultaneously from one extremity of the kingdom to the other...there is, perhaps, no disease, respecting which so much ignorance prevails as that which is supposed to be communicated by the bite of a rabid animal...the minute details of the sufferings and deaths of persons afflicted with hydrophobia, are so truly terrific. 
Their article claimed that dogs infected with tetanus were being wrongly labelled rabid and the fear was so great that people bitten by a non-infected dog became so hysterical that they would "induce all those frightful symptoms" on themselves. In actual fact the disease, that caused a craving for or fear of water, had a lengthy incubation period in people and the bite wound may long have healed before symptoms of rabies were displayed.
When railway shunter John Campbell of 118, Herbert Street, died an awful death from rabies on August 23rd, 1892, it caused a sensation in Sutton. At his funeral at St.Annes the following Sunday, thousands of Sutton folk lined the streets to pay their respects as his cortege processed to the church for his burial. Roughdale’s brass band led the procession and 200 railway employees attended.
Almost two months earlier, John had been temporarily seconded by the London and North Western Railway Company to work at Preston and whilst in charge of a level crossing, a "strange dog" came up the line, rushed at Campbell and bit him "severely on the cheek"[Liverpool Mercury August 23rd, 1892]
The wound was dressed by a Preston doctor and it appeared to heal. However, a few days before his death Campbell visited Dr. Casey at his surgery in Junction Lane and complained of feeling unwell. An alarmed Casey immediately diagnosed rabies and personally drove Campbell from Sutton to Liverpool Infirmary, where four days later he died in torment. A vaccine had been developed six years earlier by Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux, but Campbell's condition would have been too advanced.
John Campbell left a widow and six young children and there was much sympathy for their plight. On September 13th, 1892 the Mercury reported that a fund had been opened to support them managed by James Lucas, stationmaster at St.Helens Junction and other railway employees.
It wasn’t until 1922 that rabies was eradicated in Britain. Let's hope it never returns to these shores.
f) The Tragic Suicide of Annie Makin
The death of many young women as a result of childbirth and disease, created a dilemma for many nineteenth century fathers. Who would cook and keep house for them and look after their children? Remarriage was the solution for quite a number and some took another wife with almost indecent haste.Hiring domestic servants was an option for widowers, although it was far cheaper to get other female family members to do the work. Initially James Makin hired a domestic servant, Elizabeth Burrows, to be his housekeeper at his home in Hammond Street, Parr after his wife Rachel died in 1881, leaving him with six children to bring up. Makin was only a labourer and despite 'domestics' being poorly paid, he still would have struggled to pay Elizabeth for her services and provide for his three sons and three daughters.
It seems that after moving to 50 Sutton Street at Peasley Cross, then part of Sutton, his eldest daughter Sarah was given the task of running his home. Upon her marriage, the responsibility fell upon Sarah's young sister Ann. By 1890, she was just 15-years-old and was clearly a deeply unhappy child with a lot on her young shoulders. She was expected to cook and keep house for her four siblings and her 45-year-old Dad who had a violent temper. On several occasions during the previous year, Sutton bobby PC Littler had been called to Makin's home by worried neighbours concerned that he was "killing the children" (Liv. Mercury 3/10/1890).
Four days later, Ann was given a severe scolding by her father for letting two friends into the house and giving them currant cakes. So after taking her young brother and sister to school, she went to the Delph where she was seen standing by the water's edge. Witness Joseph Gerrard said she "seemed somewhat strange".
Her father took over two days to report his 15-year-old housekeeper daughter missing and was drunk when he went to the police. By then Ann's hat had been found floating in the waters of the Delph, which was some 30 to 40 feet deep. Ann had tightly pinned her dress to reduce the buoyancy effect and it took several more days before her body could be recovered.
At Ann's inquest held on October 2nd, 1890 at the Griffin Inn, coroner Sam Brighouse was highly critical of Makin's treatment of his daughter. The chemical labourer attempted to defend his behaviour, claiming that he hadn't beaten Ann for "three or four months since". In censuring Makin, the coroner commented that he had other children to bring up and hoped that he would "do better to them than he had to the deceased."
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Sutton Beauty & Heritage's History Pages:
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05) Sutton's Halls & Houses | 06) Dr. Henry Baker Bates
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27) Notorious & Curious Crime | 28) Sutton Tragedy #1
29) Sutton Tragedy #2 | 30) What's Wrong With Sutton?
31) How Sutton Has Changed | 32) Memories of Sutton Part 1
33) Memories of Sutton Part 2 | 34) Memories of Sutton Part 3
35) Memories of Sutton Part 4 | 36) Memories of Sutton Part 5
37) Memories of Sutton Part 6 | 38) Memories of Sutton Part 7
39) Sutton Trivia & True Facts | 40) Clog Clatters in Old Sutton
41) Research Sources, References & Bibliography
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Sutton Beauty & Heritage strives for factual accuracy at all times. Please do also get in touch if you believe that there are any errors, with details of any corrections contained within the site's update history page, which also details the regular updates. Many individuals from all over the world have kindly contributed Sutton information or photographs. If you would like to participate in this project, I would be delighted to hear from you and this website always credits any assistance given. Do also consider contributing any recollections of old Sutton that you might have for the Sutton Memories pages, which are proving very popular. I respond quickly to all emails and if you haven't received a response within 12 hours, please check your junk mail folder or send your message again. Thank you! SRW
