WHEN you walk through the streets and parks of St Helens today, it’s hard to imagine that it used to be considered a dirty, stinking town, writes Stephen Wainwright in the first part of a special article he has put together for Coffey Time.

The renowned poet Matthew Arnold even went so far as to call our Lancastrian home a “hell-hole”. During the Victorian years newspapers queued up to rubbish St Helens, describing it as “grimy”, “repugnant” and “dreary”. By the end of the 19th century, the town had developed a dreadful reputation, although not all of it was deserved.

Many of the problems were caused by factories, especially the numerous alkali plants. In an 1876 article describing the opening of St Helens Town Hall, the Liverpool Daily Post said the “only thing remarkable about the town, as probably everyone knows, is its smoky atmosphere”. Twenty years later a magazine article on the chemical industries described how foul gases “belched forth night and day”.

Undercover journalist Robert Sherard claimed in his piece – called The White Slaves of England – that pollution killed trees and grass for miles around. This was probably a bit of an exaggeration as new parks were being opened in St Helens. Plus the geographical spread of the town meant that pollution would likely have been in patches and be dependent on the weather.

However, three years later the Coventry Evening Telegraph described St Helens as that “far from salubrious town where they manufacture chemicals and provide odours innumerable. It is a busy place, St Helens, but distance lends attraction to the view – and the scents”.

In May of 1899 a massive explosion at Kurtz alkali works killed five men and decimated part of Peasley Cross. It also caused more damage to the reputation of St Helens. The Glasgow Herald claimed that on the day after the disaster, rain had exaggerated the “normal squalor of the district”. Months later a Worcester paper said St Helens was “the town for pills and explosions”, as if factories blew up as often as Beecham’s made a pill.

Then the Pall Mall Gazette had a pop, describing its “unloveliness” and “dreary, monotonous streets”, adding that six parishes couldn’t get curates through the explosion's bad publicity. When Sir David Gamble’s daughter Grace got married in 1899, a journalist painted a vivid picture of the matrimonial event of the season. However he couldn’t help mentioning how St Helens’s first mayor had spent his life living in the “grimy town”.

Rapid expansion during the 19th century was the root cause of pollution. Between 1801 and 1891 the population had grown ten-fold, as more and more workers were needed by factories and pits. As the works expanded, so the dozens of industrial chimneys that dotted the skyline increased.

These generated terrible smells that often hung over the town and were especially bad on still or foggy days. Plus the growing workforce needed more houses, leading to more smoky coal fires.

Next week: How the town tried to heal its reputation.

Stephen Wainwright publishes the websites Sutton Beauty & Heritage, George Groves The Movie Sound Pioneer & Herbert Mundin the Hollywood Scene Stealer.