IN the first half of his special feature last week Stephen Wainwright explained how St Helens' vast industry meant it was considered a dirty, stinking place in the 19th century, here, in the second instalment he focuses on how the town tried to heal its reputation.

Regulators struggled to keep up, although by the 1890s the town had made great strides in cleaning up its act.

Efforts had begun during the 1840s when an Improvement Commission was created and they were boosted when the town was made a borough in 1868 and granted more powers.

These were badly needed as four years earlier it had been reported that most of the agricultural land in the outlying areas of Parr, Sutton, Burtonwood and Bold was becoming unproductive. This was blamed on the vapours emitted by St Helens copper and chemical industries damaging vegetation and crops.

Farmers often took polluters to court for compensation and sometimes the authorities prosecuted too. In March 1884 the Bold Manure Works found themselves in court for “causing a nuisance injurious to the health of the inhabitants”. It was claimed people had been vomiting because of the shocking smell.

During the 1880s Dr Robert McNichol, the Medical Officer for St Helens, campaigned for improved air quality and was especially critical of the heaps of alkali waste.

Not only did they emit toxic gases but they were allowed to drain into the town’s brooks where they met acid waste. Progress was slow as the prevailing view was that some pollution of the air was only to be expected in a manufacturing town like St Helens.

However a five minute black smoke limit for works’ chimneys was introduced and a government inspector investigated the worst smells. These and other measures, such as improved sanitation, helped to make life better.

However its reputation took much longer to heal. Matthew Arnold’s ‘hellhole’ jibe from1880 was often repeated by newspapers, despite the fact that he was actually referring to a lack of social matters in our town.

By 1914 the smoke nuisance was on the decline and a Liverpool paper advised its readers that: “What was once a repugnant desert of mere bricks, mortar, and waste heaps is now beginning to blossom as the rose".

The growth of parks and bowling greens were helping to boost the town’s reputation. An author argued that the town had been so rubbished in the past that it would need much advertising for the “really intrinsic beauty of its character” to be accepted. In the article entitled ‘A Maligned Town – St Helens as a Holiday Resort’, the author listed the town’s many attractions, concluding that St Helens was a “wonderful place”.

Although there had been many improvements there was much to do. In 1925 the government’s Atmospheric Pollution Committee listed St Helens as the 7th sootiest place in Britain.

Then there was the so-called ‘Stinky Brook’ that fed the St Helens Canal and which was a dumping ground for factory waste. It took many more years to make that clean.

However the departure of the chemical industries from St Helens during the inter-war years was a huge boon for the environment and the borough’s reputation for being a dirty, stinking town began to become a thing of the past.

Just how many people have since chosen St Helens as a holiday resort, is though another matter.