EVERYONE in town knew Hatton's butchery stall in the old St Helens covered market. After all, it was one of the longest-established businesses in town, tracing its origins to 1854.

And the old-time customers who crowded into that iron-pillared market (known as The Shambles) were also very familiar with the knife-wielding antics of Annie Hatton, left to run the business when her brothers, William and Joseph, went to France to serve in the first world war.

As robust as any man, Annie managed to lose two fingers in her meat-slicing role. And, says reader Mary Hatton, 76-year-old widow of the last member of the butchery family, sister Annie ran that stall with a rod of iron.

Mary, from Eton Way, Orrell, explains that when customers, standing in front of the stall, made any attempt to touch the meat, Annie would slap their hands with the flat of her butcher's knife.

She was a well-known character in those harsh but happy days," says Mary who added me that her late husband, William, would have been pleased to read my recent article about the old, sadly-vanished Shambles.

The Hatton family moved to St Helens 144 years ago from Daresbury, near Warrington, opening their first shop on Church Street, close to Woolworths. They also kept the end stall in the Shambles and Mary has forwarded a 1982 cutting from my page showing the market place in all its Victorian glory.

And she provides another distant memory-tweaker in recalling the large iron lamp-post which was situated in the middle of Church Street, St Helens. Beneath it sat the legendary cockle lady. She sold her shell-fish wares from a large wicker basket . . . "one of the characters who made the old St Helens what it was."

A Yorkshire reader also picks up on the Shambles theme. And she provides positive identification of the white-aproned assistant, prominently featured outside one of the stalls in my flashback photo.

Several readers had guessed that this was a Lennons manager manager named Murphy. But Mrs J. Barron of Pudsey, insists that it was one of Murphy's assistants, Tom Tully, who lived in Parr and worked at the stall until he was called up during the 1939-45 war.

"The last time I saw Tom he was home on leave from Dunkirk. His hearing had been affected by gun-blast."

Mrs B worked in Lennons office, Corporation Street, between 1940 and 1942. "Along with all their St Helens shops, they also owned branches in Knotty Ash, Old Swan, Ormskirk, Leigh, Runcorn and Warrington - but the jewel in the crown was Stringfellows in the town centre."

A business empire, indeed!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.