THERE were no guns, knives or drugs on the streets of St Helens when Joe Jones was a lad.

And by comparison with today's lawless culture, the local criminal classes of pre-war times were just angels with dirty faces.

Those were rather rough-and-tumble times, admits Joe, the Sutton memory man from Irwin Road, but there was often a bit of humour in the kind of petty thievery carried out.

Joe recalls the regular raids on heavily-laden coal wagons parked in railway sidings at the end of Phythian Street.

On one occasion, under cover of darkness, one raider was handing bags of stolen fuel from the wagon top to an accomplice waiting by the track-side.

What he didn't know was that his partner-in-crime had been quietly nabbed and replaced by a plain-clothed policeman. The loudly-protesting pair were whisked away in a Black Maria.

A third member of the raiding party escaped down a network of nearby entries and into his back door.

After a quick 'dab-wash' to remove incriminating coaldust, he had the nerve to fling open his front door to ask the curious, gathering neighbours what all the commotion was about!

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