In a court case from The Salford City Reporter 100 years ago this month we came across a story of child neglect so shocking that it almost beggars belief.
It is shocking to read that a father could not only treat his children so appallingly but also allow them to live in the most squalid housing conditions imaginable.
James Nicholls, who lived at Park Place, a notorious street off Cross Lane, which was infamous for its cheap lodging houses, appeared before Salford Magistrates Court charged with neglecting his four children and allowing them to beg for money.
The court heard that the National Society For Prevention Of Cruelty to Children had Mr Nicholls under observation for some time after receiving reports from neighbours about the condition of the children.
His wife was in jail for theft and two of his children had been arrested for begging in the streets.
Detective Ernest Smith told the court that he had visited the house on 25 August and found the defendant in bed, two of the younger children were in a filthy condition with neither shoes and stockings but more alarmingly they were alive with vermin and had to be taken to the workhouse to be deloused and fed.
There were two beds in the top room and the bedclothes were described as being black with filth, also there was no food in the house with the room so disgusting it was almost beyond description.
The NSPCC and the Salford police force paid a return visit to the premises on 31 August and found the condition of the remaining children and the house had got worse, if that was possible.
The two remaining girls, Phyllis and Emily, were found to have no shoes or socks and were also covered in vermin.
When questioned at the house Mr Nicholls said that he had bad legs and couldn’t work, and that it wasn’t his fault, adding that his children didn’t need to beg as looked after them.
He was arrested and appeared at Salford Magistrates Court and the full story unfolded.
Inspector Rivers from the NSPCC told the court that Nicholls was “the laziest man he had ever met”, he was too lazy to wash or get undressed and “even too lazy to speak”.
Nicholls was a fitter by trade and was capable of earning between £2-£3 a week, which was enough to feed his family and himself, but refused to work claiming that he suffered from bad legs and had to “take to his bed a lot”.
Oswald Pollitt, Superintendent of The Children’s Shelter on Chatham Street in Manchester, told the court that when the two boys aged eight and five were brought to the shelter by Detective Smith he found them to be in a dirty and verminous state, there was “even more vermin in the clothing than cloth itself”.
It took him and his wife two hours to cleanse the boys and delouse them, the rags of clothing so badly contaminated that they had to be stripped off and burned.
The boys had to have their hair closely cropped to deal with teeming lice, and marks were also found on the boys’ backs where the vermin had eaten into their flesh.
After they were washed and fed it was reported that the boys “had improved wonderfully and didn’t seem like the same children”.
The Chairman of the Bench, Mr Ockins, told Nicholls that his conduct had been “disgraceful” with the case presenting “many horrible aspects”.
Simply through his laziness he had allowed his children to get into this neglected and verminous condition while he was too shiftless and indolent to find gainful employment.
He then sentenced Nicholls to six months imprisonment with hard labour.
The mind boggles at how anybody could allow their children to live in such squalid conditions, all because they were to lazy to work.
I do hope that the four Nicholls children went on to have, happier and healthy lives away from Park Place, surely anything would have been better than those squalid conditions which they had to endure.
