SEED merchant Charlie Kinns was considered quite a toff in his hey-day.

Always immaculately dressed, his military-style moustache neatly waxed, a trademark stetson-style hat on his head and a freshly-cut flower in his button-hole.

"Oh, yes, he was regarded as being extremely posh!" recalls pensioner Phil Reid.

"In summer there'd be a rosebud in his lapel, and in winter a tiny chrysanthemum," recalls Phil, in picking up on an earlier brief mention on this page of the legendary St Helens businessman from pre-war times.

Even when there was snow on the ground, Charlie, a tall elegant personality, would be seen parading around town sporting that inevitable floral button-hole.

Arguably the best known businessman in St Helens of his era, Charlie's trade motto was 'You know me . . . I sell seeds!' and it was well known enough to be recited even by young urchins from around the district.

Recalls Phil: "He also owned a big lodging house at the bottom of Mount Street in the old Greenbank area where the rough-and-ready locals respected him and treated him like one of their own."

A businessman of many parts, Charlie also found time to deal in cars.

Another outsized personality from those bygone times was May Bonney who kept a sweets and cake shop at the top of Liverpool Road, in the heart of St Helens.

"She was noted for her penny bags of broken pear-drops and rosebud sweets," Phil remembers. It was a time when 'cut apples' could be obtained at knock-down prices - and the enterprising Charlie was among the vendors.

"You got about six in a bag for a penny," says Phil, in explaining that these were apples with the 'bruises' sliced out of them. Tripping further down Memory Lane, Phil says: "I wonder how many can remember the oil-cloth carriers at the old open market, behind where the Nelson Hotel stands in Bridge Street."

They were a feature of the brisk Saturday trading scene. "People would buy a roll of oil-cloth, and youths and men would be in line to carry it home on their shoulders."

It was a weighty burden and the fee might be ten bob (50p) for carrying it to homes as far away as two or three miles.

People used to hang about until 4.30pm outside Marr's the fish merchants. As closing time approached "you would get a ton of fish for two shillings," says Phil. "But if you didn't get it home quick, you might be pursued by packs of stray cats!"

Another fondly-remembered St Helens character was Beattie Rainford, the herbalist from Tontine Street. "For a few coppers she would make up a bottle for the 'flu or various aches and pains," declares Phil. "And believe me, whatever she produced would work."

Some of her regular customers swore that Beattie's potions would raise the dead!

Dickie Glover is another plucked from Phil's past. The former Saints idol was perhaps even better known for his meat 'n' tater pies, soaked in brown sauce, as for his rugby prowess.

As a sporty Greenbanker, Phil had a passion for the handling game and had the distinction of being sent off twice in one schoolboy game.

After his younger brother was clobbered playing a match for Sacred Heart, Phil ran across the pitch and flattened the offender. A sharp blast on the whistle of the referee, little Tommy Tucker, accompanied Phil's departure.

But as the game progressed, Phil's teacher smuggled him back on to the pitch, demanding that he have a good clean game and pleading with his fiery little player: "Please, for my sake, don't hit the referee!"

Phil complied . . . "but believe it or not, I did get sent off again, and this time for nowt!"

WELL, that's Phil's tale - and he's sticking to it!

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