EIGHTY years ago this month the people of St Helens were welcoming the news that the wartime blackout on the town's streets was coming to an end.

The likelihood of further German bombing was considered so low that the authorities felt the severe lighting restrictions imposed five years before could be eased.

The blackout was being replaced by what was described as a "dim-out" – minimal lighting not much brighter than moonlight.

It had been on September 1 1939, two days before the outbreak of war, when the blackout had been introduced.

But St Helens was not caught on the hop having participated in a large-scale practice blackout in May of that year. That led to councillors and officials standing on Eccleston Hill at 1am in the pouring rain trying to work out where a rogue light was coming from.

"The fellow who invented aeroplanes is responsible for all this," complained a member of the council to a St Helens Newspaper reporter. "If anyone had told me twelve months ago that I would be standing here at this hour taking part in a guessing competition I'd have said he was crazy."

Immediately the real blackout was introduced a number of accidents were reported with elderly people particularly prone to being knocked down in the dark.

Speaking later in 1939 at the inquest on a Peasley Cross man run over by a trolley bus while searching for a lost torch, Coroner Cornelius Bolton said: "This is another inquest on a person who ought not to have been killed. I cannot understand the mentality of anybody who goes groping about the middle of the road in the blackout."

There were many prosecutions for breaching the blackout but some young people enjoyed the dark nights, particularly courting couples!

Although the "tomfool" lads that had fun in the dark at the expense of young women led the St Helens Reporter to write this scathing critique on December 1 1939: "Tomfoolery in the streets of the town has been rife since war caused all lights to be extinguished after dark and, though I hesitate to say it, youths and girls of the borough seem to have intensified their parades and agreed upon certain spots where there is certain to be a crowd on any really dark night, and where no one can pass without being cannoned into the accompaniment of screams and shouts.

"I know of several ladies who, on “peak nights,” find it impossible to pass those places without being bumped off the footpath or caught by the arm by youths whose faces are indistinguishable, but whose strident voices can be heard in offensive guffaws."

The revised lighting system that was introduced in September 1944 involved an adjustment to a black shield on each street lamp and during the evening of Monday 11th a successful experiment was conducted in Claughton Street, Sefton Place and on part of Duke Street.

Although households would need to wait until September 19 before they could take down their blackout curtains, the street lighting could be amended straightaway. And so it was decided to start the time-consuming task of modifying each lamp.

Some towns had a master switch to control all their streetlights. But St Helens with its mix of electric and gas lamps did not have that luxury.

However, Victoria Square, Church Street and Sefton Place were temporarily connected to a central control and full peacetime lighting was imposed.

The idea was that in the unlikely event of an air raid this lighting could be extinguished at the flick of a switch.

By the end of September much of the town had light again, although caution remained the watchword with the normal lighting of streets not restored until April 1945.

Stephen Wainwright's latest book The Hidden History Of St Helens Vol 4 is available from the St Helens Book Stop and online from eBay and Amazon with free delivery. Price £12. Vols 1 to 3 are also still available.