KATHLEEN Muriel Oakes was the daughter of Harry Oakes and resided with her parents at Pool Head Farm, Darnhall. She had been apprenticed to a dressmaker, Mrs Maddocks in High St, and on leaving each day, she would cycle home. On Monday, January 12, 1914, she had left work at about 8pm and set off for home. As usual, she cycled down Woodford Lane, Hebden Lane and into Oakes’s Lane (to give an idea of these locations today – Woodford Lane is split by the dual carriageway and becomes Woodford Lane West, continuing until it reached the junction with Blakeden Lane crossroads, where it joined Blakeden Lane and Oakes’s Lane).
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By Paul Hurley
Murderer Harold Berry lived in Ledward Street, Wharton, pictured here in 1935 LET us start our story today in the office of a moneylender in Manchester in early 1946. With the end of the war, the moneylenders tried to ease the formalities of borrowing. But because of the following story, these more straightforward formalities were rescinded. One of the men employed as a moneylenders manager at the Refuge Lending Society in Walker Street, Manchester, was Bernard Phillips of Meade Hall Road, Prestwich who was 37 years old and married with one child. On January 3, 1946, a man came into the office to apply for a loan; he wanted £60, that would equate today as £2,529.43. He gave the name George Wood, the address he provided was Moss Side Farm in Tarporley and his wife’s name was Jessie.