The courts and back streets of Liverpool’s slums were private places where few outsiders ventured. In 1856, the journalist Hugh Shimmin railed against ‘the old, dilapidated courthouses, with their fetid air and small squalid rooms’ which ’still form the only dwellings which are supposed to be within the means of the labouring and casually employed poor … the Liverpool courts present scenes of social degredation and misery which it will be almost hopeless to induce people who have no practical acquaintances with the habits of the people to believe.’
Photographers tended to avoid the slums, probably with good reason. The hand-held camera allowed some anonymity, but most amateurs stuck to the street scenes around Pier Head and St John’s Market. You will not find Ben Jonson Street (rather inappropriately named after the dramatist and poet contemporary of Shakespeare) in Gore’s Directory because it is not listed (along with all the other surrounding courts and backstreets. The population was so numerous and transient that there was little value adding the current occupants to its list). This view of the street (which connected Comus Street and Scotland Road) is particularly interesting in that the raised viewpoint has captured a candid scene that contrasts with the later photographs of the City Engineer’s Department where a plate camera was used at street level. My immediate thought is that the photographer is sitting on the upper deck of an omnibus as it passed along Scotland Road.
The doss-house with its sign ‘good accomodation for travellers’ (sic) reminds me of the ubiquitous sign outside public houses offering good food and fine ales. When did you ever see a sign offering bad food or bad accommodation? The thought of a night in such a place does not bear thinking about.
Photograph courtesy of Liverpool Record Office.
I have written extensively about the lost buildings of Liverpool but today’s blog is about another lost institution – that of good journalism. If we are to judge a period in history by its newspapers then today’s sad offerings would be an interesting pointer. Both Liverpool Echo and Daily Post seem to have finally abandoned the kind of reporting that was once the hallmark of the best provincial papers. The old adage about today’s paper being tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper could not be more apt (even if they no longer use newpapers for that purpose). Looking back at a golden age of jounalism, I was taken by an 1889 article in the Liverpool Review captioned Eight Hours on the Landing Stage.
During the summer months, the Landing Stage is seen at its best from midday until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. Through the intervening hours, the bridges and approaches are thronged with continuous streams of people on pleasure bent. The greater number of this day-by-day procession are trippers from inland towns, to whom a look at the Mersey and the ships is next to a peep at heaven, and our own Liverpudlian mammas who, when father, dear old struggle, is toiling over his desk, or dodging six months’ bills, take upon themselves the pleasurable duty of giving the children an airing.
Arrived on the Landing Stage, the half-dozen streams of health-hunting holiday seekers converge towards the ferry boats, those plying to Egremont and New Brighton getting the bulk of the passengers. Going down the gangway on to the boats there is, as a matter of course, a good deal of clinging to mamma’s jacket or dress, and a chorus of maternal voices, while a score of maternal eyes anxiously look round, call out, “Now, Charlie, mind where you are going!” “Are you behind me, Cissie?” and a dozen other directions besides.
… Of the boatsmen and hangers-on who dawdle about the Landing Stage from early morn to dewy eve, I can tell you nothing that is not well known; the boatsmen dawdle about for jobs, the hangers-on dawdle, dawdle, dawdle for anything gratis from a copper to a quid of tobacco. The hangers-on who really contrive to enjoy themselves are the hatless, bare-footed, ragged urchins, whose sole ambition in life appears to be to live with dirty, crust hands and face and dodge around policemen. They are remarkably expert at the latter amusement, and on the Landing Stage live in an Elysium of laughter, horse-play and dodgery. PC No. _ and a few others know this to their cost. I must admit that I like these young ragamuffins ‘baiting’ and so do the bystanders.
If only today’s Echo or Daily Post could rustle up such meaningful accounts – but that would be running against the grain of contemporary editorial requirements.
Liverpool has made an invaluable contribution to the cause of dentistry through two of its great industries: tobacco and confectionary. They both have a long history, although little remains of either. Liverpool as a major importer of sugar was well placed to benefit from the spin-offs and, in the late eighteenth century, an Everton woman, Molly Bushell, decided to increase her income by using recipes from her local doctor to make toffee.
The business boomed and others started up in competition, including Mary Cooper in 1810. Trading from a cottage in Browside, her Everton toffee achieved national fame. In a local rhyme of the time:
Everton Toffee! Ever dear to lass and lad:
More certain cure than balm of Gilead.
Come friends, come buy – your pennies give.
While you keep sucking you’ll be sure to live!
Balm of Gilead referred to ‘cures’ of snake-oil salesman, Dr Solomon of Liverpool, who made a fortune out of his patent medicines. At least toffees gave a burst of welcome glucose!
The memory of this small local industry lives on in the nickname of Everton Football Club. I am not sure when the cottages on Browside disappeared although I have seen a late nineteenth century photograph of them in disrepair. The photograph above was probably taken in the 1880s. The style of cottage was very much the original vernacular Lancashire style, that was gradually replaced by Georgian and, later, Victorian terraces.
I am not going to make a habit of quoting chunks of poetry but I have taken a few lines from one of America’s favourite poets to make a more eloquent description on this Francis Frith photograph (c1875) than I could ever write. Whitman never left American shores, as far as I know, but his poem, written in 1865 could not have been more apt for this view of the Liverpool waterfront:
City of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful sharp bow’d steam ships and sail ships!)
City of the world! (for all races are here,
All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides! City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede,
whirling in and out with eddies and foam!
City of wharves and stores – city of tall facades of marble and iron!
Proud and passionate city – mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
There cannot be many pubs in Liverpool named in honour of their landlord/landlady. Peter Kavanagh’s on Egerton Street is one and Ma Egerton’s on Pudsey Street is another. Dublin-born Mary Egerton came to Liverpool in the 1890s and managed the American Bar in Lime Street before taking over The Eagle in Pudsey Street, behind the Empire Theatre. Her bar became the favourite haunt of performers and she became friends with many, including Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and, later, Judy Garland.
One of her claims to fame is that her observation led to the arrest of the infamous Dr Crippen. But first to the photographs. The bottom image is of an older Ma enjoying the company of visiting sailors. The top photograph is of her in the company of visiting performers including her friend Marie Lloyd (seated with a black dress with pearls, Ma is standing next to her). Marie was a superstar of her time, a bawdy singer whose use of double-entendre thrilled audiences yet shocked the moralists. A typical song line ‘I sits among the cabbages and peas’ outraged her critics – so she agreed to change the line to ‘I sits among the cabbages and leeks’ to even greater audience approval. A strong supporter of workers’ rights, she was at the forefront of a strike by theatre workers for better pay. Picketing outside a London theatre, her attention was drawn to a young actress, Belle Elmore, crossing the strike line. ‘Don’t worry about her – she will empty the theatres faster than us’ Marie shouted .. and here the story of the top photograph unfolds.
Belle Elmore was married to Dr Crippen and less than three years later was murdered and dismembered by her husband, who took up with his lover, Ethel le Neve. At some point after the murder, Ma Egerton visited London, where she came across Crippen, who was an old friend. She noticed that le Neve was wearing Belle’s jewellery and, her suspicions aroused, contacted the police. Crippen realised that he was under threat of being exposed, fled to Belgium with le Neve, where they boarded SS Montrose which was bound for Canada. To cover their tracks, le Neve dressed as a young man. Unfortunately for the pair, the SS Montrose was one of the first ships to have the newly invented Marconi wireless installed and the ship’s captain, suspicious of the couple who were seen holding hands, contacted his base, who in turn called in Scotland Yard. Crippen was arrested on arrival and returned to Britain where he was tried and hanged. So there is a bit of criminal history in one photograph (and one overlong blog).
I used to go to a lot of auctions in the 1970s. It was a great time to buy, Victoriana was out of fashion and the auction houses were full of huge sideboards, mahogany table, wardrobes and other effects that were being cleared out of the mansions as a generation passed away. I was particularly interested in books, which you could buy by the shelf (for less than a £1 usually). Sadly, to my lasting regret, I wasn’t looking for photographs at that time although, when I did show some interest in the early 1980s, I could still pick up 5 or 6 albums for a few pounds. They were usually full of topographical views, many from around the world, taken by professional photographers to sell to the tourist market. Every now and then, I would pick up a collection with Liverpool interest including a family album, taken in 1910 and 1911, which included these two photographs of a day out at New Brighton. I know my blog is about Liverpool but New Brighton was so much a part of people’s lives that I will make an exception. For many people, it was as near to a holiday that they got and must have been an amazing place on a hot summers day.
When I started this blog, my aim was to illustrate how photography had recorded Liverpool over the past 150 years. Wherever possible, I have been posting previously unseen images that add to the already large number of Liverpool photographs in circulation. My collection is obviously privately owned but I believe there is a responsibility to make it public, rather than hide it away unseen. Our interpretation of history is very much dependent on primary sources of information being made available and photography is an indispensible tool for all local historians.
This is nowhere more evident than in the photographs I have posted today. The desperate poverty shown in the first photograph (taken off Scotland Road by N. Steven in the early 1890s) compares dramatically with the second photograph, taken from one of the Earle family albums, of their relatives, the Swinburnes in about 1870. Admiral Charles Swinburne is photographed with his wife and three daughters, all dressed in their finest outfits – a total contrast to the rags and barefeet of the three girls. As the saying goes … a picture is worth a thousand words.
Which Liverpool-born person had the greatest effect on the world? The Beatles must be candidates, having launched a cultural revolution that still resonates fifty years on. From the nineteenth century, we have William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), four times Prime Minister and champion of Home Rule for Ireland. From the generation before, we have William Roscoe (1753-1831), a self-made banker and anti-slavery campaigner, whose love of the Italian Renaissance and the Medici’s city state of Florence defined the concept of the modern civic role of encouraging the growth of a cultural community in which merchants’ wealth was not an end in itself but the means to enlightenment.
What is remarkable about all of these is that their homes are still part of the city’s fabric. However, one of the most influential of all Liverpudlians is not honoured at all and all traces of his birthplace have long been obliterated.
Robert Morris (1734-1806) was born into poverty in Chorley Court, which was at the foot of Dale Street by the Queensway Tunnel entrance. At the age of 13, he left for America, helping out on his father’s tobacco farm. By the age of 18, he was a banker/shipping merchant in Philadelphia. Rapidly acquiring wealth, he put his weight behind the fight for independence from Britain, effectively bankrolling George Washington’s army. Responsible for establishing the financial and banking systems of the newly independent country, Morris was one of only two people to sign the three significant founding documents of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution.
Perhaps because of our ambivalent relationship with the USA, Liverpool failed to recognise the significance of Chorley Court and it was pulled down in the early 1930s to make way for the Blackburn Assurance building (later Stanley Leisure).
In my post of February 9th., I listed some of the fine churches that had disappeared. Many were demolished for housing or other developments but quite a number succumbed to vandalism and fire. Whether the destruction of St Catherine’s Church in Abercromby Square was vandalism or redevelopment is a matter of opinion. The whole integrity of the square was quite incredibly broken up by no less a body than the University of Liverpool in their drive for expansion. Street after street of Georgian housing was removed to allow for their vision of a modern campus and John Foster’s classical church of 1829 unfortunately stood in the way. At least until 1966, when it was reduced to a pile of rubble.
The Church of St Chrysostom might strike a chord with those familiar with Liverpool churches. The church of St John the Divine in Fairfield (its prominent steeple is a landmark as you travel along Edge Lane) was by the same, somewhat eccentric architect, W. Raffles Brown. His rather peculiar take on Gothic was regarded as muddled and inaccurate by The Ecclesiologist but W Herdman, at least, was impressed enough to include it his magnificent volume Modern Liverpool, writing that, ‘when we look back forty or fifty years, and see the enormous cost of such abortions at St Mark’s, St Mary’s, Edghe Hill, St Anne’s and others and compare the results with the neat elegance as the one before us at a cost very much less, it must be admitted that some advance has been made in the essentials of church architecture.’ A familiar story of changing tastes over a couple of generations. Built in 1853, St Chrysostom, which stood in Audley Street, Everton, was destroyed by fire in 1972.
In 1973, I spent the summer working in a warehouse in Manesty’s Lane, off Hanover Street. I was fortunate to grab a last view of the interior of the Sailors’ Home (see earlier post). It was a sad sight; abandoned and neglected, waiting for demolition. The building had been deemed a serious risk under the strict fire regulations, which insisted on a thirty minute fire safety limit between floors of a building. This was understandable after the horrendous fire at Henderson’s store in 1960 in nearby Church Street, in which eleven people lost their lives. Fire regulations were tightened up but the Sailors’ Home was an open void and any attempt to fire-proof it would have posed an intolerable financial burden for a building that no longer served its original function. At the same time, the plot was sold in anticipation of a government department relocating to Liverpool. That did not materialise but demolition had already been completed and the end result was a hole in the ground for the next thirty years. Here, for the record, are two interior photographs of what was lost.