Vernon’s Pool, 1936
Central Cafe´, Central Station
Looking through all my posts to date, I was somewhat surprised how little emphasis I had placed on the people of Liverpool. The great majority of my photographs were of street scenes and buildings rather than the people who lived in them – so I am making amends this week with a series of images celebrating the lives of working women and their contribution to the economy of the city.
The first photograph is of women working at Vernon’s Pools in 1936. Football pools has started in 1923 when John Moores and two friends handed out 4000 coupons outside Old Trafford. Initially, the business was slow and John Moores bought out his two partners who had lost confidence in the loss-making enterprise. Moores quickly turned Littlewoods round and millions of working people began to spend a few pence each week in what was the only national gambling competition (at that time it was based on agents house-calling rather than by mail). Vernons followed in 1925 – making Liverpool the centre of an industry which employed thousands of women checking the weekly returns.
The February, 1936 press photograph relates to the Football League’s attempt to keep secret football fixtures to crush the pools industry. They were angered that none of the £20 million a year profits were going to the game and had decided that enough was enough. The tactic was impossible to sustain but it did force an agreement whereby a percentage of pools money went to the League. The importance of the pools to the area took a mighty hit in 1994 when the National Lottery was introduced – but the photograph is a reminder of one of the key industries of the city in the twentieth century.
The bottom photograph is of Central Cafe´in Central Station. I guess it was taken in the 1930s. A Mrs Carey was the manageress (seated above the hot-pot sign). With 14 women employed, it must have been a thriving enterprise. It is sad that this kind of photograph is no longer as common as it was. Companies used to take a pride in assembling their workforce for group photographs but that, like the Central Cafe´and Lancashire hot-pots, is a thing of the past.
Mann Island c.1898
Mann Island c.1890
Liverpool’s constant renewal has left the city with a legacy of buildings spanning three centuries. The top photograph can be placed immediately because of the presence of the White Star offices, which opened in 1897. Around it are three of the city’s architectural losses. To the left, are the Goree Piazzas – magnificent early nineteenth century warehouses which were firebombed during the War and then pulled down for road widening. In front of them runs the Liverpool Overhead Railway – opened in 1893 and demolished within a few years of the Goree in 1957/58. The church in the background is St George’s Church in Derby Square (as it is now named), which only just lasted to the end of the nineteenth century before demolition.
The importance of photographic documentation can be seen in the bottom image, which was taken before the Overhead Railway was built. The tower in the centre was the hydraulic tower for James Street Station – again a victim of wartime bombing.
Looking at sites such a YoLiverpool – it is refreshing to see so many photographers are making the effort to record Liverpool’s changing face. Not all photographs are masterpieces but in 20+ years time, a new generation will be grateful for today’s photographers who are so passionate about their city.
Not so popular Poplar Street
Unromantic Valentine Grove
The debate over slum clearance has been well aired over the last fifty years. There are many who believe the wholesale clearance of housing across Liverpool was an unmitigated disaster and that communities would have been best served by careful renovation of run-down properties. On the other side, there is the argument
that the housing stock was in such a poor condition that only demolition and rebuild would be appropriate if living standards were to improve. The residents of Valentine Grove along with their neighbours in equally inappropriately named Venus and Cupid Streets (off Larch Lea) had already departed when the photograph was taken in 1972.(Who thinks up such street names?). In nearby Poplar Street, the inhabitants were prepared to voice their indignation in a graphic and eye-catching way.
Perhaps not the most photogenic images – but such records are an important reminder of what the city was like and the kind of conditions its citizens endured.
Myrtle Gardens, 1969
Boys’ Orphanage, Myrtle Street, 1885
Girls’ Orphanage, Myrtle Street, 1885
The site of Myrtle Gardens has an interesting history as these three previously unpublished photographs show. In 1800, the original Botanic Gardens were sited there before being removed to Edge Lane in 1836. Myrtle Street was a pleasant rural lane but was soon absorbed into the rapidly expanding town. A female ophanage school was commenced in 1843 and opened in November of that year. The boys’ orphanage school was completed in 1854 (at the same time as the Church of Holy Innocents on the same site). The architect was John Cunningham (architect of the Sailors’ Home) and the buildings are in a simple, unpretentious style in keeping with their purpose.
In 1934, the multi-storey Myrtle Garden flats were built on the site (subsequently sold in the 1990s to a private developer for refurbishment into modern apartments and renamed Minster Court). There were, until recently, reminders of the original Botanic Gardens in the street names: Grove, Olive, Almond, Laurel, Mulberry, Peach and Vine Streets. To help with locating the site. here is a 1930s map:
Walton Gaol 1974
Walton Gaol 1930
If a gaol was to be built on your street, you would probably care little for the architecture – you would just want to move to another place. Prisons stir up deep emotions and it is unlikely that one would be built in the heart of a residential community. Nevertheless, there is no reason why prison buildings should not have architectural merit. Architect Charles Peirce and John Weightman, the Corporation Surveyor, realised the need to reassure the community and their castellated Norman fortress (of 1855) certainly suggests military strength. Unfortunately, in remodelling the prison c1974, the outer fortified gatehouse was demolished to make way for an ugly brick bastion topped by a curved metal string course. A shame, from an architectural perspective but I am sure most people would not consider the reshaping of the prison with much sentiment other than that of relief for the additional security provided by the new wall.
Interestingly, it is apparently against the law to take a photograph of any HM Prison. I was stopped from taking a shot of the new exterior wall by a prison officer, who politely asked me to put my camera away.
Who would have believed 50 years ago that there would be no Tate and Lyle in Liverpool and that the company would no longer be in the sugar business? Last week’s news that the sugar business had been sold brings to an end a company history that started in Liverpool in 1859, when Henry Tate became a partner in a small sugar refinery in Manesty’s Lane (just off Hanover Street). My own business career started back in 1973 in a warehouse owned by Tate and Lyle on the site of the original refiners (although the warehouse was built in the 1870s and demolished in the 1980s).
The history of sugar in Liverpool is, I imagine, likely to cause more than a few readers to stifle a yawn – but, pay attention at the back, as teachers used to say in school, it really is an interesting part of the city’s history. Along with tobacco and cotton, the wealth of the city was built on the import of goods from the New World. Sugar had its own spin-offs. The famous Everton toffee mentioned in an earlier post was the fledgling start of a much bigger confectionary industry (Barker and Dobson amongst others) as well as providing the basic ingredient for the massive Hartley’s jam business.
The Love Lane Refinery was completed in 1873 and in its time employed thousands from the surrounding Vauxhall district. Other local refineries such as Farrie’s and Macfie’s could not compete with Tate’s and were absorbed into the sugar empire. Henry Tate, himself, was a benefactor on a significant scale – building the Hahnemann Hospital on Hope Street, providing the funds for Liverpool University’s library block, as well as generous donations to the Royal Infirmary and Liverpool Institute. His biggest gift was to found the Tate Gallery in London – now with its Liverpool offshoot. Ironically, the opening of the Tate Liverpool came only a few years after the closure of Love Lane in that brutal period in the early 1980s which also saw other great names including British American Tobacco pull the plug on their Liverpool bases.
Palatine Club, 1969
Palatine Club, 1864
The Post-War reconstruction (or destruction depending on your point of view) of Liverpool city centre, saw many fine buildings swept away. This fine palazzo at the foot of Bold Street was one. Built in 1854 to the designs of G.O. Parnell, it was painted by William Herdman for his great undertaking, the book Modern Liverpool. The fine chromo-lithograph shows an impressive building with classical detailing built out of shining Bath stone. Herdman (son of WG) was impressed by the building but not by its use – perhaps cocking a snook at the London rich:
The principal building in this view is the Palatine Club House. Club life has never found a congenial atmosphere in Liverpool, which is an arena for busy hands and fertile brains to labour and scheme and thrive in, but affords very small scope for wealthy leisure to expend itself in enjoyment. The habits of life engendered by commercial pursuits are quite unfavourable to the “dolce far niente” (translation pleasant idleness/sweet doing nothing) principle, which is essential to the club lounger.
I remember the building in the mid-1970s. The Press Club were its last tenants if I remember correctly. Why pull down such a good building for the characterless modern shops that replaced it is an almost pointless question? I wish I knew the reasoning behind such wanton destruction. On a totally unrelated point, note the hand-drawn milk float further down the street.
I was reliably told by a member of English Heritage some years back that there were about 30 equestrian statues (i.e statues with someone on them) in Britain. I have forgotten the exact number (33 springs to mind) and an internet search has been of little help. Liverpool has four of them (Victoria and Albert on St George’s Plateau/King Edward VII at Pier Head and George III outside TJ Hughes on London Road).
Now we have another statue of a horse (although without a rider) down at Mann Island (to be revealed once the new Museum of Liverpool is opened. This one is in tribute to the role the working horse (and carter) played in the vital transporting of goods to and from the docks. Today’s photograph celebrates their contribution and looks as if it was taken in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Once a familiar sight, their days were numbered as motorised transport took over their role.
As for the statue, I have only seen press photos so far – so I will have to reserve my judgement until I see it in situ. I hope it is better than many of the recent ’school of realism’ efforts that have sprung up over recent years. It is interesting that the two most popular sculptures (Superlambananas and Antony Gormley’s Other Place) are far more abstract in concept than the literalism of most of the others. Perhaps an indication to those who commission art that people are more adventurous than they are given credit for.
While researching yesterday’s post about Squeaking Jimmy, I dug out my copies of Horne and Maund’s seminal five book series Liverpool Transport. A lifetime’s work – these are often described as books for ‘anoraks’ by those with only a passing interest in transport. To me, they belong to a fine tradition of writing about Liverpool that I believe is unrivalled in any other city.
Over the last 40+ years, the number of books keeps rising, including many seminal works such as Quentin Hughes’s Seaport – which had a profound effect on all who read it – and the Pevner series, recently brilliantly revised in two volumes by Richard Pollard and Joseph Sharples. There have been many other important books – including English Heritage’s six volume series published for Capital of Culture Year. I have published approaching 200 titles as Bluecoat Press and yet I have turned down five times as many because there is a limit to what I can do. The result of all this effort is a deep awareness of the Liverpool’s rich history – quite astonishing for such a ‘young’ city. Go to Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds or any other city and you will find nothing like the same breadth or depth of titles. Sadly, I see the number of books being published rapidly slowing down – after all, there are only two major bookshops (both Waterstones) in the city centre and little else outside. The internet is obviously a superb source of information but it is difficult to replicate the structure of a physical book (although ebooks will soon take on this function).
Publishing is at an interesting crossroads and I hope my blog helps in the transition from paper to digital. Today’s photographs are a case in point – two previously unpublished images of market life in the 1890s. Both are captioned Back o’ the Market and bear close similarities to Inston’s work. This is life in the raw as hawkers try to make a few pennies from selling rags, broken crockery or whatever else can make them a few coppers.
My apologies for the short break – and also for the quality of today’s photograph, an 1890s lantern slide which has deteriorated over the years. Nevertheless, it is a great image of street life taken with a hand-held camera. In my book on Charles Frederick Inston, I outlined the way in which camera technology became more portable and film became faster and easier to use once roll-film came into use. Naturally this changed the way photographers worked and candid street photography became a fashion that was reflected in the competition categories amongst amateur photographic societies. Within a short period of time, photography shifted from being a rich man’s pursuit to a popular medium within the pockets of working men and women.
The photograph is captioned Squeaking Jimmy, Church Street. The building in the background is Russell’s Building, which was bombed during the War and later replaced by Littlewoods (now Primark). As for Squeaking Jimmy – I can only guess that he was selling those little toy whistles that imitate bird noises or something similar – unless there is a more sinister interpretation to his name.
