Chapter I: Front Matter

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 50152-h.htm or 50152-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/50152/pg50152-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50152/50152-h.zip)

Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/liverpool1907scot

Transcriber’s note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).

Words in small capitals are shown in UPPER CASE.

The page numbers in the “List of Illustrations” refer to
the original positions of the plates in the book.

LIVERPOOL

* * * * * *

IN THE SAME SERIES

EACH CONTAINING 24 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR

EACH =6s.= NET

DEVON--NORTH DEVON--SOUTH IRELAND JAMAICA THE UPPER ENGADINE NORWEGIAN FJORDS PARIS

PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

AGENTS

AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
27 RICHMOND STREET WEST, TORONTO

INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA

* * * * * *

LIVERPOOL

Painted by

J. HAMILTON HAY

Described by

DIXON SCOTT

With 25 Full Page Illustrations in Colour

London Adam and Charles Black 1907

Published August, 1907

TO MY NEPHEW OR NIECE

WRITER’S NOTE

Neither guide-book nor history nor commercial estimate, this Book merely attempts the much less laborious task of handing on the instant effect produced by that active, tangible quantity, the Liverpool of the present day; and its Writer has therefore been forced to rely, almost as completely as its Illustrator, upon the private reports of his own senses rather than upon the books and testimonies of other people. None the less he has managed to incur a little sheaf of debts, and these, although he is unable to repay, he is anxious at least to acknowledge. By far the greatest measure of his gratitude is due, not for the first time, to his friend Mr. John Macleay--lacking whose suggestion the Book would never have been begun--lacking whose counsel it would, when finished, have been even less adequate than it now remains; but he desires as well to offer his especial thanks to Professor Ramsay Muir, who generously permitted him to read certain chapters of the recently published “History of Liverpool” in proof; to Dr. E. W. Hope, Liverpool’s Medical Officer of Health, for courteous responses to various inquiries; to Mr. G. T. Shaw (of the Liverpool Athenæum), Mr. A. Chandler (of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board), Mr. H. Lee Jones, Mr. T. Alwyn Lloyd, and Mr. William Postlethwaite, all of whom have provisioned him with much more information than he has found it possible to use. To them, and to all those other creditors whose names have not been mentioned but who may be equally inclined to deplore the waste of good material, he would protest that their assistance might have had a more commensurate practical result if only they could have persuaded those implacable niggards, space and time, to imitate their eager liberality.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE RIVER

PAGE
Its dominion over the City--The historical result--Liverpool
and the nineteenth century--Youth and age--Liverpool’s dual
paradox--The River as reconciler--Its physical influence--Its
psychological--As a maker of pageants--The traveller’s report 1

CHAPTER II

THE DOCKS

Liverpool’s distribution--The great fan--Ramparts--The
seven-mile sequence--Unhuman romance--Loot of
cities--Labyrinthine effort--Efficiency--The key to the
labyrinth--A relic--Brown and blue--The new drama--A river
progress--Advents--The Landing-Stage--Arrivals and
departures--The bridges from New York to London 22

CHAPTER III

THE CITY

The problem--A bunch of street portraits--Lord Street, North
John Street, Whitechapel, Stanley Street--Bold Street,
Brunswick Street, Victoria Street--The four vestibules--Lime
Street, Church Street, Tithebarn Street, the River-side
terrace--Episodes and intermediaries--The general
interpretation--The stage manager--Typical
actresses--And actors--The Sunday quietude--Bank holiday
incursions--The City at night 43

CHAPTER IV

THE SUBURBS

Rejuvenation--Car influences--Sociabilities and
processes--Seaforth to Southport--Bootle’s
independence--The universal trend--Damocles and
Litherland--Walton’s tragedy--The Grand
National--Everton--Squeezed Dye-wood--From Anfield to the
South--The two spinsters--Liverpool’s Bloomsbury--The outer
curve--Cabbage Hall to Mossley Hill--Sefton
Park--Garston to the centre--Dingle and melodrama--The
cross-river cubicles--Bidston Hill 93