Recollections of a Busy Life: Being the Reminiscences of a Liverpool Merchant 1840-1910

The principal events which dwell in my memory as having taken place at this time are the Fancy Fair held in the Prince's Park, in aid of our local charities, a very brilliant affair; and the opening of the great exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. It was a matter of grave consideration with my parents if I was of sufficient age to appreciate the exhibition, but in the end I was allowed to go to London; and I can only say, for the benefit of all youngsters of 10 and 11 years, that I greatly enjoyed that magnificent display, and it produced a lasting impression upon my mind. I recall at this day every detail. The wonderful show of machinery impressed me most, but the weaving of cloth and the various industrial processes were all of absorbing interest to my youthful mind, so much so that on one day I lost my party, and had to find my way back to our lodgings. Fortunately, half-a-crown had been placed in my pocket for this contingency, and with the help of a friendly policeman I had no difficulty.

The building of the church of St. John the Divine, at Fairfield, greatly interested me, and during my holidays I was taken up to the top of the tower to lay the first stone of the steeple. When the church was consecrated in 1854, Bishop Graham, of Chester, lunched at the "Hollies," my father being the chairman of the Building Committee.

After spending two years at a dame's school at Kensington, I was sent to the upper school of the Liverpool Collegiate. I was placed in the preparatory school, under the Rev. Mr. Hiley. From the preparatory school I proceeded to the sixth class. My career was by no means distinguished; four times a day I walked up and down from Edge Lane to school. My companions were Tom and Hugh Glynn; they, like myself, made but little headway. Dr. T. Glynn is now one of the leaders of our medical profession, and a short time ago I asked him how it was that we as boys were so stupid. He replied that our walk of eight miles a day exhausted all our physical and mental energies, and we were left good for nothing; and I might add we had in those days little or no relaxation in the shape of games. There was a little cricket in the summer, but this was the only game ever played, so that our school-days were days of unrelieved mental and physical work, which entirely overtaxed our strength. The Rev. J. S. Howson, the principal of the Collegiate, was very much beloved by the boys. I was a very small boy, but not too small for the principal to notice and address to him a few kindly words; in after life, when he became Dean of Chester, he did not forget me. His sympathy and love for boys and his power of entering into their feelings made him a very popular head-master.

At the age of 14 I was sent to Dr. Heldenmier's school at Worksop, in Nottinghamshire, where the Pestalozzian system of education was carried on. It was a celebrated school; many Liverpool boys were there with me, the Muspratts, Hornbys, Langtons, etc., and though we worked hard we had plenty of relaxation in the workshop and the playing fields, besides long walks in the lovely parks that surround Worksop, and which are known as the Dukeries. During these walks we were encouraged to botanise, collect birds' eggs, etc., and the love of nature which was in this way inculcated has been one of the delights of my life. The noble owners of these parks were most kind to the boys. We were frequently invited to Clumber, the residence of the Duke of Newcastle, who was Minister of War. The Crimean war was then being waged, and we considered the duke a very great person; and a few words of kindly approbation he spoke to me are among the sunny memories of my school days. The Duke of Portland, who was suffering from some painful malady, which caused him to hide himself from the world, was also always glad to see the boys, and to show us the great subterranean galleries he was constructing at Welbeck; but our greatest delights were skating on the lake at Clumber in winter, and our excursions to Roch Abbey and to Sherwood Forest in the summer. The delight of those days will never fade from my memory. We used to return loaded with treasures, birds' eggs, butterflies, fossils, and specimens of wild flowers. In the autumn Sir Thomas White always gave us a day's outing, beating up game for him; this we also greatly enjoyed; and how we devoured the bread and cheese and small beer which the keepers provided us for lunch!

We were taken by the directors of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway to the opening of the new docks at Grimsby. The directors had a special train which stopped to pick up the boys at Worksop. Charles Dickens was of the party. On the return journey, I was in his carriage; he gave me a large cigar to smoke – the first, and the last cigar I ever smoked, for the effect was disastrous.

My school days at Worksop were happy days. We spent much time in studying the natural sciences; we became proficient in joinery and mechanics; and there was a nice gentlemanly tone in the school. My great friend was George Pim, of Brenanstown House, Kingstown, Ireland. We never lost sight of each other. He entered the office of Leech, Harrison and Forwood, and became a partner with us in Bombay, and afterwards in New York; he died there in 1877, at the age of 34. A fine, handsome, bright fellow; to me he was more than a brother, and his like I shall never see again. The friend of my boyhood, of my young manhood, my constant companion; he was a good fellow.

Richard Cobden's only son was at Worksop, a bright, handsome boy. His father doted upon him, and often came down to visit him, when he took some of the boys out to dine with him at the "Red Lion"; he was a very pleasant, genial man, fond of suggesting practical jokes, which we played off on our schoolmates on our return to school. Poor Dick Cobden was too full of animal spirits ever to settle down to serious school work. He had great talent, but no power of application. He died soon after leaving Worksop.

When at Worksop I distinguished myself in mathematics, and my master was very anxious I should proceed to Cambridge, but my father had other views, and thought a university training would spoil me for a business career. I have ever regretted it. Every young man who shows any aptitude should have the opportunity of proceeding to a university, but in those days the number of university graduates was small, and the advantage of an advanced education was not generally recognised. Life was more circumscribed and limited, and a level of education which suited our forefathers, and had made them prosperous men, was considered sufficient: more might be unsettling. The only thing to be aimed at and secured was the power and capacity to make a living; if other educational accomplishments followed, all well and good, but they were considered of very secondary importance.

Our home life was quiet and uninteresting, very happy in its way because we knew no other. Our greatest dissipations were evening parties, with a round game of cards; dinner parties were rare, and balls events which came only very occasionally. Sundays were sadly dull days; all newspapers were carefully put away, and as children we had to learn the collect and gospel. Our only dissipation was a short walk in the afternoon. Oh! those deadly dull Sundays; how they come up before me in all their depressing surroundings; but religion was then a gloomy business. Our parsons taught us Sunday after Sunday that God was a God of vengeance, wielding the most terrible punishment of everlasting fire, and only the few could be saved from his wrath. How all this is now happily changed! The God of my youth was endowed with all the attributes of awe-inspiring terror, which we to-day associate with the evil one. It is a wonder that people were as virtuous as they were: there was nothing to hope for, and men might reasonably have concluded to make the best of the present world, as heaven was impossible of attainment. In my own case, partaking of the Holy Communion was fraught, I was taught, with so much risk, that for years after I was confirmed I dare not partake of the Sacrament. What a revolution in feeling and sentiment! How much brighter and more reasonable views now obtain! God is to us the God of Love. We look around us and see that all nature proclaims His love, and the more fully we recognise that love is the governing principle of His universe, the nearer we realise and act up to the ideal of a Christian life. Love and sympathy have been brought back to the world, and we see their influence wrought out in the drawing together of the classes, in the wider and more generous distribution of the good things of life, and in the recognition that heaven is not so far from any of us. We see that as the tree falls so will it lie; that in this life we are moulding the life of our future, and that our heaven will be but the complement of our earthly life, made richer and fuller, freed from care and sin, and overarched by the eternal presence of God, whose love will permeate the whole eternal firmament.

Charles Kingsley was one of the apostles of this new revelation, which brought hope back to the world, and filled all men with vigour to work under the encouragement which the God of Love held out to us. It has broadened and deepened the channels of human sympathy and uplifted us to a higher level of life and duty.

During my school days I spent several of my summer holidays in Scotland with my mother, who was a patient of Professor Simpson in Edinburgh, and usually resided two or three months in that city. One summer holiday I stayed with old John Woods, at Greenock. He was the father of shipbuilding on the Clyde. He was then building a wooden steamer for my father to trade between Lisbon and Oporto. Another summer holiday I spent with Mr. Cox, shipbuilder, of Bideford, in Devon, who was building the sailing ship "Bucton Castle," of 1,100 tons, for my father's firm. The knowledge of shipbuilding I obtained during these visits has been of incalculable value to me in after life. Another of my summer vacations was occupied in obtaining signatures to a monster petition to the Liverpool corporation praying them to buy the land surrounding the Botanic Gardens, and lay it out as a public park. I stood at the Edge Lane gate of the Botanic Gardens with my petition for several weeks, and I obtained so many signatures that the petition was heavier than two men could carry.

I am glad to think it was successful, and the Wavertree Park has contributed greatly to the pleasure and enjoyment of the people of Liverpool, and has been the means of preserving to us the Botanic Gardens. I think it was one of the most useful things I ever accomplished.

CHAPTER II.

VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD

Leaving school I entered the office of Salisbury, Turner and Earle, one of the oldest and leading brokerage houses in the town. The partners were Mr. Alderman John H. Turner (remarkable for the smallness of his stature), Mr. Horace Turner, and Mr. Henry Grey. My senior apprentice was the late Colonel Morrison. I had not been very long in this office when I contracted a very severe cold, the result of being out all night on Ben Lomond. I had gone up with my father and a party of friends to see the sunset; on the way down I lost my way, and finding myself with darkness coming on, in very boggy land, I sat down on a rock to await daylight. Heavy rain fell and I was soaked through, which resulted in a cold that took such a strong hold of me that the doctor ordered me a sea voyage, and on the 20th November, 1857, I set sail on board the clipper ship "Red Jacket," for Melbourne. The gold fever was at its height, and the passenger trade with Australia was very active. Our ship was crowded with passengers; she was the crack clipper of the day, and carried a double crew, that she might be enabled to carry sail until the last moment. We had a very pleasant passage and beat the record, making Port Phillip Heads in sixty-three days.

I visited the gold fields at Ballarat, making the journey from Geelong by stage-coach, drawn by six horses, the roads being mere tracks cut through the bush. I descended several of the mines; at this time the alluvial deposits had been worked out, and most of the mines were being worked at a considerable depth. At Melbourne I stayed with Mr. Strickland, at a charming villa on the banks of the Yarra-Yarra. Leaving Melbourne, I took a steamer for Sydney, where my father had many business friends, and had a very good time yachting in the bay and riding up country. I managed to lose myself in the bush, and for a whole day was a solitary wanderer, not knowing where I was. It was a period of strange sensations and of much anxiety. Eventually, late in the evening I came across a shepherd, who gave me the best of his simple fare and guided me to the nearest village.

From Australia I sailed in a small barque, the "Queen of the Avon," for Valparaiso; she was only 360 tons register, and I was the only passenger.

The voyage across to Valparaiso was eventful. We had bad weather throughout, and a heavy cyclone which did us great damage about the decks. We were hove to for two days with a tarpaulin in the mizzen rigging. We sailed right through the storm centre, where we had no wind, but a terrific and very confused sea, and here we saw hundreds of sea-birds of all kinds. At Valparaiso we obtained a charter to load cocoa at Guayaquil. We had a lovely cruise up the coast, and the sail up the river to Guayaquil was heavenly; we had the panorama of the Andes on our right, with the richly verdured island of Puna on the other hand; flocks of flamingoes were wading in the shallow sea channels, and pelicans were busy fishing along the margins of the sandbanks. At Guayaquil we had some good crocodile shooting, not the easiest game to bag. These reptiles had to be stalked in the most approved fashion; although they lay seemingly basking and asleep in the sun, with their great mouths wide open, their ears were very much on the alert, and it was most difficult to come within shot. We succeeded better from a boat than from the land, for by allowing the boat to drift with the tide we were able to get within easy shot without being heard.

I visited Bodegas and some of the Indian villages at the foot of the Andes. The whole country was very interesting, and very rich in tropical birds and flowers. There were too many snakes to make travelling quite comfortable, but in time we found they all did their best to get away from us, and we gained more confidence.

I had a little adventure in Guayaquil which might have been very unpleasant. There was a revolution, and the government troops had only just regained possession of the city; I had the misfortune to walk unwittingly through a barricade, which consisted of some half-dozen ragged black soldiers, who quite failed to suggest to me a military outpost. I was at once arrested and taken to the jail. Here I remained for some hours surrounded by the most horrible looking ruffians, and was in mortal dread of the time when I should be locked up with them in one of the foul dens which led off the court-yard. I was fortunately set free through the kind intervention of an American who had been a witness of my capture and incarceration.

At Guayaquil we loaded a cargo of cocoa and sailed for Falmouth for orders. We arrived off this port in November, 1859, after an uneventful voyage of 110 days. We tacked the ship off the Manacle Rocks, at the entrance to the harbour; the wind flew round to the east, and we were driven out again into the chops of the channel; it was twenty-four days before we again saw Falmouth. We fought our way against a succession of easterly gales, sometimes driven out as far west as the Fastnet. The fleet of ships kept out by the long continued easterly winds was very large, and the Admiralty was obliged to dispatch relief ships with stores for their succour.

No one who has not experienced an easterly gale in the Channel can form any idea of the toil of a constant fight against a succession of heavy gales, cold and bleak with sleet and snow. Sometimes the wind would decrease and we were able to make some headway, and perhaps work our way within sight of the Scilly Islands, raising our hopes of an early arrival at our port, then another gale would spring up and drive us back again to the west of Ireland, and the same thing was repeated over and over again. The Channel was full of ships detained by adverse gales, and the home markets were disorganised by the lack of supplies of raw produce. All this is now a thing of the past, steamers are independent of head winds, and winter easterly gales no longer strike terror into the hearts of shipowners and merchants.

Whilst on this voyage, to relieve the monotony of the daily routine of sea life, I taught myself navigation, took my trick at the wheel, and had my place aloft when reefing next to the weather earing, where I worked with an old man-of-war's man named Amos. Amos was a noble specimen of the old-fashioned British sailor. He was the king of the fo'castle, and while he was on hand no swearing or bad language was heard. The knowledge I then obtained of navigation and seamanship has been most valuable to me through life. It was a great opportunity, which I was wise enough to avail myself of. During the whole time I was on board this ship – nearly eight months – I never missed taking my trick at the wheel, or going aloft to reef. I well remember laying out on the fore yardarm, off Cape Horn, for two hours, while we got a close reef tied. We had to take up belaying pins to knock the frozen snow and ice off the sail before we could do anything, and the ship was labouring so heavily in the seaway that our task was most difficult. In navigation I became so proficient that I could work lunars with ease, and after the passage home of 110 days without seeing land I placed the position of the ship within three miles of her true position, near the Wolf Rock, Land's End, the old captain being ten to twelve miles out in his longitude. I remember feeling very proud of my good landfall. I told the old skipper that I thought we should see land at noon. He smiled and replied that we should not make it before three o'clock. I went aloft on to the fore yard-arm at one o'clock, and had not been there many minutes when I shouted "Land Ho!" I saw the sea breaking over the Wolf Rock.

CHAPTER III.

LIVERPOOL

Liverpool occupies the unique position of having filled two important places in the history of England. There was, firstly, the little town clustered round about its castle, and holding a charter from King John dated 1207, its estuary affording a safe haven for the trifling commerce passing between England and its sister island, Ireland. Thus situated it had to bear its part in the political movements and the foreign and civil wars which for long years harassed and distressed the country and checked its progress. Although the six centuries which intervened between 1200 and 1800 are filled with many incidents which clothe this portion of the history of Liverpool with much that is picturesque and romantic, at the close of the eighteenth century we still find Liverpool a small if not insignificant place, with a population in 1790 of only 55,000, while the tonnage of her shipping was only 49,541 tons.

This may be said to close the history of "old" Liverpool. With the dawn of the nineteenth century a new Liverpool sprang into existence. The opening of the American trade, the peace of 1814, and the introduction of steamships, gave an enormous impetus to the growth of the trade of the port and laid the foundations of that vast and world-wide commerce which has made the name of Liverpool synonymous with the greatest achievements in commerce and in science. The building of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the mother of railways, the docks, and the bridging of the Atlantic by what is practically a steam ferry, will ever stand out as epoch making.

Thus in little over a hundred years Liverpool has grown from a small town into a great city, the city of to-day.

Liverpool in 1860-1870

My story must, however, begin with the 'sixties, when I commenced my business career. The growth of the city and its commerce has since been fully commensurate with the growth of the country. In the fifty years which have intervened the Empire has doubled its area and population, and the United Kingdom has trebled its trade. The population of Liverpool, including the newly added areas, has during the same period increased from 433,000 to 750,000, and the tonnage of our shipping from 4,977,272 tons to nearly 17,000,000 tons. She conducts one-third of the export trade and one-third of the import trade of the United Kingdom, and she owns one-third of the shipping of the kingdom, and one-seventh of that of the world. It has been a privilege to have been engaged in the commerce of the port during this remarkable expansion, and to have been associated with the conduct of public affairs during this period of growth and development in the city. Very much of this has been due to the enterprise and enlightenment of her own people. Liverpool shipowners have been in the vanguard of steamship enterprise, which has contributed so greatly to her prosperity; her merchants have built up her great trade in cotton and grain, and her citizens have not been slow to promote every sanitary improvement which made for the health and well-being of her people.

During the past fifty years the town has been re-sewered, the streets paved with an impervious pavement, and a new water supply has been introduced. The city has been encircled by a series of public parks and recreation grounds, baths and washhouses have been established, free libraries have been opened in the various suburban centres of population, cellar dwellings have been abolished, and rookeries in the shape of courts and tenement houses have been done away with, and in their place clean and comfortable working-men's cottages and flats have been substituted. The curse of drink has been effectively checked by the closing of twenty-five per cent. of the public-houses. To quote from Professor Ramsay Muir's interesting History of Liverpool: "Thus, on all sides and in many further modes the city government has, during the last thirty years especially, undertaken a responsibility for the health and happiness of its citizens unlike anything that its whole previous history has shown, and if any full account were to be given of what the city as a whole now endeavours to do for its citizens much ought also to be said of the extraordinary active works of charity and religion which have been carried on during these years."

The Liverpool of to-day is a city very different from the Liverpool of the 'sixties and 'seventies, indeed it is difficult to recognise them as being one and the same; the streets remain, but they are widened and improved, and their inferior and often squalid surroundings have disappeared; and if our modern architecture is not always of the best, our new buildings at least impart dignity and importance. Shaw's Brow, with its rows of inferior, dingy shops, a low public-house at the corner of each street, has given way to William Brown Street, adorned on one side by our Museum, Libraries, Art Gallery, and Sessions House, and the other by St. George's Hall and St. John's Gardens. The rookeries which clustered round Stanley Street, and were occupied by dealers in old clothes and secondhand furniture, have been replaced by Victoria Street, which is margined by banks and public buildings. The terrible slums which surrounded the Sailors' Home and Custom House, veritable dens of iniquity, have disappeared.

The dirty ill-paved town is now the best paved and the best scavenged town in the United Kingdom. With the growth of the town and the extension of tramways, residential Liverpool has been pushed further out until it can get no further, and it is now finding its way into Cheshire. No private dwelling-house of any importance has been erected on the Liverpool side for many years. The charming suburb of Aigburth has long since been destroyed, but the greatest change has taken place in the docks. The old docks have had to be remodelled to give sufficient depth of water and quay space for the larger vessels now employed, and special docks have had to be constructed for the Atlantic steamship trade. In the 'sixties the Prince's dock was filled with sailing ships trading to India and the West Coast of South America. They discharged on the west side and loaded on the east side. It was quite a common thing for a sailing vessel to occupy four and five weeks loading her outward cargo. On the walls of the docks and on the rigging of the ships, posters were displayed notifying that the well-known clipper ship – , A1 at Lloyd's, would sail for Calcutta or Bombay, and giving the agent's name, etc.