Liverpudlians

A Small Selection of People with a Liverpool Connection

William Brown

merchant and politician, was born on 30 May 1784 at Ballymena, co. Antrim, the eldest son of seven children of Alexander Brown  (1764-1834), merchant, and Grace, daughter of John Davison of Drumnasole. Education and early years in America There is little information about William's boyhood except that he was sent with his brothers, George (1787-1859), John (1788-1852), and James (1791-1877), to be educated at the school of the Revd J. Bradley in Catterick, North Riding of Yorkshire. Like them he initially learned slowly until his poor sight was corrected with glasses. Late in life he said he was too fond of playing at school, but his letters reveal a forceful, well-written style. His father, who at this time was a linen auctioneer in Belfast, was forced to hide during the Irish troubles of the late 1790s, and in 1800 he emigrated to Baltimore with William. Mrs Brown brought the other boys out with her in 1802. Alexander, George, James, and John then remained in America for the rest of their lives, but William sailed for Britain in late 1808 and visited America only twice thereafter. William's return to Britain was due partly to his father's plan to establish branches at other major Atlantic ports. Alexander had rapidly become the leading linen importer in Baltimore. He made William a partner in 1805, and then in 1806 sent him to Philadelphia to establish a branch there. However, by 1808 it was obvious that the greater need was in Liverpool. The same family strategy sent John to Philadelphia in 1818 to found John A. Brown, and James to New York in 1825 to found Brown Brothers. George remained with his father in Baltimore to help in Alexander Brown & Sons. It is curious that William's first partnership in Liverpool was with his cousin, William A. Brown, and did not include his father and brothers. Possibly there were legal reasons in this troubled period, but William was the most determined of Alexander's sons and may have wished to escape his father's authority. Settling in Britain, and marriage William married, on 1 January 1810, Sarah (d. 1858), daughter of Andrew Gihon of Ballymena, Alexander's principal linen supplier. They had thirteen children, all of whom predeceased him. Sarah accompanied William to Baltimore in 1811, but they quickly left again for Britain after war was declared with the USA. George and John were also in Britain for part of the war, but left in 1814. In 1815 William formed a new partnership with his brothers, but not with his father, called William and James Brown (W. and J. Brown). William, however, was a partner in all of the family's American companies. The firms did well during the Anglo-American War of 1812-14. The net worth of the partnerships rose from 122,000 in 1810 (not including Liverpool) to 540,000 in 1815, and to 920,000 by 1821, with very large gains in the immediate post-war years when America restocked with British goods; there was only a 6 per cent reduction in the panic year of 1819. Few records of the Liverpool firm have survived, but William's activities can be inferred from the detailed letters written to him from Baltimore. They reveal that the firms speculated shrewdly in American staples and British goods as well as in commercial bills and government stocks. After the war, trade from Britain to the USA grew more slowly than American exports, and that from New York and Philadelphia grew at the expense of Baltimore, from where Alexander continued to exercise authority. The new trade was mainly in raw cotton. Alexander established agents in Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans, who consigned cotton to William. The commercial crisis of 1825 destroyed many of the older Liverpool houses, and in the late 1820s W. and J. Brown was regularly the largest cotton importer. In 1827 the Bank of England agent in Liverpool reported to London that the W. and J. Brown concerns were very large indeed: 'They have already this year had 70 ships from America consigned to them, and expect 30 more, and they hold at least 30,000-say thirty thousand-bags of cotton unsold'  (Bank of England Liverpool agent to head office, 8 Sept 1827). That year William imported 65,000 bales of cotton, worth about 3 million, when total American exports to Britain were worth about 26 million. Initially William entered the cotton trade by accepting orders from rich Liverpool and Manchester brokers which were then transferred to Alexander for execution by the southern agents. Later, Alexander made advances to large factors or planters in the south who accepted the speculative risk of holding the cotton. William's role was to sell the cotton to the best advantage of the firm's American clients. In a rapidly changing market precise instructions were usually soon out of date, and it was understood that William had considerable discretion. Alexander usually urged him to press on with sales even in a falling market. Occasionally Alexander ordered cotton on the Baltimore firm's own account, to fill his ships or to encourage joint purchases, and he then consigned it to W. and J. Brown for sale. William was successful because the family, despite occasional wilfulness, proved capable of managing these very complex arrangements and calculations. William's capital grew from 36,000 in 1815 to 287,000 in 1830, and Alexander supplemented this when necessary with his own resources. William was therefore able to make very large advances in his own right to Liverpool merchants buying cotton or to British manufacturers exporting goods. Similarly his firm was well placed to negotiate bills of other merchants in Anglo-American trade. In 1827 the Bank of England agent reported: They act as agents for some of the American Banks so that a considerable portion of the Exchange business between the two Countries is effected through this House ... [and they give credits to] ... approved agents of American Houses who travel through the manufacturing districts and order goods at Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and other places and who pay for such goods by bills drawn upon this House, on which they receive a commission for which they get repaid by consignments of American produce. (Bank of England Liverpool agent to head office, 8 Sept 1827) In 1831 William became first chairman of the Bank of Liverpool, to aid his and other merchants' bill transactions. Shipping interests The Browns owned a small fleet of ships from 1812 until the 1840s. They were registered in Baltimore, so they could legally participate in the American coastal as well as transatlantic trades, but they regularly visited Liverpool. It was said that William even regularly entertained-and gleaned the latest commercial gossip from-all the American packet-ship captains at the best hostelry in Liverpool, renowned for its turtle soup. Besides managing their own ships, W. and J. Brown handled the cargoes of several American packet-ship lines. An example was the Cope Line. Thomas P. Cope was a Philadelphia merchant who established the first Philadelphia-Liverpool packet line in 1822. Initially his cargoes were consigned to fellow Quakers Rathbone Hodgson and Cropper Benson. When the Browns persuaded him to run his ships with theirs, Cope apologized to Cropper Benson. The Browns, he said, 'have acquired command of the shipping of a large proportion of Philadelphia goods ... we saw should we decline [co-operation] we should encounter a most powerful and determined opposition'  (Cope to Cropper Benson, 21 March 1822, Cope letter-books). Thereafter the Browns handled Cope's cargoes and ships for fifty years. They made similar arrangements with at least two New York-Liverpool packet lines as well as with 'regular ships' from Baltimore, thus ensuring the earliest information, and very profitable commissions on high-value freights. Alexander Brown died in 1834, leaving William as the senior partner. However, distance and the partnership structure meant that although the brothers had to co-operate closely, in practice they had considerable discretion. George was severely shocked by Alexander's death and wished to specialize in finance. William's reaction is unknown. However, in the next few years the family firms expanded dramatically in the boom of the mid-1830s and they survived the panics of 1837-9. In 1830 financial flows between Liverpool and the Baltimore and New York branches were about 3.5 million, evenly divided between Baltimore and New York. By 1835 the joint flow had risen to 11 million compared to total American exports to Britain of 52 million. Similarly the capital of the firms as a whole had increased from 2.8 million in 1830 to 4.6 million when Alexander died. William's share of the assets in 1834 was about 1.7 million. By December 1836 total assets had risen to 5.9 million, but by late 1840, after John and George had withdrawn, the remaining capital had fallen to about 3 million. The panic of 1837 severely tested the Liverpool firm. In late 1836 the Bank of England, afraid of gold outflows to the United States, had commenced restricting credits to the leading Anglo-American houses, including W. and J. Brown. By early 1837 the American houses had severely restrained their credits to their southern factors and others. In April 1837 the general pressure precipitated widespread panic in the United States, which soon affected Liverpool as bill and produce remittances depreciated, or failed to arrive. By May 1837 W. and J. Brown was in great difficulties and appealed to the Bank of England. As William was ill, Joseph Shipley, his junior partner, represented the firm. Supported by the Bank of Liverpool and the private bankers Denisons, Brown argued that the company was essentially sound, but that if they failed the consequences would be 'more felt than that of any other house in England ... As no doubt a very large proportion of our acceptances are held by the Bank, we hope you will feel an interest and find an advantage in supporting us'  (Ellis, 47). Thus while many other large houses failed, the Bank of England enabled W. and J. Brown to survive, through the very large loan of 2 million. Its magnitude can be assessed by comparison with the total British government expenditure in 1837 of 51 million and a total American expenditure of 8 million. This confidence proved justified, and by early 1838 the company had almost fully recovered; the bank loan was repaid, and the Liverpool firm, aided by the collapse of competitors, received more cotton than ever before. The company name was changed to Brown Shipley in 1839, in recognition of Shipley's role and his increasing importance in the firm. Finance and banking In the mid-1830s Brown was running a very large, diversified merchant house. By 1850 Brown Shipley specialized in finance. There was a general but not universal trend towards specialization at this time as trade flows increased and the capital requirements of some activities such as shipowning grew. However, Brown Shipley shed many of its old interests for specific reasons. Alexander Brown's death and the panic of 1837 reduced George and John's enthusiasm for business and they retired in 1837 and 1839 respectively. Henceforth the Baltimore and Philadelphia offices took a marginal role. The demise of the Bank of the United States created a great opportunity for Brown Shipley and Brown Brothers to take over the bank's American domestic exchange business. The collapse of British exports to America finally ended Brown Shipley's role as export merchants. The Browns' interests in cotton lasted longer-in fact they opened branches in the south in the late 1830s to operate their exchange business and were forced, through their forfeiture on mortgages, to manage several bankrupt plantations. However, William Brown was increasingly sceptical of close connections with southern factors and planters: 'It is advances on plantations that has ruined most of the Old houses here' he wrote to James in 1846  (letter-book, 18 Oct 1847). The Browns sold their sailing ships in the early 1840s, but in 1847 James Brown undertook to support the plan of Edward Knight Collins to create a steamship line to rival Cunard. William Brown's reaction was extremely hostile: 'I do not know when I was more surprised, astonished and mortified than ... to find that you had become principals in Collins Steam Boat Scheme'  (letter-book, 23 Jan 1848). He disliked the diversion of time and capital from the firms' existing business, and distrusted the new technology. Seeking to strike a deal with Cunard, he wrote to D. and C. McIver, Cunard's Liverpool agents in 1849, considering how unpleasant it would be for your vessels and those coming to us to be carrying on a war of mutual injuries ... I have written to my Brother James ... to see Mr Cunard ... and if possible to make such arrangements as would prevent injury to either concerns. (letter-book, 8 March 1849) This led to the first effective steamship cartel. However, despite Brown's arrangements, and a generous federal subsidy, excessive costs and losses forced the Collins Line out of business in 1858. By now, however, the Browns' central business concern was finance. In the early 1840s they took over the role of the Bank of the United States as the leading negotiator of sterling and dollar bills of exchange, first in the cotton trade and then in all the leading transatlantic and American import trades. The growth of the business can be measured by the size of the firms' New York-Liverpool accounts. In 1845 the exchange flows stood at 16 million (against total American exports of 45 million); by 1855 these were 32 million (against 92 million), and by 1859 they were 45 million (against total American exports of 133 million). Meanwhile the firms' capital had increased from 3 million in 1840, to 5 million in 1850, and 6 million in 1860. A considerable portion of this was unfortunately locked up in the Collins Line and in southern plantations and other investments, and it was no wonder that William Brown was concerned, especially after panics, to free as much of the firms' capital as possible. In a letter to James he wrote: The more I think of it ... the more I think it is desirable to get every shilling unlocked from fixed property. ... When you think in our extensive Bill Business the very large amount of disappointments we must have even when we ultimately recover a large amount, it must be guarded against. (letter-book, 18 Oct 1847) Political campaigns By the early 1840s William Brown had delegated much of the detailed running of the business to able 'juniors' such as Joseph Shipley, Francis Hamilton, and Mark Collett, a future governor of the Bank of England. Instead he had become increasingly interested in politics. He had first entered Liverpool politics in the mid-1820s when he agitated for reform of the Liverpool docks, and he became a member of the important Liverpool dock committee in 1828. The Bank of England agent in Liverpool reported that the Brown partners 'are not men of much education and mix very little in the best society of the town'  (Bank of England Liverpool agent to head office, 8 Sept 1827); nevertheless, William became an important figure behind the scenes, supporting the campaigns of free-trade allies such as John Denison, who was related to Brown's London bankers. Brown was a Liverpool alderman from 1835 to 1838 and a borough magistrate from 1833 to 1845, and he led the campaign against the corn laws in Liverpool in 1840. He became the Anti-Corn Law League's candidate for parliament in South Lancashire in 1844 but, although he lost, this election led to the re-organization of the electoral register. Hence when Lord Ellesmere resigned in 1846, Brown was returned unopposed to what he called the most commercial seat in Britain. Brown was one of the leaders and financiers of the Liberal group of MPs who secured free trade. He reported his maiden speech to James: Lord George Bentinck had been promulgating ... the most erroneous opinions ... the spirit moved me ... and up I got to attack this great protective Leviathan ... before I had proceeded far the cheers became loud and long, so that the Reporters lost some of my argument. ... When I had done ... I received the congratulations of all the members around me and of the Ministerial bench. (letter-book, 24 Jan 1847) Nevertheless Brown was not a commanding speaker in parliament: his voice was too weak and he often chose dull commercial subjects. However, he lobbied effectively for Liverpool, Anglo-American, and international affairs. For instance, during the commercial crisis of late 1847 he represented the Liverpool merchants' interest to Sir Charles Wood, the chancellor of the exchequer. In February 1848 he wrote authoritatively to Wood that his colleagues Alexander Henry, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Joseph Brotherton, Thomas Thornley, and Joseph Hume wished to interview Wood and Lord John Russell. He also represented the Lancashire free-traders in the Brussels Congress of All Nations in 1847. He generally supported good international causes, had lobbied in favour of the penny post in Liverpool in 1838, and supported the extension of the uniform post principle to transatlantic mail in the late 1840s. He wrote regularly to prominent Americans, which included a widely published correspondence with W. M. Meredith, secretary of the US Treasury in 1849-50, opposing protection. In the early 1850s Brown turned to his own preferred domestic reform, decimalization, and in April 1853 secured the appointment of a select committee on decimals which he chaired. Initially he hoped to introduce a comprehensive decimal system of weights and measures as well as currency but Gladstone persuaded him to attempt currency first. His proposed system included a sovereign worth 1000 farthings or mils, with the florin-the predecessor of the current 10 pence piece-worth 100. He wrote to Charles Wood in February 1852: 'I am glad that the mint is at work on the Florins-I wish they were at work on the copper coinage-a cent or a penny called five farthings, then our decimal coinage would be complete'  (letter-book, 10 Feb 1852). Gladstone told him that although the government was in favour in principle, Brown must demonstrate public interest before it would act. Hence Brown wrote hundreds of letters to mayors, commercial associations, universities, and mechanics' institutes. For instance he wrote to Thomas Bazley: Master manufacturers might take the trouble of explaining to their intelligent Foremen the advantages of a Decimal System and ... a grand petition might be signed by all the adult hands in their mills, which would I think have great weight with the Chancellor. ... He is very timid and fears the masses would not be satisfied with the change-we must use a little pressure with him. (letter-book, 1 Dec 1853) These methods secured favourable votes in the House of Commons, and between 150 and 200 MPs joined the Decimal Society. However, the conservative royal commission, appointed by the government in 1856, dispatched the proposal. Fostering good Anglo-American relations Brown attempted to improve Anglo-American relations. He entertained or interviewed each American ambassador including Abbott Lawrence, James Buchanan, and Charles Francis Adams. Free trade itself was an obvious exercise in Anglo-American relations. Brown also mediated between Palmerston and George Mifflin Dallas, American minister in London, in the foreign recruitment issue in 1856 when the USA objected to Britain's attempts to recruit American volunteers for the Crimean War. He persuaded Palmerston that a rupture between Britain and the USA would seriously affect British trade, and that American protests were probably motivated by domestic electoral rather than diplomatic concern and would therefore soon fade. Brown also became directly involved in Anglo-American negotiations in Central America, where a rail route was required to link the shipping services between New York and San Francisco. Under the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850 Britain and the USA had agreed not to seek exclusive control in Central America, leaving a confused power vacuum in which the Central American republics and American filibusters contended for control. Britain itself had interests in Honduras, the Mosquito Coast, and the Bay Islands. Brown reluctantly accepted a request in 1856 from the British government to form the Honduras Interoceanic Railway Company to build a railway across Honduras. He wrote to Charles Pelham Villiers MP that it had been made clear to him that 'the settlement of our affairs with the United States and Honduras was based upon carrying forward the railroad ... the importance of the adjustment of our American difficulties to our respective countries cannot be overrated'. Although New York and London boards were formed, the venture collapsed in the commercial panic of 1857. By this time rail and lake steamer routes, dominated by American interests, had been built across Panama and Nicaragua and the longer Honduras route was never exploited. Last years, character, and appearance, 1859-1864 In the last years of his life Brown continued to sponsor Anglo-American projects such as the first (unsuccessful) transatlantic telegraph. However, his major interests were local. He gave 40,000 to Liverpool to build in 1857-60 the imposing Brown Picton Public Library, and he was rewarded with a baronetcy in 1863. The American consul, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who attended the dedication in 1857, wrote that among all the dignitaries William Brown 'was the plainest, and simplest man of all: an exceedingly unpretending old gentleman in black, small, withered, white haired, pale, quiet and respectable'  (Kouwenhoven, 105). Brown also, in the spirit of the times, raised, equipped, and commanded the 1st brigade of Lancashire artillery volunteers. Hawthorne's portrait of William Brown is somewhat qualified by Benjamin Orchard, the leading late-nineteenth-century Liverpool biographer. Orchard had no love for Brown, and in his sketch called him William Green. Like Hawthorne he noted that in the open air Brown seemed 'rather small of stature; at no time dignified or dashing in manner; with stooping shoulders, shrinking air and hesitating speech, in neat but unpretentious attire, few would have turned again to look at him.' Nevertheless, Orchard observes: But see him with his hat off, seated in his office chair, giving directions to a junior partner, or sedately chatting with one of his trade connections, and no intelligent observer would doubt that he had before him one of those remarkable men who seem specially formed by nature to become the great cornerstones of a nation's commerce. Whoever has examined the portraits of William and his brother George ... must have seen this; but exquisitely as they are painted, they do not tell all. There were about William Green an amplitude of temple, a lofty and compact squareness of brow, a weight of character in each line round the mouth, an inscrutable keenness of eye, a mingling of calm power and enterprising shrewdness, so unusual and so impressive as to startle even the most stupid beholder. (Orchard, 211-215) Many of Orchard's comments are clearly biased or inaccurate, but these descriptions do help to explain the contrast between Brown's meek appearance and his dominating character, and his provincial background and his international success. The American Civil War was potentially a great disaster for the Browns, especially if Britain had become involved. William visited Charles Francis Adams, the American ambassador, and wrote to the secretary of state, William Henry Seward, arguing that the belligerents should respect private property. When James was pressed to invest in federal bonds, William wrote firmly that the main responsibility of the partners was not to the north or to Britain, but to the future of the firm. In practice the firm did relatively well during the war, but its future was also threatened because, though William remained healthy into old age, all his children died before him, and his grandchildren were still young in 1860. He and James, most of whose children had also died, were forced to make complex settlements to protect the firm and their heirs. William died at his home, Richmond Hill, Walton, near Liverpool, on 3 March 1864. He had transferred some of his private capital to the firm before his death, and therefore left under 1 million. His eldest son, Alexander Brown, having died on 8 October 1849, his grandson, Lieutenant-Colonel William Richmond Brown, succeeded to the baronetcy. Obituaries acknowledged Brown's abilities and accomplishments, but concluded that despite his long public service to Liverpool, some element in his character denied him public affection. J. R. Killick

Dixie Dean  

William Ralph Dean (1907-1980), footballer, was born at 325 Laird Street in Birkenhead.

By the age of twelve, Dean had played center forward for Birkenhead Boys. At fourteen he was an apprentice fitter in the engine shop on the Wirral railway and playing with adults in the works' team in the Cheshire League, sometimes against the reserve teams of Football League clubs. A short spell at Pensby in the Wirral Combination led to his signing as an amateur for Tranmere Rovers and then as a professional once he turned sixteen. Tranmere had been founder members of the Third Division (Northern) in 1921. He only played two games in his first season (1923-4) but in 1924-5 he made the breakthrough to regular first team football. His twenty-seven goals in the same number of league games was noticed by several clubs and he was transferred to Everton for £ 3000, a record fee for an eighteen-year-old, in the spring of 1925.

The next ten years were a good time to be a center forward. In 1925 the offside law was changed, prior to then you had to have three players between you and the opponents' goal line. Initially the change produced more goals until more sophisticated defense techniques came into play.

It was in this context that Dixie Dean became the most potent goalscorer English football has ever seen. In his first full season for Everton (1925-6) he netted thirty-two goals in thirty-eight matches. A serious motor cycle accident in 1926 restricted his opportunities in 1926-7 but twenty-seven games still produced twenty-one goals. The 1927-8 season was his annus mirabilis. Everton won the championship in that year and of their 102 goals in 42 matches Dean scored 60. He actually played in only thirty-nine himself and even more astonishingly scored his goals in only twenty-nine games. The year before George Camsell of Middlesbrough had established a new record for league goals in a season with fifty-nine. With two games left in 1928 Dean had only scored fifty-three. But he scored seven in the last two matches, four at Burnley and a hat-trick at home to Arsenal in a 3-3 draw in the final game. He was still only twenty-one. For the next ten seasons no one scored goals like Dixie. His average of 0.867 per league game and 0.936 for all games is unlikely ever to be broken.

Twenty of the record sixty goals were headers. He was a physically robust player and perhaps he needed to be, as he suffered fifteen major football injuries. He often played when not fit and it was injury which brought his career to a premature end in 1939 after brief spells with Notts County and Sligo Rovers.

Off the field his pleasures included cigarettes, a glass of beer, and a bet. His honeymoon was spend on a tour of various racetracks.

Dean was never able to transfer his success as a footballer to the wider world. A sports shop he ran in Birkenhead in the 1930s failed, and after war service in the Royal Tank regiment, he became landlord of the Dublin Packet in Chester from 1946 to 1961. The new chairman of Everton, John Moores, head of Littlewoods pools, then found him a job as a security officer, from which he retired in 1972.

Unfortunately his right leg was amputated following a thrombosis in 1976. He collapsed and died at Goodison Park only a few minutes before the end of the match between Everton and Liverpool on 1 March 1980.

Horrocks, Jeremiah

Jeremiah Horrocks astronomer

Picton, James Allanson

 (1805-1889), antiquary and architect was born in Highfield Street, Liverpool, on 2 December 1805.

After an elementary education at Richard Prior's school, Church Lane, St Peter's, Liverpool, he entered his father's business at the age of thirteen. A few years later he joined the office of Daniel Stewart, an architect and surveyor, to whose business he ultimately succeeded. Picton executed some important buildings in and about Liverpool, including the Corn Exchange and Richmond Buildings, an office block where he used three storeys of round-arched openings forming arcades, 'a good solution to the problem of letting in light'  He also became an authority on land arbitration, an expertise which he subsequently used to good effect for the city council.

Picton soon became involved in the public life of Liverpool, and became a member of the town council in 1849; he was also a member of the Wavertree local board from its establishment in 1851, and its chairman from soon after this date. Immediately after joining the Liverpool town council, Picton started campaigning for a public library for the borough, an idea which had first been mooted in 1848.Pictone advocated support from public funds rather than private philanthropy. In 1852, as a result of his advocacy, a special act of parliament was obtained to authorize the levying of a penny rate for the support of a public library and museum. The pioneering new institution thus founded grew to be one of the most important of its kind. Sir William Brown subsequently provided magnificent buildings for the library and museum in 1860, and in 1879 the corporation added the fine Picton Reading Room, modelled on that of the British Library in London. Picton was appointed as first chairman of the library and museum committee in 1851, a position which he retained until death.

By the mid-1880s Picton was increasingly concerned by the growth of the immigrant Irish community in Liverpool and the accompanying spread of slum districts; he believed, moreover, that the homeless Irish of the city had links with the Fenian movement.

Picton's political commitment was combined with a strong Christian faith. He took part in local religious and philanthropic work, and edited a controversial magazine, the Watchman's Lantern, started in 1834 by the Liverpool Methodist Association. Picton was, in fact, a Congregationalist who attended the Great George Street Chapel of the famous Thomas Raffles, but he as readily accepted diversity in religion as he did in politics: he once declared that he could worship with fellow Christians ranging 'from Roman Catholics to Ranters'.

. Picton had wide-ranging historical, scientific, and linguistic interests. He was a promoter of the Liverpool Mechanics' Institution, founded in 1824, a president of the Liverpool Philomathic Society, founded in 1825 to promote 'learning by discussion', the literary and philosophical society, the architectural society, the geological society, and other local societies. In 1858 he published his Architectural History of Liverpool, which was followed by his well-known work Memorials of Liverpool, Historical and Topographical (1873-5), which became an inspiration to subsequent local historians of Liverpool. He subsequently edited Selections from the Liverpool Municipal Archives and Records, 1207-1835 (2 vols., 1883-6). -

Rathbone,  Eleanor Florence

 (1872-1946), social reformer, was born on 12 May 1872 in London

William Rathbone was a Liberal member of parliament from 1868 until 1895, and Eleanor's childhood years were divided between London and Greenbank, the family home in Liverpool, where successive generations of Rathbones had played a prominent role in civic life.

Eleanor returned to Liverpool rather than London, for her father had retired from parliament in 1895. She took over the secretaryship of the Liverpool Women's Suffrage Society and of the local branch of the Women's Industrial Council. Along with other socially concerned young women, she volunteered as a home visitor for the Liverpool Central Relief Society, taking a district and devising strategies to lift destitute families out of poverty. Although this work was painstaking and often frustrating, it gave her a sense of purpose and concentrated her mind; in reports summarizing efforts in her district she sought to understand not simply the personal failings that led to distress, but equally the wider causes of poverty. Encouraged by Charles Booth, father and daughter began a new investigation into Liverpool's system of dock labour. But early in 1902, with that work in embryo, William Rathbone died.

Over the next two decades, a period marked by the South African War and the death of her father on the one hand and the First World War and the death of her mother on the other, Eleanor Rathbone became the most prominent woman in Liverpool's public life. There was a dynastic element to her achievement, surely, for the name of Rathbone was one to be reckoned with in Liverpool politics. Yet if she drew on that tradition, she also in some ways broke with it: for example, to the distress of her male relations on the city council, she identified herself politically as an independent; both her vehement support for women's rights and her growing scepticism about the rationality of the market distanced her from her family's historic Liberalism. Her politics were thus shaped as much by her feminism as by her family inheritance; they were also increasingly linked to her own original economic thought. Rathbone's activities in these years are hard to disentangle, for her roles as a social reformer, social thinker, feminist, and practical politician fed off one another, together providing the foundation for her commanding role as the architect of a 'new feminism' after 1918.

Initially, social work took centre stage. In 1903 Rathbone began working with the Victoria Women's Settlement, which had opened in 1898 and was now entering a moment of expansion. In 1902 the settlement had appointed a dynamic new warden, Elizabeth Macadam  (1871-1948), a Scottish social worker who had trained at London's Women's University Settlement. Rathbone and Macadam probably met about the time of William's death, and the two became close friends and collaborators. Forthright where Eleanor was reserved, practical where Eleanor was abstracted, Macadam answered Rathbone's only half acknowledged need for friendship and a cause: over the next seventeen years the two used the settlement to anchor a growing local women's movement. They put the settlement on a solid financial footing, recruited some dozens of supporters and co-workers, established a training programme for social workers (a programme that was in 1910 brought under the umbrella of Liverpool University, which then appointed Macadam as a lecturer), and built up an array of social services for local women and children. Great believers in co-ordination between voluntary and public services, the two helped in 1909 to found the Liverpool Council of Voluntary Aid, an umbrella organization which gradually absorbed the work of many older philanthropic societies.

As the settlement's honorary secretary until 1915, Eleanor Rathbone took part in all aspects of this expansion. She paid special attention, however, to social investigation, scrutinizing successive facets of Liverpool's economy and social life with a critical and feminist eye. Her most ambitious study focused entirely on men: her Report of an Inquiry into the Conditions of Dock Labour at the Liverpool Docks (1904) laid bare the inefficiencies as well as the hardships of the casual labour system and catalysed later efforts at decasualization. Already in that study, however, she noted the devastating impact of erratic wages on dockers' wives; a later survey of household budgets (How the Casual Labourer Lives, 1909) further dramatized their predicament. Her earlier studies of women's employment opportunities in Liverpool, undertaken for the Liverpool Women's Industrial Council in the 1890s, had shown that married working-class women had little chance to earn: demand for their labour was low, and most were fully occupied with their children. But must these women be condemned to poverty and dependence? With Liverpool's working mothers as her point of reference, Rathbone began to think more systematically about the problem of the lack of 'fit' between a labour market and wage system geared to compensate individual (and usually male) effort and the needs of women and children. In 1912, in essays published in the feminist press, she raised the possibility of direct state provision for the cost of raising children, and in her political interventions she became bolder as well. Having marshalled the support of the seamen's union and the great shipping lines, she helped to work out an arrangement in 1912 whereby seamen could have a portion of their wages paid directly to their wives; in 1914, after subjecting Liverpool's poor-law unions to a blistering attack (The Condition of Widows under the Poor Law in Liverpool, 1913), she advocated state pensions for widows raising young children on their own.

From the 1890s Liverpool women had served as poor-law guardians and (later) as school governors; in 1906 they won the right to stand for election to the city council. Almost inevitably, the first woman to exercise that right was Rathbone herself: in 1909, in a campaign run largely from the settlement, she won election as an independent representing Granby ward, a seat she held without interruption (and usually unchallenged) until 1935. On the council she became an energetic advocate for municipal housing and for the corporation's women employees, but she also expressed her suffragist views. In 1911, still the council's lone woman member, she persuaded her colleagues to pass a resolution in favour of a women's suffrage bill then before parliament. As both a practical politician and an outspoken feminist, Rathbone's position was not always easy: in 1910 she faced criticism from Archibald Salvidge and other Conservative opponents for endorsing a socialist parliamentary candidate who supported women's suffrage; on the other hand, after 1906 she found her constitutionalist views challenged by a local militant movement loyal to the Pankhursts. She remained, however, both staunchly constitutionalist and progressive: under her leadership the Liverpool Women's Suffrage Society repeatedly condemned militancy while also building up grass-roots support in the towns and rural areas of Lancashire and north Wales. By 1912, with the militant movement in decline, she had become the president of a regional federation of some twenty-seven constitutionalist suffrage societies.

With her political acumen and independent base, Rathbone was an important asset for the national suffrage movement. She served uninterruptedly on the executive of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) from 1896, wrote regularly for the Common Cause, its affiliated paper, and took part in numerous deputations. She was also involved in formulating political strategy, reaching out to progressives within the Liberal Party and opposing the policy, crafted in 1912 by Catherine Marshall and supported by Millicent Fawcett, of allying with the Labour Party in order to put pressure on the Liberals. Convinced that this tactic would strengthen the Conservative Party and ultimately harm the women's cause, Rathbone organized an internal opposition to it, only to have her actions denounced as disloyal. Hurt and shocked, she resigned from the NUWSS executive early in 1914, but that break, while painful, proved temporary. Although horrified by the outbreak of war, she had no doubts of Germany's guilt or of British women's duty to support their country. When the pacifist wing of the executive resigned en masse over the national union's relatively pro-war stance, Rathbone regained her position. From 1915 she was the dominant figure on the national union's executive and, effectively, Fawcett's successor-designate. She managed much of the negotiation over the suffrage issue when it re-emerged in 1916 and-in spite of many feminists' reservations-arranged for a successful amendment to the bill which extended the local franchise to the wives of male local government electors-a provision that increased the women's local government electorate fourfold.

The war also multiplied Rathbone's Liverpool involvements. At its outbreak Liverpool's mayor (and Eleanor's cousin), Herbert R. Rathbone, asked her and Macadam to organize assistance to soldiers' and sailors' wives. This proved to be a complex task, for the Liberal government had promised to pay 'separation allowances' to the families of volunteers, but had no machinery to cope with the half-million immediate claims. Philanthropic organizations were thus deputed to process applications and advance payment. In Liverpool, Rathbone pressed her settlement house allies into service, setting up several dozen local offices staffed by hundreds of voluntary workers. In time the war government transferred these functions to a new Ministry of Pensions, but Rathbone's Liverpool organization remained in operation, supplementing state payments, visiting wives and families, and becoming a model for family-based social work. At the end of the war she helped to create the Liverpool Personal Service Society to carry on such work and recruited Dorothy Keeling, a successful Bradford social worker, to run it.

Rathbone's wartime work convinced her of the need for activist women to become involved in state administration itself; more importantly, it suggested a model for addressing the problem of women's dependence that had troubled her for so long. Separation allowances, although far from generous, were proportional to the size of the family and were paid directly into the woman's hands-and Liverpool's poor wives and mothers, Rathbone discovered, usually had less trouble managing on such payments than on their husbands' pay. Already by 1916, then, Rathbone had begun to wonder whether separation allowances might not provide a model for a more comprehensive peacetime policy. In articles in the Economic Journal and The Times she laid out the intellectual case, and early in 1918, with six other collaborators (H. N. Brailsford, Kathleen Courtney, Mary Stocks, Maude Royden, Emile Burns, and Elinor Burns), published a practical proposal (Equal Pay and the Family). One benefit of family endowment, she argued, was that it would make equal pay between men and women possible: with direct state support of children, the case for the (already fictive and inefficient) male family wage would disappear. This group, now renamed the Family Endowment Committee, began presenting their case to public bodies, government planning committees, and the press, and in the statist and reconstruction-obsessed years at the end of the war they received a hearing.

At the end of the war Macadam was offered the secretaryship of the new Joint Universities Council on Social Studies, whose headquarters were in London. Having just lost her mother, Eleanor thus faced the prospect of losing Elizabeth as well. This crisis made her acknowledge how important Elizabeth's love and support were for her; while she urged Elizabeth to pursue the career that would make her most happy, she promised, in essence, to follow her. In 1919 the two friends bought a house together in Romney Street, just off Smith Square and within an easy walk of parliament. Rathbone's Liverpool commitments remained substantial: she stayed on the city council, continued to lecture for the Liverpool School of Social Service, founded (and became president of) a new cross-party Liverpool Women's Citizens' Association, and made an unsuccessful bid for a parliamentary seat in the election of 1922. She kept a comfortable house in Liverpool-initially with Elsie and after her death alone-but with Elizabeth in London, Romney Street became her primary home. Cushioned by the fortune Elsie left to Eleanor on her death, Eleanor and Elizabeth lived comfortably together for the rest of Eleanor's life.

The nature of that relationship is difficult to recapture, especially since both women were concerned to protect their privacy and arranged that their mutual correspondence be burnt after their deaths. It is not likely to have been actively sexual, for Rathbone in particular was somewhat prudish, hostile to Freudianism and other theories elevating the importance of instinctual life, and prone to define sexual feeling as a troublesome male failing. Yet, for her, Macadam was much more than a friend and companion. Eleanor once told Elizabeth that she had allowed no one else inside 'the ring-fence of my personality'  (Stocks, 181); only with Elizabeth did she feel fully herself, only with Elizabeth could she be completely unconstrained. Rathbone took Macadam's advice on all aspects of her work, but she also relied on her practical and social skills, counting on Macadam to run their joint household and manage their schedules. Gradually, then, and especially after Rathbone's election to parliament in 1929, Macadam's independent career gave way to her role as Eleanor's trusted deputy, emotional support, and, in a sense, 'political wife'. This shift in the relationship caused some tension, for Macadam was a strong-minded but sensitive woman, proud of her own accomplishments and quick to resent those who saw her only as Eleanor's companion. Yet Rathbone, for her part, never took Macadam for granted; although the more prominent, she was also the more dependent. In 1919 Eleanor had written to Elizabeth that the prospect of a shared life dedicated to the work of social reform would bring her 'a happiness too great to seem possible'  (letter, Rathbone papers); all the evidence is that it did so.

After her death Eleanor Rathbone came to be remembered primarily for her successful campaign in support of family allowances, and indeed that cause figured prominently throughout her life. Yet such a characterization overlooks her central role in pre-war Liverpool politics; nor does it do justice either to the lasting importance of her economic thought or to the range of national causes on which she made a mark. After 1919 Rathbone took up five main political issues, those of the integration of women into political life, the development of state benefits for the family, the protection of women in Britain's colonial empire, the defence of democratic political ideals in the face of the rise of fascism, and the rescue and reception of refugees from Francoist Spain and Nazi Germany. She became the dominant figure in the first two arenas, and played a significant, if less well-known, role in the last three. And in all five areas she exhibited a combination of progressive idealism and pragmatic political acumen that mark her out as one of the most accomplished public campaigners of the years between the wars.

Perhaps inevitably, feminism dominated Rathbone's thoughts after 1918. Millicent Fawcett's determination to step down as the leader of the constitutionalist suffrage federation, combined with the failure of all the women candidates (save Constance Markievicz, who did not take her seat) at the 'khaki' election, forced politically active women to think concretely about their aims and strategies. Rathbone knew what she wanted: as a political independent, she did not wish to see women simply absorbed into the established political parties; she was convinced that cross-party feminist activism remained essential to women's advancement. In 1919 she was elected to succeed Fawcett as president of the now renamed National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC).

During the years of Rathbone's presidency the national union pursued several feminist reforms, among them an equalization of the franchise, equal guardianship of children, divorce-law reform, and widows' pensions. Parliamentary and political activity remained the focus, and with the aid of her close friend Eva Hubback, who served as parliamentary secretary, Rathbone turned the union into a very effective lobbying organization, skilled in drafting legislation, adept at finding parliamentary allies, and capable of drumming up waves of resolutions from branches and allied women's groups across the country. These efforts met with some real success: by 1929, when Rathbone stepped down as president, she could point to a number of measures-among them the introduction of widows' pensions in 1925 and the equal franchise legislation of 1928-that had improved the lives of many millions of women.

Yet for all NUSEC's legislative success, the twenties proved difficult years for feminism. Without the vote to campaign for, feminist organizations proved hard to sustain: younger women professed themselves uninterested, while veteran campaigners often devoted themselves to single-issue causes. Rathbone responded to this problem creatively but controversially, insisting that feminists not only demand all those rights and privileges hitherto monopolized by men (a project she tended to identify as 'the old feminism'), but also begin to adapt social institutions to reflect women's own values and work. 'At last we can stop looking at all our problems through men's eyes and discussing them in men's phraseology,' she told a divided NUSEC conference in 1925. 'We can demand what we want for women, not because it is what men have got, but because it is what women need to fulfil the potentialities of their own natures and to adjust themselves to the circumstances of their own lives'  (Woman's Leader, 13 March 1925, 52). Such was Rathbone's standing that she brought her organization with her: NUSEC added family allowances to its programme in 1925 and, even more controversially, moderated its uniformly hostile stand on protective legislation in 1927. Yet these victories came at a real cost, for the 'new feminist' agenda alienated many old supporters; after the vote on protective legislation in 1927, fully half the executive committee resigned. Already much diminished, NUSEC could not afford these losses; in the thirties, after setting up the townswomen's guilds as a successful offshoot, it subsided into a still smaller National Council for Equal Citizenship, restricting its activity to specific lobbying efforts.

If feminist organizations declined, however, some feminist politicians flourished, among them Rathbone. In 1929, at the urging of several friends at Liverpool and Manchester universities, she agreed to stand as an independent for the parliamentary seat of Combined English Universities. To her surprise, she won the seat easily-and had little trouble holding it through three subsequent elections until her death. As MP for the Combined Universities, a political independent, and a woman, she might be thought entirely marginal to the Commons, but she made the first two liabilities work in her favour, taking advantage of her intellectual standing and non-party status to speak on the basis of conscience alone. Even more important, she made an impressive case for women MPs. True, she gave 'women's questions' special attention, and unlike many of her fellow women MPs did not hesitate to identify herself as a feminist. Yet she also followed colonial and foreign policy closely, and some of her very best speeches were on such questions as British policy towards Ethiopia or Home Office regulations on the admission of refugees. Always well prepared, pointed, and capable equally of espousing common sense arguments or of quoting Macaulay and Mill, she struck the Manchester Guardian's parliamentary correspondent as having a 'masculine mind'-but it would be truer to say that she established the principle that the mind has no sex, and that women could speak with as much force and intelligence as men on matters of national importance. Skilled lobbyist as she was, Rathbone also mastered the ways of the house, learning how to extract meetings or concessions from ministers with the threat of a parliamentary question and buttonholing government spokesmen, who, Harold Nicolson recalled, used to dive into doorways to avoid her.

The status and rights of women was thus always one of Rathbone's central concerns in the years after 1919, but that focus often shaded imperceptibly into a second area of activity. By the end of the war she had become convinced that only by disaggregating male wages and paying mothers directly for the work of reproduction could women achieve full citizenship, and she never changed her view. Throughout the twenties she built up the intellectual case for and a political coalition behind the ideal of family endowment. The founding document was her own comprehensive but impassioned study, The disinherited family: a plea for direct provision for the costs of child maintenance through family allowances (1924; rev. edn, 1927). Heralded by William Beveridge, Hugh Dalton, and other prominent economists as one of the most important modern treatises on distributive economics, Rathbone's book began with a cogent statistical proof of the lack of 'fit' between wages and family needs, proceeded to make the case for direct endowment of motherhood on moral, economic, humanitarian, and demographic grounds, and concluded with a thorough survey of the family allowance systems introduced on the continent and across the empire.

Widely reviewed, The Disinherited Family won a number of prominent converts, allowing Rathbone to set up a broader Family Endowment Society devoted to propagandizing the cause. From 1924 the society presented the case for family endowment to royal commissions and party committees, interested businessmen, and activist women. There were some victories: in 1925, with Beveridge's support, the royal commission on the coal industry recommended that a system of family allowances be set up to mitigate the effects of wage reductions for miners; in 1926 the Independent Labour Party made a system of state-funded family allowances the cornerstone of their expansionist platform, 'Socialism in our time'. Yet there were few practical experiments. Beveridge set up a family allowances programme at the London School of Economics; a few progressive employers introduced firm-based schemes; a few city councils introduced rent rebates for families with young children. But no major party came out in favour of the policy: even the Labour Party, which looked likely to support it in the run-up to the general election of 1929, in the end bowed to trade-union fears of possible effects upon wage bargaining. And as the slump worsened in the early thirties, family endowment looked likely to be postponed for ever.

Yet Rathbone found a way to adjust even to these dismal circumstances. As she noted, in a period of downturn it was even more crucial to put the welfare of children first, and in 1934 she founded the Children's Minimum Campaign Committee to press for better social services-including free milk and school meals-for children in poverty. That men with large families could sometimes receive more from unemployment insurance and assistance (which included children's allowances) than they could earn as unskilled labourers also crystallized the argument for universal allowances. By the late thirties such planning advocates as the Next Five Years Group and the management research groups had taken a new interest in family endowment; populationist concerns brought such Conservatives as Leo Amery on board. By the spring of 1941 more than 150 MPs joined Rathbone in a petition urging the government to introduce a state scheme; one year later such a resolution passed the Commons. When William Beveridge worked out a comprehensive plan for social security during the Second World War, he made a universal system of children's allowances (for the second child and beyond) one of the assumptions of his plan. In the end the wartime government bowed to the inevitable and introduced a Family Allowances Bill, but only after serious pressure from Rathbone and the women's organizations would it contemplate making the payment directly to the mother. Rathbone, who was suffering from an injured leg, attended the bill's final stages in a wheelchair; characteristically, she was embarrassed and confused when the house rose to cheer her.

Her desire to improve the status of mothers always lay at the heart of Rathbone's social policy efforts, and they motivated her ten-year excursion into colonial questions as well. In 1925 she had been appointed assessor, representing the international women's organizations, to the child welfare committee of the League of Nations. The Geneva conferences she attended drew her attention to the oppression of women and children in other parts of the world; increasingly, she saw feminism in an international and imperial frame. In 1927, when the American muckraker Katherine Mayo published Mother India, her tendentious expose of the sexual subjection of Indian women and children, Rathbone sprang into action. At two NUSEC-sponsored conferences and in an early article she urged British women to take up the domestic subjection of colonized women. For the next eight years in parliamentary questions, articles, speeches, and a short book on the subject (Child Marriage: an Indian Minotaur, 1934) she argued for a robust campaign against child marriage by British authorities and Indian reformers alike.

Yet her foray into Indian questions proved difficult. Rathbone assumed that the British authorities in India could best act to stamp out child marriage: to her surprise, however, neither politically active Indian women nor the government of India shared her views. Progressive Indian women had been profoundly offended by Mayo's openly racist views and insisted that India's social problems should be addressed by Indians alone; the India Office and the government of India, for their part, were reluctant to undertake legislation likely to cause local unrest. After two years of fruitless parliamentary lobbying Rathbone changed tactics. From 1930 until 1935, when the Government of India Act finally passed, she worked indefatigably to increase Indian women's representation, both as electors and as legislators, in the new constitution. Once again her proposals drew criticism from some Indian feminists eager to maintain the principle of strictly equal qualifications for women and men, and her six-week trip to India in 1932 only partially dispelled their suspicions. Yet she pursued her goal with great skill, keeping in close touch with Indian progressives and feminists (even those with whom she disagreed), cultivating successive secretaries of state for India and their under-secretaries (she became close to Lord Lothian in particular), giving evidence to the round-table conference and its subcommittees, setting up a formidable British women's lobby to press her proposals, and arranging for the introduction of a raft of amendments during the bill's final stages. By 1935 many in Britain and India agreed about the need to improve women's political representation, but the form in which this was done-through a special wife's franchise and reserved women's seats-owed much to Rathbone's interventions.

Nor was India Rathbone's only colonial cause. In December 1929, in an act of remarkable political courage, she and the duchess of Atholl rose in the Commons to denounce the practice of clitoridectomy in some African territories and to ask whether some African women's situation did not resemble slavery. With Atholl and Josiah Wedgwood, she founded a small, cross-party committee for the protection of coloured women in the crown colonies, which gradually extracted some information about African women's social conditions from a reluctant Colonial Office. Rathbone also kept a watching brief on women's political rights across the colonies, speaking up to defend women's franchise in Bermuda and Palestine, and to argue for British women's right to retain their nationality on marriage. A visit to Palestine with Macadam in 1934 at the invitation of the Palestine Women's Equal Rights Association aroused an incipient Zionism. Impressed with Jewish settlers' educational and social institutions, and struck by the equal role accorded women, she told the association that, had she her life to live over again, she might choose to return as a Jew in Palestine.

Rathbone's colonial involvements, which dominated her life in the early thirties, were always principally feminist in aim: she wished to improve women's position in all Britain's imperial possessions. Yet her efforts brought about a subtle shift in her thought, for if she began by asserting British women's rights to protect colonized women, she ended by seeking to extend such women's own political rights. This shift strengthened her core democratic principles: to those who claimed that Indian or Arab women were too illiterate or backward to exercise political power Rathbone retorted-following Mill-that through such exercise women would grow in capacity and knowledge. Gradually, then, a fundamentally humanitarian approach gave way to an overtly political stance, positioning her well for the role she played as democratic tribune in the last decade of her life.

Rathbone took up that role early. In April 1933 she was already pointing to the danger posed to European democracies by the Nazi seizure of power and arguing against a policy of conciliation. In the following year, in parliament and on the executive of the League of Nations Union, she urged a vigorous defence of Ethiopia in the face of Italian aggression. Frustrated by the union's dilatory procedures and by the widespread public sentiment in favour of peace at almost any price, she tried allying with an assortment of groups-Lloyd George's Council of Action, the National Council for Civil Liberties-which she hoped might take a more robustly anti-fascist line. Usually, however, she worked with a few trusted friends, especially the duchess of Atholl, who shared her disgust at the policy of appeasement. In February 1937 she and Atholl met political leaders and intellectuals in Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia to urge them to resist German influence; in Britain as well Rathbone warned that fascist powers would be encouraged and not appeased by concessions. The democratic powers must defend the principles of the league, with force if necessary, she wrote in War can be Averted, published by the Left Book Club in early 1938. Yet, looking at the 'doubtful hesitating set of men' on the front bench  (Hansard 5C, 343, 31 Jan 1939, 149), she felt anything but optimistic. Having predicted as early as 1936 that only a 'real National Government' led by Churchill and backed by Labour would effectively stand up to the fascist powers  (Rathbone papers, XIV.3.34), in the wake of the Munich crisis she set up a cross-party parliamentary action group which helped to pave the way for Churchill's accession.

But it was the Spanish conflict that most absorbed Rathbone's energies in the late thirties. Although anything but a communist, she saw it in black and white terms: to her mind, a democratic republic was seeking to defend itself from precisely the same forces as had seized control in Italy and Germany. She could not, then, understand why the democratic powers refused to come to the republic's defence. Critical from the outset of the policy of non-intervention, Rathbone publicized information about German and Italian violations of the pact and bombarded the government with parliamentary questions (by the late thirties well over half of her questions were about this conflict). She also took on extensive extra-parliamentary commitments. At the end of 1936 she accepted the vice-chairmanship of a newly formed national joint committee for Spanish relief, which organized the evacuation, care, and eventual repatriation of some 4000 refugee children. With the duchess of Atholl, Ellen Wilkinson, and Dame Rachel Crowdy, she travelled to Spain in the spring of 1937-braving bombardment in Valencia-to review the situation of refugees and political prisoners for herself. Nothing she saw there diminished her enthusiasm for the republican cause, and as its fortunes worsened, she put herself at some political risk to try to get refugees out. By the spring of 1939, unable to mobilize either the Foreign or Home Office and with the republic all but defeated, she simply tried to charter a ship to run the blockade and remove from Valencia republican sympathizers sure to suffer Franco's vengeance.

Rathbone's Spanish adventures turned her into a refugee expert. She harangued and pleaded with a reluctant Home Office for more generous policies on entry and, when she found herself inundated by individual requests for aid, set up a parliamentary committee for refugees to take up such cases. As she saw it, having so singularly failed to defend Europe's vulnerable democracies, Britain was morally required to give shelter once those democracies had fallen. Late in 1938 she tried to secure entry for Czech and German socialists and Jews threatened by Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland; January 1939 found her in Prague, trying to make sure that such refugees were not simply-in compliance with Nazi wishes-shipped back to Germany. This was a strenuous life for a woman who was almost seventy, but she seems to have thrived on it: there is no suggestion before the 1940s that foreign travel, long hours, constant smoking, and sporadic sleep taxed her robust constitution.

With the outbreak of war Rathbone felt a measure of relief as well as horror: the expiation for appeasement was finally at hand. Certainly, she dreaded the loss of life and utterly rejected the idea that it should fall on young men alone. To the contrary, she insisted on women's duty to risk their lives and eagerly backed the campaign, run mostly by her fellow women MPs, to bring women into all (and even the most dangerous) of wartime occupations. Both she and Elizabeth filled out their voluntary service forms, Rathbone professing herself in excellent health, able to drive, and willing to do anything required. Both women refused to leave London during the blitz and simply moved round the corner to Tufton Court when Romney Street was destroyed by bombs in 1940. Rathbone had a busy war, reviving the family endowment campaign, helping to found the Citizens' Advice Bureau, entering into a much reported if ill-advised correspondence with Jawaharlal Nehru, and, especially, carrying on with her refugee work.

In June 1940, with an invasion of Britain possible, the Home Office interned some tens of thousands of 'enemy aliens'; to Rathbone's horror, these included socialist and Jewish refugees from Nazism-who remained, in Home Office eyes, German. Refugees interned in haste were released at leisure, and Rathbone and her allies found themselves locked in combat with Herbert Morrison and his under-secretaries both about policy and about individual cases. Her persistence and expertise made her at the same time respected and (in some cases) disliked by the officials and ministers whom she badgered almost daily. So strained did her relations become with Morrison in particular that Rathbone, fearing that his hostility would jeopardize particular cases, began working through other MPs. Yet within the refugee community itself and among a loyal group of parliamentary and political co-workers she won a reputation for her almost saintly devotion and integrity. As always, much of her work was funded from her own pocket.

As news of Nazi mass murders made its way to Britain, Rathbone's parliamentary committee joined Jewish organizations in trying to frame some response. When Jan Karski reached England late in 1942 bringing word of extermination camps in Poland and the early use of gas, Rathbone was among those he contacted. For the next two years this issue almost blotted out all others. Together with Victor Gollancz, Victor Cazalet, and others, she founded a new organization, the National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror, to press the government to mount efforts to rescue those threatened with annihilation. A wide range of proposals-from underground work to pressure on neutrals and the satellite states and an actual offer to Hitler to take in all Jews from occupied lands-made their way from her committee to the Foreign and Home offices. Until 1944 at least its efforts met with very little response: officials adopted a dilatory, wait and see attitude and, to Rathbone's fury, tied the question up in leisurely international consultations. Repeatedly warned by officials that publicity might lead to retaliation against those she wished to help, she usually held her tongue; on a few occasions, though, she and her allies forced bitter Commons debates. Although Rathbone accepted that military efforts must come first, she could not understand the government's unwillingness even to contemplate attempts at rescue. As the death toll mounted, a sense of impotence occasionally overwhelmed her. Yet she never succumbed to despair or to talk of revenge: she was one of the few British politicians to denounce forthrightly the deportations of Germans at the end of the war and, together with Victor Gollancz, spearheaded a civilian effort to send foodstuffs to her former enemies in that dreadful post-war winter. She was caught up in this effort when she died suddenly of a stroke at her home, 26 Hampstead Lane, Highgate, Middlesex, on 2 January 1946. She was cremated and her name added to the family monument in the Smithfield Road cemetery, Liverpool. Reputation and legacy A wave of tributes from parliamentary allies and humanitarians followed. A memorial lecture series was established at the civic universities and a home for refugee children built in Rathbone's memory in Israel. Over the next thirty years, however, she slipped out of the public mind. The university seat which she represented with such distinction was abolished soon after the war; moreover, given her political independence, no party could claim-and thus publicize-her achievements. Her name was associated with family allowances, but during the post-war economic boom these were allowed to stagnate and found few advocates. In the 1970s, however, Rathbone's life and, more importantly, her ideas won renewed attention. Economic downturn and the emergence of such lobbies as the Child Poverty Action Group put family allowances back on the political agenda, and with the rise of second-wave feminism the efforts of earlier women activists received another look. Sometimes that effort at recovery generated as much heat as light. The battles of the 1920s between 'new feminists' and 'equalitarians' were refought in the pages of academic journals in the 1980s, with Rathbone's ideas often caricatured or singled out for particular praise or blame. Gradually, though, scholars came to see British feminism's inter-war quarrels as part of a broader argument over citizenship and social rights played out in most western states in the wake of the First World War, and to appreciate the combination of pragmatism and analytical power Rathbone brought to that debate. Having spent many years among Liverpool's working-class families, she had the wit to recognize that mothers raising children were indeed working and the moral imagination to envisage a world in which such work might carry its own economic reward. She was, then, one of the first thinkers to move beyond an arid argument about whether women should seek equality or ask for the accommodation of difference and to recognize the profoundly gendered-to use twenty-first-century terminology-nature of labour markets, wage systems, and political structures. In her insistence that feminists pursue not only equal opportunities within that gendered system but equally the reconditioning of those structures to eradicate their masculine bias Rathbone anticipated much later feminist thinking and politics. Few have thought so creatively and at the same time so practically about what it would take to bring about a genuinely equal citizenship for women. But the renewed interest in Rathbone's life and work came from a second direction as well. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as the official records on Indian policy, appeasement, the Spanish Civil War, and allied responses to the Holocaust began to open, scholars working in all these areas were surprised to find the figure of an indomitable middle-aged humanitarian constantly crossing their path. In her own day Rathbone's central role in many of the international and reform movements of the thirties and early forties escaped public notice, for she tended to work through sympathetic fellow MPs or cross-party lobbying groups and to use the threat of publicity to force reluctant ministers to hear her out. But those who worked with her closely found her (as Harold Nicolson recalled) to be a subtle tactician and an adept political operator; certainly no other backbench MP of this period can be credited with such a range of accomplishments. 'No Parliamentary career has been more useful and fruitful,' the Manchester Guardian insisted on her death  (Manchester Guardian, 3 Jan 1946, 3), and as scholars bring to light her central role in humanitarian causes ranging from better child nutrition to Spanish relief, from family allowances to the release of interned aliens, this verdict seems justifiable. Rathbone herself would have been bemused by this posthumous attention. Personally reticent and driven by conscience rather than ambition, she found public attention disconcerting and embarrassing. She could not be persuaded to accept an honour for her work in either the First World War or the Second (although she did accept honorary degrees from Durham, Liverpool, and Oxford) and, when a group of friends insisted on having her portrait painted in 1932, she was quite taken aback. 'I do not believe that I belong to the small class of persons who justify public portraits,' she protested in a letter; fifty years from now, she predicted, that portrait would languish forgotten in some dark corner or cupboard  (Beveridge papers, II b, 31, London School of Economics). But here her predictive antennae proved faulty. James Gunn's portrait of Eleanor Rathbone was hung in the National Portrait Gallery, and her ideas and achievements continue to compel our attention. Brilliant, systematic, and pragmatic enough to translate visionary ideas into piecemeal reforms, she stands as both the most significant feminist thinker and the most effective woman politician of the first half of the twentieth century. Susan Pedersen Sources  Rathbone papers, U. Lpool + Hansard 5C (1929-46) + M. D. Stocks, Eleanor Rathbone: a biography (1949) + Common Cause [later Woman's Leader and the Common Cause] (1909-31) + S. Pedersen, Women's stake in democracy: Eleanor Rathbone's answer to Virginia Woolf (Austin, Texas, 2000) + S. Pedersen, 'Rathbone and daughter: feminism and the father at the fin-de-siecle', Journal of Victorian Culture, 1/1 (Jan 1996) + S. Pedersen, 'Eleanor Rathbone, 1872-1946: the Victorian family under the daughter's eye', After the Victorians, ed. S. Pedersen and P. Mandler (1994) + B. Harrison, 'Constructive crusader: Eleanor Rathbone', Prudent revolutionaries: portraits of British feminists between the wars (1987) + J. Alberti, Eleanor Rathbone (1996) + Foreign and Home Office papers, PRO + BL OIOC + BLPES, Beveridge MSS + archives, Somerville College, Oxford + U. Birm., Oliver Lodge MSS + U. Warwick Mod. RC, Wilfred Roberts papers, MSS 308 + Lothian papers, NA Scot. + Katherine Mayo papers, Yale U. + Nancy Astor papers, U. Reading + S. Pedersen, Family, dependence and the origins of the welfare state: Britain and France, 1914-1945 (1993) + J. Alberti, Beyond suffrage: feminists in war and peace, 1914-1928 (1989) + B. Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (1979) Archives Somerville College, Oxford + U. Lpool, corresp. and papers + Women's Library, London, papers | BL, corresp. with Lord Cecil, Add. MS 51141 + BL, corresp. with Society of Authors, Add. MS 56786 + BL OIOC, Indian Office papers + BL OIOC, corresp. with John Simon, MS Eur. F 77 + BLPES, corresp. with William Beveridge + Bodl. Oxf., corresp. with Gilbert Murray + CAC Cam., corresp. with A. V. Hill + JRL, letters to the Manchester Guardian + NA Scot., corresp. with Lord Lothian + PRO, Foreign and Home Office papers + U. Birm., Oliver Lodge papers + U. Reading, Astor papers + U. Warwick Mod. RC, Wilfred Roberts papers + Women's Library, London, corresp. relating to Indian women's affairs + Yale U., Katherine Mayo papers FILM BFI NFTVA, documentary footage SOUND BL NSA Likenesses  photograph, c.1909, U. Lpool, Rathbone Archives; repro. in Pedersen, 'Eleanor Rathbone' · J. Gunn, oils, 1933, NPG [see illus.] Wealth at death  96,999: probate, 14 June 1946, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

Roscoe,  William

(1753-1831), historian and patron of the arts, was born on 8 March 1753 at the Old Bowling Green House, Mount Pleasant, Liverpool

Roscoe's father had been butler at Allerton Hall, near Liverpool, before he became innkeeper at the Old Bowling Green. Soon after William's birth the family moved into a newly built and larger tavern with an extensive market garden also on Mount Pleasant.

. In 1774 Roscoe was admitted as an attorney of the king's bench. He entered into partnership with a firm which came to be known as Aspinall, Roscoe, and Lace.

In 1773 Roscoe and his friends had founded a Society of Encouragement of the Arts, Painting and Design, which organized in Liverpool the first public exhibition of paintings held in any English town outside London. It included 'The Mother', a drawing of his own. Roscoe became increasingly interested in Italian literature and art. His interest was stimulated as the result of meeting with Henry Fuseli, a Swiss-born artist, who had spent eight years in Rome studying Michelangelo, and had become Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy. Roscoe and Fuseli became close friends. At the time of Fuseli's first visit to Liverpool, Roscoe wrote a poem entitled 'The art of engraving' which contained a reference to 'the Great Lorenzo' and his part in the revival of art in fifteenth-century Florence. Roscoe decided to write a biography of Lorenzo de' Medici, the first to appear in English. This task engaged his leisure hours for nearly ten years. The more he learned from his study of Lorenzo de' Medici, patron of the arts, the more he began to see himself cast in the role of a latter-day Lorenzo, doing for Liverpool what Lorenzo did for Florence. He was fortunate in securing the help of William Clarke, the son of a Liverpool banker and companion of his early studies, who on account of ill health had been advised to spend the winter of 1789 in Italy. Clarke was able to gather a large quantity of resource material from librarians in Florence and Rome to enable Roscoe to proceed with his task.

The publication of Roscoe's 'Life of Lorenzo de' Medici' in 1796 proved an immediate success and won him international fame as a historian and scholar. Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo was a remarkable achievement for a self-educated historian who had never ventured abroad.

Nine years later in 1805 Roscoe published his second major work 'The Life of Pope Leo X', the son of Lorenzo de' Medici. He himself had never intended to publish such a work, but was persuaded to undertake the task by Horace Walpole and the earl of Bristol, who regarded it as an appropriate sequel to his first biography. The Life of Leo was not well received by critics. It aroused the anger of both Catholics and Protestants. Despite this it ran to six editions. Again the 'Life of Leo', though it fell short of expectations, served a useful purpose as a mine of information and was widely read in Europe and America, having been translated into French, German, and Italian.

Soon after publication of the 'Life of Lorenzo' Roscoe retired from his legal practice at the age of forty-three. From 1790 to 1793 Roscoe had lived at The Dingle, an idyllic retreat overlooking the Mersey. Three years after retirement he bought Allerton Hall, to which he added a wing to accommodate his rapidly growing library and collection of paintings.

At this time Roscoe became increasingly involved in political activity and in the 1806 election he was invited to stand for parliament as an independent candidate for Liverpool. His campaign proved successful and in an early speech calling for an honourable peace with France and parliamentary reform, he spoke in favour of the abolition of the slave trade. In his speech at the debate preceding the passing of the bill for the abolition of the slave trade, he concluded:

I have long resided in the town of Liverpool: for thirty years I have never ceased to condemn this inhuman traffic: and I consider it the greatest happiness of my life to lift up my voice on this occasion against it, with the friends of justice and humanity.

Soon after the inaugural meeting in London of the African Institute, which Roscoe helped to establish, Wilberforce, speaking of Roscoe, said, 'Here is a man who by strength of character has risen above the deep-seated prejudices of his townspeople and eventually won their respect. His future is secure' . This last remark proved untrue. On his return to Liverpool after his triumph in parliament, Roscoe found himself at the centre of a riot orchestrated by local slave traders which hastened the end of his brief parliamentary career.

Soon after moving into Allerton Hall, Roscoe was approached by the family of his friend William Clarke (who had helped gather material for his 'Life of Lorenzo'). He was asked to investigate the affairs of the Clarke family bank, which had run into difficulties. Roscoe felt obliged to help and proved so successful that against his better judgement he accepted the invitation to become a partner. Confidence was restored and for many years Roscoe enjoyed a career as a reluctant but successful banker. During this period he became an enthusiastic farmer, personally supervising the lands surrounding his home. He also became involved in an expensive experiment, the object of which was to reclaim a large tract of land on Chat Moss and Trafford Moss, between Liverpool and Manchester.

In 1816 the bank collapsed during the period of acute depression following the end of the Napoleonic wars. Roscoe faced bankruptcy with remarkable equanimity and courage. Allerton Hall and the greater part of the property of the partners had to be sold. Roscoe and his family were to move house constantly until 1824. His large collection of valuable books, manuscripts, and art treasures was also sold.

Roscoe's books were widely dispersed as a result of the sale. He and his friends, determined that his collection of early Italian and north European paintings remain intact in Liverpool, launched a successful appeal, making it possible for the collection to be presented to the Liverpool Royal Institution. In 1893 the collection was handed over to the Walker Art Gallery on loan and finally as a gift in 1948. It was the loss of his books rather than his paintings which Roscoe felt most deeply. They had been his constant friends and companions for nearly forty years. The sonnet he wrote on parting with his books is one of the best of his poems.

Apart from his collection of paintings perhaps Roscoe's most tangible and enduring legacy to Liverpool was the founding, along with Dr Traill, of the Royal Institution as an adult educational centre, which was opened in 1817. Roscoe, as president, delivered an address, setting forth his ideals of what the institution might become as a centre of scholarship, learning, and the arts. Out of the Royal Institution sprang a well-known school and later the foundation of the University College.

In 1818 Roscoe published a new edition of the hymnal in use at the Renshaw Street Unitarian Church, adding nine hymns written by himself. Roscoe's God is a God of majestic order, a transcendent God, glimpses of whom may be seen in the world of nature. Like Robert Burns, of whom he was a great admirer, he was not able to believe in a God who calls some and not others. Roscoe was a deeply religious man, and God was never far from his thoughts. The most popular of all Roscoe's poems were those written for his family-The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast (1807)-of which 40,000 copies were sold within a year of publication. In these imaginative poems Roscoe personified creatures great and small. Unlike Aesop's Fables they are totally lacking in moral content. They were written to encourage children to appreciate the world of nature.

His last published work was a botanical work entitled 'Monandrian Plants of the Order Scitamineae', issued in parts from 1824 to 1828. Roscoe was well placed in Liverpool to obtain exotic plants from far-off lands for himself and for the Liverpool Botanic Garden with the help of shipping friends. A flower from Nepal is still named Roscoea.

His final home was 180 Lodge Lane. A vivid description of Roscoe towards the end of his life is given by Washington Irving:

One of the first places to which a stranger is taken in Liverpool is the Athenaeum. As I was once visiting this haunt, my attention was drawn to a person just entering the room. He was advanced in life, tall and of a form that might once have been commanding, but it was a little bowed by time, perhaps by care. There was something in his whole appearance that indicated a being of a different order from the bustling race about him ... I enquired his name and was informed that it was Roscoe. I drew back with an involuntary feeling of veneration. This then was an author, of celebrity: this was one of those men whose voices have gone forth to the ends of the earth, with whom I have communed in the solitudes of America.

Henry Tate

  (1819-1899), sugar refiner, was born in Chorley, son of the Revd William Tate. To eke out a living as a Unitarian minister, William Tate opened a private school for poor children. It was here that Henry received his only formal education.

At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to one of his older brothers, Caleb Ashworth Tate (d. 1846), who was a grocer in Liverpool. Seven years later Henry set up on his own, by buying the business of Aaron Wedgwood in Old Haymarket, Liverpool. By the time he was thirty-six, Henry Tate had six shops-four in Liverpool, one in Birkenhead, and one in Ormskirk. He also expanded into the wholesale trade in 1857.

Tate began a more significant commercial diversification in 1859, when he went into partnership with John Wright, a cane sugar refiner of Manesty Lane, Liverpool. This proved sufficiently successful for Tate to sell the six shops in 1861, and for the partners to establish their own refinery in the following year. A second refinery was built in 1864. Five years later Wright withdrew, and the company changed its name to Henry Tate & Sons. The subsequent years were difficult for British refiners, as imports of refined beet sugar, supported by state subsidies, entered the market from continental Europe, particularly Germany. Several businesses in Britain went bankrupt. Tate and other cane sugar refiners argued for some form of protection from such subsidized imports, but the chief response of his and other successful companies was to innovate and expand to meet competition.

In 1870 Tate built a new refinery in Love Lane, Liverpool. Here he incorporated the so-called 'Greenock method' of refining (Greenock then being one of the centres of refining), which included boiling the sugar in a partial vacuum, and at a low temperature, to reduce caramelizing. The refinery began operating in 1872, but before it did so Tate was introduced to another new method, developed in France by Bovin and Loiseau, using lime and carbonic acid to purify the sugar. Tate bought the rights to this, and introduced it to Love Lane. Much of Tate's commercial success was based on his ability to recognize an opportunity, and to his judgement in introducing new technologies from elsewhere. This was illustrated again in 1874-5, when he bought a derelict shipyard on the Thames at Silvertown. It was to be the site of his largest refinery, which began operating in 1878, under the control of his son, Edwin. The construction of a new refinery represented a significant risk for the company; the costs were such that Tate was forced to withdraw his daughter, Isolina, from boarding-school.

At the time of the move to London, Tate learned of a process for making sugar into small cubes, patented by Eugen Langen of Cologne. Hitherto sugar had been sold in blocks or 'loaves', which needed to be broken or chopped into smaller usable pieces. Tate (jointly with another refiner in Liverpool, David Martineau) bought the rights to the Langen cube-making process in 1875, with an agreement not to pay royalties until his refinery was producing them successfully. In 1892 Tate bought outright, for 12,000, the exclusive British rights to a superior cube-making process, which had been patented by Gustav Adant of Brussels. Tate's refinery began to use this process in 1894. The family firm became a private limited company two years later, when Henry retired and his eldest son, William Henry, was made its first chairman. It was said by some contemporaries that Tate was much guided by his first wife, Jane. She was the daughter of John Wignall of Aughton, Lancashire. They married on 1 March 1841 and had seven sons (one of whom died in infancy) and three daughters. Tate outlived his first wife and married for a second time, on 8 October 1885; his new wife was Jane Amy Fanny, daughter of Charles Hislop of Brixton Hill. Tate's family life was always private-indeed, he was a very private man. He was guided by the religious beliefs and values of his Unitarian upbringing, though he was attracted to the Congregational church at the time of his second marriage. He never sought public or political office except for serving briefly on Liverpool city council in the 1860s as a Liberal. He was also a JP in Liverpool and Surrey.

He took a great interest in art, sought to encourage young artists, and built up an extensive collection of contemporary paintings at his home in Park Hill, Streatham Common, London. He was a close friend of Sir John Everett Millais, director of the Royal Academy. It had been Tate's intention to donate his collection to the National Gallery, but the trustees were prepared to accept only a sample. Thus, after some difficulty in finding a site, he endowed a new gallery at Millbank in London. This became the National Gallery of British Art, but has always been far better known as the Tate Gallery. He donated sixty-five of his own pictures, and three sculptures to the gallery. They included many which reflected his conservative taste, such as Orchardson's Her First Dance and The First Cloud; Waterhouse's Lady of Shallot; Millais' Ophelia, Vale of Rest, and North-West Passage; and several by Tindeman, Reid, and-Queen Victoria's own favourite-Sir Edwin Landseer.

The building for the new gallery was designed by Sydney R. J. Smith, and opened by the prince of Wales on 21 July 1897. On this occasion Tate broke his self-imposed public silence and made a speech presenting the gallery to the people. The initial cost of the gallery had been 190,000 but later additions brought the total close to half a million pounds. In recognition of this, and other benefactions, Tate was made a baronet in 1898. He had twice declined this honour, but was eventually persuaded to accept by Lord Salisbury, who told him that a refusal would be a snub to the royal family. For twenty years the new gallery was administered by the National Gallery, of which Tate had been made a trustee.

Tate made many other donations, often anonymously, and always discreetly. They included 42,500 for Liverpool University, 3500 for Bedford College for Women, and 5000 for building a free library in Streatham; additional provisions were made for libraries in Balham, Lambeth, and Brixton. There was 10,000 for the library of Manchester College, Oxford, and, also to Manchester College, 5000 to promote the 'theory and art of preaching'. In addition he gave 20,000 to the (homoeopathic) Hahnemann Hospital in Liverpool in 1885, 8000 to the Liverpool Royal Infirmary, and 5000 to the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute, which became the Queen's Institute for District Nurses. In 1887 he gave 5000 to the Tate Institute in Silvertown, to serve as a non-sectarian, and apolitical meeting-place for working people. It had a large hall and several meeting rooms, a reading room, billiard room, and nine bathrooms.

Andrew Barclay Walker  (1824-1893), brewer, was born at Auchinflower, Ayrshire, son of Peter Walker of the Fort brewery, Ayr. He was educated at Ayr Academy and at the Liverpool Institute. On completion of his education Walker was taken into partnership in the brewing business by his father, who had established a small brewery in Ray Street, near St Paul's Square in Liverpool. The business expanded rapidly and in 1846 a new brewery was opened in Warrington, where the family already had two breweries. In 1877 another brewery was opened in Burton upon Trent to specialize in the brewing of high-quality bitter ales under the title of A. B. Walker & Sons. On the death of his father in 1879 Walker became sole proprietor of the Warrington breweries and in 1890 the firm converted to a limited liability company, 'Peter Walker & Son Warrington & Burton Ltd', with Walker as the first chairman. Walker also acquired a number of colliery properties in Ayrshire and south Wales from which he derived a large income.

Walker entered the Liverpool city council in 1867. He was elected alderman in 1871, served the office of mayor in 1873-4 and 1876-7, and was high sheriff of Lancashire in 1886. At a cost in excess of 50,000 he built the Walker Art Gallery which was opened and presented to the town in September 1877. In 1886 he provided 20,000 for the building of engineering laboratories in connection with the Liverpool University College which was opened in 1889. He also contributed other large sums to charity and art and literature in Liverpool throughout his life. To the village of Gateacre, near Liverpool, he gave a village green and an institute, library, and reading-room. In recognition of his public services he was knighted on 12 December 1877, and created baronet on 12 February 1886. In 1884, for approximately 250,000, he purchased Osmaston Manor in Derbyshire, with furniture, model village, and estate. As a mariner he owned a famous steam yacht called the Cuhona on which he entertained several members of the royal family, including the prince of Wales.

In November 1889 Walker resigned from his position as alderman on the city council because of ill health. In recognition of his service to the city, Liverpool made him its first honorary freeman in January 1890, and in December the same year he was presented with his portrait by W. Q. Orchardson RA.

Walker was twice married. His first wife, whom he married in 1853, was Eliza, daughter of John Reid of Limekilns, Fife; they had six sons and two daughters. She died on 20 March 1882, and on 11 October 1887 he married the Hon. Maude (b. 1861/2), second daughter of Haughton Charles Okeover of Okeover Hall, Staffordshire, whose title derived from her having been a maid of honour to Queen Victoria. Walker died at his residence, Gateacre Grange, Little Woolton, Lancashire, on 27 February 1893, leaving personalty valued at 2,876,781 18s. 10d., besides much freehold property. He was survived by his second wife and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, Peter Carlaw Walker (1854-1915), who also took over control of the family firm and lived at Osmaston.