Liverpool in the “Long” 18th Century
Traces of old Liverpool’s original docks can still be tracked on the ground and a few of the churches and buildings remain, but mainly all you can see is parts of the road plan. Yet, there are relatively abundant documentary sources for the eighteenth century in Liverpool, although few are readily accessible digitally.
It is the intent of this web page to make available some digital records from the eighteenth century, for Liverpool in particular, but also for a few other places that my ancestors have led me to, and increasingly other data sources for the period as well (2009).
One interesting list of 98 names is for the crew of a Privateer ship in 1778 reproduced in Gomer William’s book on Liverpool Privateering, that contains quite a section on my sixth great Uncle William!
Another, is a list of Proprietors - Stockholders (nearly 500) - in the Leeds & Liverpool Canal (for 1789) - with a surprising width of investment from across the country. The Canal came near to the waterfront at what was then the north-west end of the City, and in his last year or two Uncle William lived at 5 Leeds Street with his sister Mary Ward (my 5th Great Grandmother) and her son-in-law John Browne (Navy Lieutenant) and his family - wife Nancy and daughter Mary, who later (1811) married George Farrar. Thanks (?) to the online London Gazette, I now know he was bankrupt throughout the 1820s - post-Napoleonic London was not a thriving place.
The “Long” eighteenth century is a term used to encompass the period 1660 to about 1815 (or even 1840), giving me plenty of scope for documentation!
LINK!
Link to separate 18th C daily weather web site
Link to 25 years of 18th C Liverpool weather data added (top of page). Some later material is being added.
Abundant daily data for the eighteenth century with some records back to 1666. Do you have anyone in Basel in 1400? If so I can help you.
Now in progress John Gadbury’s London Weather Diary - 1668 onwards for 21 years!! 1668-1683 now available.
NOW AVAILABLE
Central England temperature series (monthly means)
Frozen Thames page added - in progress
text accounts for 1740 and 1763
updated 11st February 2009 (1752 Bankrupt name sort)
Apologies if you get a Weather Pages link from the Bankrupt pages - work in progress to fix it (its a font related problem); meanwhile be careful to check the visible url is the one you want as you hover before you click!
Several of my ancestors lived and worked in old Liverpool but although I went to University in Liverpool (commuting from Ormskirk), I was only aware of one as a child - William Hutchinson, sometime Privateer and latterly Dock Master and an excellent example of the self-made man. My Grand Aunt “Dai” never failed to remind me of his accomplishments, and that once he was nearly “eaten” by ship-mates facing starvation, after choosing the short straw in the aftermath of some maritime disaster. It may, however, be an apocryphal story.
Determined digging has not so far revealed any original records on the matter, although there were many similar accounts circulating in the eighteenth century, not least the Luxborough Galley in 1727, but the crew names don’t match and William was still working in the Newcastle coal trade as a cabin boy - and only aged 11.
Some north of England bankrupts ~ 18th century
Enfield’s subscription list is in progress (STILL)
Engraved view of Liverpool, Old Dock, a windmill (!) and a count of shipping in the Old Dock, September 27, 1764, from the Gentleman’s Magazine.
Tall ship (JR Tolkien) from the west coast of the Isle of Man, June 2007
As near as I could get to what it might have looked like over 200 years ago
