After the completion of the Dock Board Offices, Liverpool's most famous
landmark was built, the headquarters of the 'Royal Liver Friendly Society'
otherwise know as the Liver Building. It took 5 years to build and it topped by
the famous 'Liver Birds'.
The three pictures on Page Four show images of the docks, the original plot of
land used to build the Liver Building on, and finally the building itself with
the city's Overhead Railway running in front of it.
Liverpool's status as a trade centre
increased rapidly through the 1800's and at one point it was handling a fifth of
the entire worlds shipping. This in turn lead to the growth of the city centre.
The three pictures on Page Five show two different views of a busy Victorian
Church Street.
The third picture shows that original 'Church' itself, St. Peters. It stood
where the HMV shop is today, a single marked paving stone outside the record
shop serves to remind us of this.
As prosperous as the city was though this
period, Liverpool had some of the worst examples of Victorian 'slums'.The influx
of immigrants lead to a massive population rise, this in turn lead to dreadful
housing and sanitation conditions.
Whole families - infant to grandparent - would be crammed into single rooms or
cellars leading to a population density of 66,000 per square mile.
Page Six
shows three images of life in the Victorian 'courts' - a maze of filthy back to
back houses spread over the Everton area where most immigrants settled.