The Collegiate Story.

The Foundation of a School.

The time is 1839. In the maritime trade, Liverpool led the world. A Merseyside boy, the son of a merchant, would have been sent in the first place to a Dame school, of which there were over one hundred in the Liverpool area. At the age of 11. He would transfer to a private school for three or four years, which was probably run by the local church ( Established, Roman or free church). For the son of a poorer man, a clerk or labourer, there were few opportunities. In fact, of about 50,000 children between 5 and 15, half attended no school at all. Dame Schools for the poor were pathetic and often comprised a small room of less than one hundred square feet to accommodate forty boys. Dogs and hens often occupied the same room, and the noise was almost deafening. They were, in fact little more than a dumping ground for children while mothers went to work. Children in Charity Schools were more fortunate, even if they were sometimes harshly treated. The Blue Coat School, 1708 and the School for the Blind 1791 both thrived.

At the end of the 18th century, the wealthy merchants founded libraries in such clubs as the Lyceum and the Athenaeum and these were followed by the establishment of the Royal Institution School in Colquitt St, 1819. In 1823. The Liverpool Mechanics and Apprentice Library opened its doors. The Liverpool Mechanics Institute followed as part of a movement that swept across 19th Century Britain and gave working men and youths a chance to acquire scientific knowledge in the evenings. In 1835, a day school was added to the project in Mount Street and is now known as the Liverpool Institute.

A belief that education must have religion at its centre, brought together many Liverpool men, both clergy and leading layman, who decided to establish a day school of high quality with the Christian faith as its centre. A meeting took place on the 12th of July 1839 in the office of the Militant Protestant Truth Society to consider the best way to set up a new Protestant Institute in Liverpool for the education all classes upon sound religious principles. The two protagonists were Robertson Gladstone and Samuel Holme both prominent in business and public life. 18 members attended the meeting and their first resolution stated ‘that it is expedient to establish an institution in Liverpool for the general instruction of all classes, combining scientific and commercial with sound religious knowledge.

Mr. John Gregory, Jones was appointed secretary to the new committee and remained so for 50 years. He was a man dedicated to education, taught himself many languages and learned Welsh and Gaelic when he was over eighty

. The prospectus of the school for the education ‘of the Commercial, Trading and Working classes was launched and received the support of Church and State by the patronage of the Bishop of Chester and John Gladstone.

Mr Samuel Holme was a builder and naturally took the Building Subcommittee under his wing and he had already earmarked a likely site for the school in a field on a hill in Shaw St. belonging to Mr Thomas Shaw near to the expanding dormitory suburb of Everton. A dispute developed on a theological issue raised by William Ewart Gladstone, who felt that religious qualifications imposed on teaching staff that they should be ‘Orthodox Trinitarian Protestants’ was too loose and might let in Quakers and Baptists. However, after some debate, a special committee of clergy produced a more acceptable regulation, and the words ‘Trinitarian Protestant’ were removed from the prospectus. The Committee of Management was formed and had a constitution of thirty-six members in six equal parts, representing the clergy, merchants, professional men and gentlemen, manufacturers, tradesmen, and mechanics.

Times were hard in the 1840s and money was short so much so that after six months only £10,000  had been raised towards a target of £20,000. The committee turned to several devices to gain support, including Life Governorship for donations of £100 and the right to nominate boys to the school for donors of larger sums. In addition to financial support, the Committee wanted the patronage of a national figure. After unsuccessful approaches to the Duke of Wellington and the Archbishop of York, Lord Stanley, later 14th Earl of Derby and Prime Minister, accepted the patronage, while Lord Francis Egerton of the famous Bridgewater family became first President of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution.

The committee had considerable trouble in settling the site of the new institution. They originally bought a site from Mrs Nicholson in Soho St. after a good deal of handling, and furthermore they considered other sites in Brownlow Hill, London Road and one in Myrtle St. The latter was declined because it was too near to the Mechanics Institution in Mount Street and it was felt inadvisable because the boys of the two schools would always be fighting. Finally, they chose a larger size offered by Thomas Shaw in Shaw Street on a considerable mortgage.

They had problems also with their architect, the ‘Golden Boy’ of the early Victorian period, Harvey Lonsdale Elmes. In 1837, at the age of 23, he had designed St. Georges Hall in a classical style, winning a public competition and soon afterwards was successful with a Doric design for the Assize Courts. His Tudor design for the new institution had heralded a Gothic revival. He estimated the cost to be £15,000, but the committee were worried about his travelling expenses from London. However, after much acrimonious correspondence, they gave him a prize of £105  and he agreed to supervise the work. In fact, Elmes saw the front of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution completed, but did not live to see his magnum opus St. Georges Hall, in stone. In failing health, he sailed to the West Indies, where he died in 1847.

The laying of the foundation stone in Shaw Street by Lord Stanley on the 22nd October 1840 was a grand affair. After a 2 hour service in the Parish Church of Saint Peter in Church St, the procession formed in the quadrangle of the Blue Coat School. Thousands lined the route from School Lane, Ranelagh Street, Lime Street  Islington to Shaw St. The foundation stone was drawn by five horses and pushed by four more. On the stone sat 6 apprentice Masons wearing white leather aprons bound in blue. In the procession came boys or Blue Coat school, in ‘well-kept ranks’, followed by 60 clergy, 400 gentleman marching four a breast, followed by their ladies in carriages. When the procession arrived in Shaw St. a brass cannon fired a ‘feu de joie’ that shook the nerves of the ruder as well as the feebler sex. Before the stone was laid, a bottle of coins and papers was deposited in the foundations. The Blue Coat Band played God save the Queen before leading the procession back to town for a public dinner which cost one Guinea for men and half a crown for their ladies, who were allowed to listen and watch from boxes and galleries. It is said they were provided with light refreshments. The assembled company drank some dozen toasts to each member of the Royal family and other personages. Several members tried to speak at once and finally the Reverend Hugh McNeile, who came from County Antrim and was Minister of Saint Jude's Church, roused the company to echo his cry ‘Charge. Chester, charge! On Stanley On! With 1000 voices shouting the call the dinner ended and the Liverpool Collegiate Institution was well and truly launched.

The contract for building was given to John Tomkinson, who tendered to put up the whole school for £21,379. The construction work was beset by problems since Tomkinson was not very efficient. Eighteen inches were added to the width of the treads of the main staircase after the building was half completed; the heating and ventilation system, devised by Mr Graham broke down; the slates were fixed to the roof with cheap iron nails instead of copper. However, despite these and other the problems and several postponements, the school was opened officially on a wet Friday morning, 6th of January 1843. The facade was of pink Woolton sandstone with ten Gothic windows, a central porch arch which extended to the full height of the building, and either end and niche bearing the statues of the patron and president. Other features included the Board Room with a tall chimney piece of Talacre Stone bearing the names of the president, directors and other officers of the Institution and carved with the coats of arms of the rectors of Liverpool and donors of £1000 . (This room is now the study of the headmaster of the Liverpool Collegiate School). The opening ceremony itself was attended by the usual gallery of important personages of the day, and was marked by an impressive speech from W.E. Gladstone, who presided, but it is said that the visitors flooding through the buildings noticed first the cold, and then the dampness since the patent heating system had failed. So, the rumours spread that the school was damp and unhealthy. Furthermore, there had been no money to spare to drain, level or pave the playgrounds at the rear of the school and these after a day of rain were a quagmire. The committee had spent £36,000 on the building concomitant expenses -a shortfall of £10,000.

The institution was originally intended to comprise two day schools, an evening school and a lecture hall. The school hall was the only large public meeting hall in Liverpool in the early 1840s and was used for concerts, lectures and meetings. The Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra used it before the original Philharmonic Hall was opened. As the advantages of the Institution became apparent the wealthier classes of the town became anxious that suitable facilities should be made for their children to receive equal benefits with those of the middle and working classes for whom the two day schools were provided. So, the first school was divided into two sections at different charges. Thus the three schools were established, Upper, Middle and Lower schools, with a scale of charges per term of twenty Guineas, ten Guineas and three Guineas, respectively.

The first Principal of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution was the Reverend William John Conybeare, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He refused to adulterate the syllabus with vocational training. The Upper school offered a sound classical education which compared favourably with that of similar schools. The Middle school offered English, mathematics, book-keeping, French Writing, Drawing, Singing, Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. Whilst the Lower school was planned on simpler lines, offering the three R's, Latin, Singing and French. Evening classes were offered and had a great appeal to the semi-literate,  men whose life was on the waterfront and who  wanted instruction in the theory and techniques of the trades in which they already had practical experience.

The proposed salaries of staff were liberal for the 1840s. The principal was to receive £700 minimum, Senior Masters £300, Assistant Masters £200. In fact, because money was tight, the principal had to apply for his salary, while each master was given a number of shares and so his salary fluctuated with the prosperity of the schools. This caused ill feeling, particularly when the teaching staff discovered that the secretary had not included himself in the scheme and received full salary as a time when the Masters’ share had fallen to 12 and 6 pence in the pound.

During the 40s, the school numbers declined considerably, which reflected the social conditions of the time; as the numbers went down, so the value of the Masters shares slumped and much of the teaching was done by pupil teachers from the Upper school. Conditions in Liverpool were particularly bad. The Cellars were packed with Irish immigrants by the thousand, fleeing from the potato famine at home to a precarious life in the rapidly decaying slums of the port.

Conybeare resigned in 1848 to take up parish work and was succeeded by his right hand man, the Reverend J S Howson, a Yorkshireman and a good administrator who understood business needs. The Institution began to thrive under Howson’s Leadership and In April 1852, the number of boys had increased from 454 in the bad days of 1847 to 648. However, in contrast, the Evening schools declined from 400 pupils at the opening to 100 in 1852. This seemed to be a national trend and can be related to the new prosperity which was running through the country. Thomas Shaw’s Mortgage was paid off and by the end of 1854, the remaining debt of £2,640 was discharged.

After 10 years, the status of the three schools within the social life of Liverpool had been clarified, although many people doubted whether they did more than scratch the surface of the problem of local education. An article by a Doctor Hume, a former history master at the college, declared that the Upper school compared with that of the Royal Institution in Colquitt St, its middle school with the Mechanics Institute in Mount Street, and its Lower School with the Lower school at the Mechanics. There were thoughts that the Upper School should have moved to a house in Sefton Park but whilst Howson saw the significant changes in the character of Shaw Street and the Everton area, he was aware that the financial stability of the Institution had not yet reached a point to support such a move. Howson felt that the schools should be in the vanguard of educational progress, but in a report to his committee, he commented ‘The library and Board Room have long been without a carpet; we have no good school bell or clock, the ventilation is imperfect; the dining arrangements are still incomplete, the windows have never been cleaned for years, and the woodwork requires painting. Furthermore, he pointed out that school dinners cost 8d per day, without beer, and consisted of a single plate of beef or mutton with vegetables, a roll of bread, and a glass of water. Beer was only served if the principal gave permission on the grounds of health. Punishment was to make boys sit still and do nothing for up to three hours at a time. ‘I write letters,’ said Howson. ‘If they speak, they stay longer. I find no punishment so disliked. They dread my turn on duty.’ He recognised that the Upper School set the academic standard, although it was not flourishing as well as its founders had intended. The greater brainwork of the upper school demanded longer holidays, whilst the Masters would have liked a whole Saturday holiday too, but parents were  unwilling to have their boys at home all day on Saturdays. The prosperity of the school was affected by the changing character of Liverpool. The well to do were moving out of Everton to the South end in Princess Park and the rural land beyond. It is to be noted that some boys walked over eight.

 miles per day in their four journeys to and from school. But Howson was a progressive and with great foresight encouraged parents from the new suburbs of Seaforth, Walton, Knotty, Ash, Wavertree, and Childwall, and further afield to send their boys to the schools by arranging cheap fares on the ferries and the rapidly developing railway systems.

Academically, the Institution went from strength to strength both in university entrance and in the new Oxford and Cambridge public examination, to be taken by boys of 18 years and 16 years. In 1864, the cumbersome title of the Collegiate Institution was changed to the Liverpool College, since at that time it was commonly known as ‘the College’. It was significant that boys could transfer from the Lower school to the Middle School to the Upper School. Howson  retired in 1865 and it is a tribute to him that by that time there were 879 boys in  the College with 185 in the Upper School.

George Butler, the husband of Josephine Butler (social reformer), succeeded Howson. Himself a fine scholar and sportsman who had played cricket for Durham, he embarked on a programme of academic development for seven years up to 1872, and pioneered the teaching of geography. He once remarked. ‘Boys are something like guns. What comes out of them depends on what is put into them’. It was even said that Butlers’, mongrel, dog, Bunty understood Latin and Greek. He improved the playing fields for in his time the boys had time off for games and to compensate for this he extended the morning to 12:30 PM.

In 1869, Butler’s Boys gained 6 open scholarships, whilst a Tradesman’s son became Senior Wrangler at Cambridge University. However, whilst the Upper School was thriving, the Middle and Lower Schools were losing money. He was faced with the dilemma of continuing to build an academic forcing-house or make the school pay by increasing commercial tuition.

In the 1870s, Liverpool had grown into a great urban community of more than 500,000 which demanded an increased activity by the City Council in health, housing and education; but despite the provision of public wash-houses and the appointment of the first Medical Officer in England, there were terrible hardships and poor living conditions. Meanwhile, Butler began to join his wife in her social work in towns all over the North and Midlands, and to some extent neglected the college by his preoccupation with the social problems of the large towns. By 1878, the position of the College was fast becoming perilous, but the link that had been forged with Liverpool Council of Education since its foundation in 1874 saved the day. This body was established to promote and encourage  elementary education by every means. The council set up scholarships to allow Liverpool Board Schools’ boys to attend the College and it was possible for them to work their way to the highest academic honours at Oxford and Cambridge. Thus academic honours were high, but numbers and revenue were low.  George Butler resigned in 1882, consoled by the success of his pupils, and was followed by a dynamic young man, Edward Selwyn, Junior Dean of Kings College, Cambridge.

Selwyn pressed his committee to move the upper school to Sefton Park and although they hedged and dithered, they finally agreed to purchase a house in Lodge Lane to which some of the boys in the Upper School moved in 1884. With a more youthful staff the numbers immediately picked up and the Lodge Lane building became an exciting place compared with the Shaw St premises of the Middle and Lower schools, which were frightful, with the floors never scrubbed, the windows never cleaned and the ceiling is never white washed. Even so, the British Medical Association met there in 1882 and 1883. Selwyn re-laid the foundation of the schools and when he left in 1888 to assume the headship of Uppingham the Upper School was financially carrying the Middle and Lower Schools in Shaw St. A new principal, Frank Dyson, sometime fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge saw the transfer of all the Upper School to new buildings in Lodge Lane in 1890, (presently occupied by Arundel Comprehensive School). On two afternoons each week, a hansom cab would arrive at Lodge Lane at 2:00 PM. and the principal in frock coat and silk hat would depart for Shaw St, which needed some looking after. The National Department of Science and Art gave a small capitation grant and the local authority, added another, familiarly known as ‘whisky money’. In 1891, the city. Council voted £400 for technical instruction at Shaw St. Through the 90s the Middle and Lower (now called Commercial) Schools lost £150 per year, whilst 90% of the boys were the sons of Clarks working men and small tradesmen who had come from public elementary schools the fees £4  and £5 a year were already a strain on the pockets of parents.

Liverpool was not obliged to provide secondary education at this time, but their attitude changed with the 1902 Education Act when the City Council set up on Education Sub-Committee with the duty to introduce a new scheme of secondary education. The Institute School in Mount Street was handed over to the City Council and this school suddenly entered on a new prosperous life, while Shaw St remained as poor as ever.

In 1904, the City commissioned Michael Sadler of Manchester University to report on secondary education in Liverpool. He found the educational endowment per 1,000 in Manchester was £11  18s; Hey.  Bury £21 4s; and Liverpool, 10s  7p. Soon after Sadler's report was published, negotiations started with the City Council to take over the Shaw St premises. This brought the Old Boys into the battle to save the Shaw Street School because they felt that the three schools of the old Collegiate Institution had a common tradition which should continue. A dinner was held at the Adelphi attended by the next principal J. B. Lancelot, to arouse support for a target of £2,500 . However, the Old Boys Union failed miserably. Then Mr W.L. Gladstone started another save Shaw St Fund with a gift of £300. Inspired by this donation, the defenders made one last attack into the enemy territory. A meeting was held at the town hall and a target of £2,600  was fixed. The amount was not forthcoming and in November 1906 renewed approaches were made to Councillor Alsop and the Education Committee. The fight was over and on Wednesday, 3rd of July 1907 the Shaw St Schools were sold to Liverpool Corporation for £12,500. The portraits of the founders were removed to the College in Lodge Lane and the Shaw St Schools reverted to a form of their original title and became the Liverpool Collegiate School, which, like the new independent Liverpool College, was to achieve a greatness of its own during the next 50 years.                    E.S. Downham