CULTURE AND COMMERCE: Liverpool's merchant elite c. 1790-1850 Thesis submitted in accordap'PP ACauirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Dö Arline Margaret Wilson October 1996 Table of Contents Page Acknowledgements iii Notes on sources IV List of tables V Abbreviations VI Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Setting the Scene: Economic Rise and Cultural beginnings 8 Chapter 2 Liverpool's cultural icon; William Roscoe and the Florence of the north 43 Chapter 3 The Scholar Businessman; the Liverpool Royal Institution 79 Chapter 4 Liverpool's Learned Societies 128 Chapter 5 Liverpool and the Visual Arts 185 Chapter 6 Liverpool and the Performing Arts 214 Conclusion 241 Appendices 1. Presidents of Liverpool Institutions and Societies 245 2. Detailed plan of the Liverpool Royal Institution 252 3. Selected list of scholars of the Liverpool Royal Institution 255 i Page 4. Societies meeting in the Liverpool Royal Institution by 1881 259 5. Comparison of Learned Societies 262 6. List prepared by the Council of the Liverpool Polytechnic Society 'as calculated to suggest' desirable subjects for future communications 263 7. Liverpool Musical Societies 1790-1850 266 8. Some Liverpool Theatres 267 9. Notes on various Liverpool Institutions 270 10. Selected Biography 272 Bibliography 290 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly I must thank my family who have required great patience to live with someone who, especially in the latter stages of this thesis, lost both her sense of humour and her sense of proportion. Special thanks are due to Christine and Stephen Williams for sympathetic comments and criticisms and to Helen Wilson for help with proof-reading. The staff of the various libraries I have used have given valuable assistance, in particular Katy Hooper, Special Collections, Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool. The Department of History, University of Liverpool has provided much material aid - my thanks especially to Dr. J. Kermode for welcome moral support, to my room-mate Nick Hardy for many invaluable discussions on different aspects of Liverpool's history and to Dr. Diana Newton for her constant friendship and patience. I am indebted to the British Academy and also various members of my family for the financial support without which I would not have been able to complete this work. My last and greatest debt of gratitude is to my supervisor, Professor John Belchem, without whose encouragement, considerable forbearance, ideas and time, this work would never have been completed. III Notes on Sources The Liverpool Record Office and the University of Liverpool were the main sources for material. The Holt and Gregson Collection is extensive and useful for information on eighteenth-century Liverpool. The Roscoe letters and papers letters, although well trawled, are important not only for shedding light on William Roscoe but on the wider cultural and political arena. Minute books and annual reports were the most useful source for the societies, with the exception of the Liverpool Philomathic Society, most of whose early records have been lost. Subscription lists proved variable, often giving names but no addresses. Many of the records of the Liverpool Royal Institution were lost in the bombing of 1941, making a full account difficult. However, much information is to be found in the annual reports and resolutions. The Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire are a rich vein of information for anyone interested in the history of Liverpool. iv Tables page 1. Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society; membership occupational structure, March, 1812.133 2. Honorary members of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society 1812-1817.137 3. Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society; occupational analysis of the contributors of papers and the total numbers presented by each group. 140 4. Summary of the contents of the papers delivered before the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society 1812-1821. 141 5. Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society; membership occupational structure, 1844 151 6. Liverpool Philomathic Society; membership and attendance 1847-1867.164 7. Liverpool Polytechnic Society; occupational structure, 1838.169 V Abbreviations BAAS British Association for the Advancement of Science L. R.O. Liverpool Record Office Lit. and Phil. Literary and Philosophical Society O. U. P. Oxford University Press S. J. L. Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool T. H. S. L.C. Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire T. U. H. S. Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society vi Introduction Time waswhen 'gentleman' was lookedupon as a title inherentlybelonging to Liverpool men.' Recent years have seen something of a growth in studies of the English middle classes. A major factor in this upsurge of interest has been the development of approaches seeking to explain the perceived crisis of British capitalism. Much ink has been expended on this theme, which, originating in the 19GOswith the 'New Left' critique of Anderson and Nairn, was revivified by historians such as Martin Wiener and W. D. Rubinstein in the Thatcher years. 2 Although sharply differentiated in terms of aims and assumptions, they nevertheless share the same pervasive themes - the failure of the middle classes to recognise their hegemonic potential, that England remained dominated by the noblesse oblige of aristocracy and Eton, and the calamitous effects this had on the state of the British economy and society. 3 Cain and Hopkins, on the other hand, argue that gentlemanly capitalism 'The Roscoe Magazine, 1st March 1849, p. 13 2p Anderson, 'Origins of the present crisis', New Left Review, 23, (1964); T. Nairn, 'The British political elite', New Left Review, 23, (1964); M. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980, (Cambridge, 1981); W. D. Rubinstein, 'Wealth, elites and the class structure of Britain', Past and Present, 76, (1977). 'Simon Gunn, 'The "failure" of the Victorian Middle Class; a critique', in Janet Wolff and John Seed (eds. ), The Culture of Capital- Art, Power and The Nineteenth Century Middle Class, (Manchester, 1988), p. 18. I emerged not as a response to industrialisation but as a result of an alliance formed in the eighteenth century between the landed elite, and the city and 4 southern investors to further the cause of British overseas expansion. W. D. Rubinstein asserts that contrary to the idea of Britain as the workshop of the world, it was never fundamentally an industrial or manufacturing economy at all but always essentially a commercial, financial and service based one, 5 centred in and around the metropolis. This division between the commercial south and the industrial north, it is suggested, manifested itself not only in source of income but also in terms of attitude and behaviour. Both these approaches have stimulated much lively debate on the 'making' of the British middle class° and they have been accompanied by a number of important empirical studies which have been concerned not only with the economic and political agenda but which have emphasised the importance of 7 cultural forms and practices in the creation of an elite. Efforts to redress the perceived image of a philistine industrial middle class and challenge this "P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, 'Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas; 1. The Old Colonial System 1688-1850', Economic History Review, 2nd series, 39,4, (1986), pp. 501- 525. 5W.D. Rubinstein,Capitalism, Culture and Decline in Britain, (London, 1993). 6Seefor example M. J. Daunton, '"Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Industry 1820-1914', Past and Present, 122, (1989), pp. 119-158, and Daunton's exchange with W. D. Rubinstein, 'Debate; Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Industry 1820-1814', Past and Present, 132 (1991), pp. 151-187; and most recently 'Aspects of the History of the British Middle Class c. 1750 to the Present'. A Conference held at Manchester Metropolitan University, 12-13 September 1996. 7See for example, Theodore Koditschek, C/ass Formation and Urban Industrial Society: Bradford, 1750-1850, (Cambridge, 1990); R. J. Morris, Class, Sect and Party. The Making of the British Middle Class: Leeds 1820-1850, (Manchester, 1990); Janet Wolff and John Seed (eds.), The Culture of Capital. John Seed, 'Unitarianism, political economy and the antimonies of liberal culture in Manchester, 1830-1850', Social History, 7,1, (January, 1982), pp. 1-25. 2 distinction between industrial and commercial England have seen a great deal of this attention focus on the north. Liverpool, whose prosperity was founded on commerce rather than manufacturing has been seen as atypical and its cultural forms and practices have featured little in this work. 8 However, Liverpool, it could be argued, has the classic credentials to fulfil a role in treatises that assert the primacy of commercial enterprise over spinning and smelting in England's rise to pre-eminence. Yet, as John Belchem points out, for Cain and Hopkins 'gentlemanly capitalism seems not to have extended beyond the City of London and the Home Counties' and Liverpool, once again, is rendered exceptional, this time not by the source of her wealth but by her geographical location. 9 With the idea of two middle classes increasingly being deemed too simplistic and unsatisfactory, 10a study of the culture of Liverpool, may well serve to emphasise that the middle class was 'made' in many different ways and in a variety of different contexts. Liverpool's rise from an insignificant seaport at the start of the eighteenth- century to a position at its close where the town was vaunting its position as OCertain themes have been addressed but these have mainly concentrated on economic lpsqps and the political and sectarian divisions within the city, for example, P.J. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism; A political and social history of Liverpool 1868-1839, (Liverpool, 1981); Frank Neal, Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 1819-1914, (Manchester, 1988); John Belchem (ed. ), Popular Politics, Riot and Labour: Essays in Liverpool history 1790- 1940, (Liverpool, 1992).