odd bits of info.

Hi All.

I am reading a book Title Liverpool.Our City ..Our Heritage by Freddie O'Connor. it is a very detailed history of Liverpool. including the more unsavory bits. In the Chapter on Scotland Rd / Vauxhall. there is a Quotation from a report from 1880's called Squalid Liverpool.It is quite long, but gives a very good insight into the times. also a couple of names which may be of interest.

''In Comus Street and Bent St we came across cases of sickness.In No 1 Court in the former St we found a poor little lad lying on a bundle of rags,apparently in the first stages of Scarlet Fever. No Doctor had been called to see him. In No 4 Court, Bent St another little child was seen lying in a bed also showing symptoms of fever. it was touching in the extreme to witness the patient weariness of these little sufferers. Born to pain and misery, even disease appealed to their young minds merely as an incident of life a little more painful than usual. In the same Court, in No 1 House,lives John Oliver. who served his Queen for twenty-one years in the army, who fought through the latter portion of the Indian Mutiny, and who receives from his grateful fellow-countrymen the magnificent sum of ninepence a day. He is now apparently threatened with paralysis. Another pensioner. John Walsh. occupies a room in this house.Both men belonged to the 1st Battalion 23rd Regiment* These men fought the dusky allies of Nana Sahib for the sake of other people's lives; now they are fighting squalor and want on behalf of their own. The latter conflict they find more terrible of the two.
* Royal Welch Fusiliers ''
There is a reference earlier in the book about Working Class families. and an even lower ''Hand to Mouth Class''.

I just thought that the References to these RWF men might be of some interest.



ivor