‘A Bit of Liverpool’

Strolling through the slums of Liverpool in 1883, a journalist made a startling observation. Although there were plenty of old women, there were few old men. It was as if males didn't survive long in such a dangerous environment. Indeed, many men had the ‘bruised and baited look of a fighting bulldog’. Hugh Shimmin described the typical Liverpool ‘rough’ in similar terms: ‘men of short stature, with big heads, broad, flat faces, and thick necks [with] white trousers turned up at the bottom to show their high-laced, greasy boots’. Physically, Liverpool men were built for fighting. Add to this a psychological propensity for violence and the police courts were destined to remain busy. Shimmin, again, makes a revealing comment about the volatile nature of the Liverpool temperament: ‘The transition from a coarse word or a ribald jest to a kick, from a poker to a knife, is made with alarming rapidity.’ The hospitals, as much the police courts, were well aware of this. The north-end hospital, each Saturday night, required two extra nurses to prepare bandages.

Liverpool had a notorious reputation for violence. In 1874, in Blackburn, a local ruffian armed with a knife severely kicked two policemen. Upon severing the finger of one of them, he vowed to ‘give them a bit of Liverpool’. The town's reputation owed much to its history of sectarian battles and ruffianism imported from the Emerald Isle. The Irish were viewed as particularly savage street fighters who kicked, bit and scratched.