Merseyside football and the slave trade

ABSTRACT

This paper is about the roots of Everton Football Club and, given their shared heritage, Liverpool FC. It concerns a dimension to the history of both clubs that has been largely overlooked but should be considered in light of Liverpool’s ongoing civic reckoning with its historic slave trade connection. The research carried out suggests that the foundation period of professional football on Merseyside was marked by the patronage of well-known figures in Liverpool society who, directly or indirectly, profited from the exploitation of slave and other forms of coerced labour. It is contended that there was a reciprocal relationship between a cohort of club patrons and the evolving football scene in the city. It is also argued that Everton FCs recent commitment to memorialize the slave associations of the dock land site of its new stadium – a move it has reaped praise for – can also be viewed negatively as an underscoring of the ‘maritimisation’ of the impact of slavery, further obscuring the pervasiveness of the slavery story beyond maritime spaces.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Hunter, ‘Everton Plan for New Stadium in Kirkby Rejected by Government’.

2. Hunter, ‘UNESCO Strips Liverpool of its World Heritage Status’.

3. Hughes, ‘John Bramley-Moore’.

4. Mulhern, ‘Everton’s New Bramley-Moore Stadium’.

5. Kendall-Raynor, ‘Everton to Acknowledge Bramley Moore Dock History of Slavery at New Stadium Site’.

6. Ibid.

7. BBC Liverpool 24 August 2020. ‘Liverpool Identifies First Streets for Slavery Signs’.

8. Wolfe-Robinson, ‘Slavery museum to be expanded’.

9. A claim made in the following sources: Longmore, ‘‘Cemented by the Blood of a Negro?’, 243.

10. 8E blog ‘The City of Liverpool’s Apology’.

11. Rand, L. ‘University of Liverpool Accepts Slavery Roots’. The University of Liverpool emerged out of the Liverpool Royal Institution, which was founded in 1812 and had a number of backers from Liverpool merchant families who profited from the transatlantic slave trade, including the Earles, Gladstones, Brooks, Branckers, Cases and Tobins.

12. Traynor, Luke. ‘Top City School Confirms Slave Trade Founder Changes After Protest’.

13. The Reader blog.

14. National Museums Liverpool, ‘Clarke Aspinall’.

15. Lewin ‘Clarke Aspinall, A Biography’.

16. Liverpool Mercury 18 September 1812.

17. John Bridge Aspinall. Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.

18. Examples of this are Thomas Clarkson’s History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (1808) and J.M.W. Turner’s painting Slavers rowing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhon Coming On (1840).

19. Lewin ‘Clarke Aspinall, A Biography’.

20. Hansard, 21 March 1876.

21. Hansard, 7 June 1880.

22. Liverpool Mercury, 18 January 1833.

23. Mulhern, J. ‘After 1833, British Entanglement with Brazilian Slavery’. 60–61.

24. Viscount Sandon’s intervention began the campaign in 1873. Hansard, 23 June 1873.

The matter was taken on by George Anderson MP. The substance of the dispute over the long-standing claims was revealed in 1881. Hansard, 25 July 1881.

25. McCutcheon, J. ‘Cunard: A Photographic History’, 16.

26. Powell, J. ‘Cotton, Liverpool and the American Civil War’, 150.

27. See comments made by Samuel Cunard in Daniels, S. ‘Punitive Damages’, 24–26.

28. Ibid, 150.

29. ‘Cambria Pt 2’, Frederick Douglass in Britain and Ireland. http://frederickdouglassinbritain.com/journey/CambriaPt2/

30. ‘Cambria Pt 1’, Frederick Douglass in Britain and Ireland. http://frederickdouglassinbritain.com/journey/CambriaPt1/

31. Douglass Monthly, ‘The Cunard Steamship Company’.

32. In the House of Lords the British peer Lord Brougham drew the attention of the chamber to a journey he had on board a Cunard liner where he had witnessed racial discrimination. ‘Debate in the House of Lords’ Douglass’ Monthly, September 1860.

33. This is a point made also by France, D. and Prentice, D, Virgin Blues, 3–4.

34. see Liverpool Courier, 15 April 1881; Liverpool Courier, 12 July 1883; Liverpool Courier, 31 March 1884.

35. Keates, T. History of the Everton Football Club, 7–8.

36. Ibid 10–11.

37. see as examples ‘Everton FC, The Annual General Meeting of 1882’, Liverpool Athletic News. 17 May 1882; ‘Everton Football Club, Liverpool Courier: 12 July 1883.

A search for private papers of the patrons to shed any further light on possible financial donations to the Liverpool club was unsuccessful. Apart from correspondence between the Earl of Harrowby and Liverpool City Council leader Arthur Forwood, which are of a political nature, it appears that the patrons left no documentation of a biographical nature that could assist in this matter.

38. See as examples: Fishwick, N. English Football and Society, 29–30 and 136; Mason, T. Association Football, 43–45; Russell, D. Football and the English, 44–45 and 114; Tischler, S. Footballers and Businessmen, 137–136; Walvin, J. Football and the Decline of Britain, 107.

39. Profile and Legacies Summary. The family owned 161 slaves on St Kitts working in their sugar cane plantations and sugar boiling factory. ‘Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. Profile and Legacies Summary. Sir William Milliken-Napier’.

Old Glasgow Club. Minutes of Ordinary Meeting.

40. Kennedy, D. A Social and Political History of Everton and Liverpool. 48–49 and 60–61.

41. Baggett, F. ‘The Slave Capital in the Era of Abolition’. 14–16.

42. ‘John Bramley-Moore’, The Athletic, 26 October 2022.

43. See for example the work of Beech, John G. ‘The Marketing of Slavery Heritage’; Moody, J. ‘Liverpool’s Local Tints’. 150–71.

44. Moody, The Persistence of Memory. 265.

45. Olusoga, ‘The History of British Slave Ownership’.