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By British standards Liverpool is a new city and though many of the towns and villages that were absorbed into it's suburbs were there then, Liverpool itself has no record in the Doomsday Book of 1086. When William Roscoe a prominent Liverpool politician was born in 1753 it took 4 days to get from Liverpool to London by coach. Liverpool is 65 miles nearer to Dublin than it is to London. However, Liverpool's links with Ireland go back much further than that. In the year 432, Scottish born Saint Patrick was in Liverpool before sailing to Ireland.
In the days before air travel and the car, Liverpool maintained strong links with many parts of the world including those in Europe, Africa, America and the Far East. In 1737 the Tower of Liverpool, a red sandstone fortress, previously owned by the Stanley family was let to the city as a jail for French prisoners of war. Many escaped and a number were also later paroled and found wives in the area thereby producing descendants in Liverpool today.
The city's population grew quickly. For example between 1831 and 1841, Liverpool's population rose by 43%. In 1847 alone, 300,000 Irish refugees came to Liverpool to leave the famine behind. Many would have crossed the Irish Sea for just six pence on the so called "coffin ships".
Many Irish people also travelled on to America in search of better prospects. Between 1830 and 1930, 9 million emigrants sailed from Liverpool to America. In 1790 the 13 eastern states had a population of only 4 million. In the following two hundred years around 40 million immigrants joined them. By 1845 only 1.5 million had gone in total but failure of the Irish potato crop in 1845 & 1846 resulted in about a quarter of the population emigrating within 10 years. In those days nearly a 1000 ships a year with up to 200,000 emigrants sailed from Liverpool to America. Each emigrant had to pass a "medical examination" before sailing. Up to 3000 per day went went through this process. 1847 was a bad year for emigrants with 17,465 or 1 in 6 dying on their way to North America.
By 1855 emigration was falling off. Ireland was no longer starving and wages in England had risen. Unemployment had started to become a problem in America. In fact so significant was it that in 1854 and 1855 a total of 30,000 unemployed immigrants sailed back to Liverpool.
The large influx had created special problems for Liverpool. In 1849 it was estimated that a total of 23,000 children were running wild in the dockland area alone. By 1880 Liverpool's population had exceeded 600,000. Even before the mass immigration of the 1840's large numbers of Irish people had been coming to Liverpool. As early as 1819 their numbers were high enough for there to be Orange and Green riots in the city.
Richard Mather was one of the earliest emigrants from Liverpool. He was a puritan who had preached his first sermon on 30th November 1618 at the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth. The chapel, situated in Park Road, still exists. Mather was silenced by the Archbishop of York for non-conformity before he decided to seek religious freedom in America in 1635 and settled at Dorchester, Massachusetts. His youngest son, Increase Mather became President and later Rector of Harvard. Paul Revere's house in Boston is built on the site of Increase Mather's house. His oldest son was also famous and participated in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and was President of Yale.
Another early Liverpool emigrant was Robert Morris. Morris was the financial brains behind the American War of Independence and also established the Bank of America. He is also famous for signing the Declaration of Independence. Fighting on the side of the British in that same war was another Liverpolitan, Colonel Banastre Tarleton, born 1754 in Castle Street. He went to America in 1776 and helped capture General Charles Lee and played a leading part in the capture of Charleston and Philadelphia.