3-034-632 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lord Derby laying the first stone of the Seamen Orphan Institution, [at Newsham Park,] Liverpool, 1871. 'The estimated cost of the new institution, which will accommodate 200 boys and 100 girls, is about £30,000...Mr. Alfred Waterhouse is the architect, and Messrs. Haigh and Co. are the contractors...the Earl of Derby made a speech, in which he spoke of the different classes by whose exertions Liverpool had been made the first seaport in the world, especially the seamen of the mercantile marine: "Of all labour there is none to which we are more indebted, or in regard to which we ought to be more willing to pay back some part of that debt, than to the sailor of our merchant service. At the best a sailor's is a way of life which involves absence from home and family during at least two thirds of a man's time. It involves poor and crowded lodgings...while when on duty the sailor is exposed to dangers which no human skill, or care, or science can always avert. In fact, no care, skill, or sympathy can make that life other than a hard and precarious one"...several speakers...offered large donations to the building fund. Mr. Charles M'Iver, of the Cunard Company, who had individually given £1000, promised another sum of £1000 from his company'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.