Hello
I hope you can help.
My ancestors lived in Toxteth Park around the early 1900s.
In the 1911 census, Annie Abrahams was a patient in the Toxteth Park Samaritan Hospital For Women (36 Up parliament Street). Would you be able to tell me what manner of hospital this was?
In 1924, her mother Hannah Abrahams died at 104 Falkner street. What was this street like in the 1920s? Was it a respectable area or rather less so?
I hope that you will be able to help.
Dan Abrahams
Falkner Street
ReplyDeleteWas originally known as Crabtree lane, but was renamed Falkner Street after Edward Falkner, who it was said raised a thousand men in under one hour for the defence of the town, when the French threatened to invade.
Falkner Square
Laid out by Edward Falkner who had intended calling it Wellington Square Although the houses were of a handsome design many stood empty for years. The square was located too far out of town and up a not inconsiderable incline when the mode of transport was horse and carriage. It soon became known as 'Falkners Folly'
regards
Rob Ainsworth
Liverpool History Society
Re No. 104 Falkner Street Liverpool 8
ReplyDelete104 Falkner Street was my great-grandmother's house. She was named Alice Matthews, later Corlett, and she occupied the house from the 1880s until her death some time in the 1920s. Her daughter (my great-aunt) Georgina (Ena) Corlett, later Quilliam and later still Field, then lived in the house until 1949 when she moved away from Liverpool.
Alice, and later Ena, took in lodgers, and I imagine that Hannah Abrahams was one of these. When he was a small child, my father often stayed at the house in the 1920s, and he used to say that it was always full of people.
The houses near the Grove Street intersection were not as grand as those towards the Hope Street junction. They were in terraces, three-storeyed with basements. In the 1920s I believe the street was considered very respectable. As a very small child in the 1940s, I lived at 104 for a year with my great-aunt. By that time the area was very much run down, the houses soot-blackened and shabby. Inside, Ena kept it spotless, but it was hard work. The house had no electricity (gas lamps throughout) and no inside lavatory, only an outside privy in the back yard. There was a rudimentary bathroom, with a tub that had to be filled with jugs of hot water carried up two flights of stairs from the basement.
The house, and the whole of that part of Falkner Street, was demolished in the late 1950s or early 1960s. As far as I know, no one in the family has a photograph of it, either in its better days or its decline, but although it was more than sixty years ago I have the clearest memories of it.
BB