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Russell Croft

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Liverpool Zoological Gardens

  • Post published:February 2, 2021
  • Post category:Urban History (Liverpool)
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Sadly, no trace remains of Liverpool Zoological Gardens, “a place of favourite and fashionable resort” in its day, which graced the south-side of West Derby Road beyond the old Necropolis…

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In Memoriam

  • Post published:October 21, 2016
  • Post category:Urban History (Liverpool)
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I was in Liverpool recently for a day and decided to go over the water to visit the U-Boat Story museum at Birkenhead, where salvaged German submarine U-534 lies at…

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A Sentimental Journey

  • Post published:July 1, 2015
  • Post category:Urban History (Liverpool)
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I was passing through Liverpool lately and thought I would take a sentimental journey (after the title of one of his solo albums) into the city’s South End to look at…

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At The Landing Stage

  • Post published:April 6, 2015
  • Post category:Hugh Shimmin/Urban History (Liverpool)
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I have written previously about the journalist Hugh Shimmin, who was such a vivid observer of Liverpool’s mid-Victorian low-life, and such a committed activist for improved social conditions in the…

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Liverpool’s Own St Paul’s

  • Post published:October 1, 2014
  • Post category:Urban History (Liverpool)
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One of the most prominent and distinctive buildings on nineteenth century Liverpool’s skyline would have been the beautiful, but now long demolished, St Paul’s church. I have a personal connection…

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An Oriel Prospect

  • Post published:September 3, 2014
  • Post category:Hugh Shimmin/Urban History (Liverpool)
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Liverpool must have presented a magnificent prospect to visitors in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, whether arriving by sea or rail. They could hardly fail to be impressed…

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Hugh Shimmin’s Journalism

  • Post published:July 1, 2014
  • Post category:Hugh Shimmin/Urban History (Liverpool)
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Writing in the 1850s and 1860s, often in his own publication the Porcupine, Hugh Shimmin invokes a desperate Liverpudlian landscape of squalid and overcrowded living, causal labour, acute poverty, hopeless drink…

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Recent Posts

  • The Omnivorous Omnibus
  • Leeds Leylands’ Life
  • Liverpool Zoological Gardens
  • Nautical Nassau
  • Wild Woodhouse Moor

Recent Comments

  • Jim Ramsden on The Omnivorous Omnibus
  • Carol Dixon on Leeds Leylands’ Life
  • Jim Ramsden on Leeds Leylands’ Life

Categories

  • Hugh Shimmin (3)
  • Jewish History (1)
  • Suffragists (2)
  • The Author Abroad (1)
  • Urban History (Bradford) (2)
  • Urban History (Leeds) (8)
  • Urban History (Liverpool) (7)
  • Urban History (London) (3)

Copyright © Russell Croft 2021

Banner image: detail from The Dancing Platform at Cremorne Gardens (Phoebus Levin, 1864), Museum of London.
This setting is featured in the chapter of Bring Him in Mad entitled ‘A Christmas Pantomime’.