James Aspinall - Liverpool a few years since - by an old stager

This little volume has been twice published, and this issue of it is in ready response to the “third time of asking” by an appreciating public, largely, as we imagine, made up of families associated in some way or other with “Old Liverpool” as it appeared in the earlier part of the present century.

The traditions of the “Good Old Town” naturally have an interest to many of us who are also quite able and equally willing to estimate at their full value the modern development and rapid progress of the “New City.”

passes rapidly on, but even the days that are spent may

and so give us often very bright and happy retrospects.

Perhaps it may soon be a self-inspired and pleasurable task for someone to take up the thread of the “Old Stager’s” story, and bring it down to the present time. Meanwhile, let us hope that the kindly enterprise of the publisher may be rewarded by a rapid demand for this little book, at once of real interest to old Liverpool families and at the same time so simple and sketchy in its style as to give it no place whatever in the “records” of the community.

In the year 1852, Liverpool a Few Years Since , by “An Old Stager,” was republished in “a more abiding form” than it had previously assumed in the columns of the Liverpool Albion . The little book sold off rapidly, notwithstanding its being somewhat expensive, as compared with the wonderfully cheap publications of the day, and it is now out of print. It has many a time and oft been suggested that a further and cheaper issue would be acceptable to the Liverpool public, The publisher has, therefore, assumed the responsibility of the present issue; and, learning that such was his intention, I have ventured to “preface” the original preface by a word or two in explanation of the circumstances and surroundings under which the Author penned these sketches.

It is scarcely imparting information, to make known the simple truth that the “Old Stager” in question was none other than the late Rev. James Aspinall, M.A. Oxon, at one time Incumbent of St. Michael’s Church, and more recently officiating at St. Luke’s, and afterwards transferred to the Crown Rectory of Althorpe in Lincolnshire, where he continued to reside until his death in 1861. The “Old Stager” was always a man of great activity of mind and body, and could never be idle. Every moment of his time was turned to some account; and thus the very remote sphere of his parochial and magisterial duties in Lincolnshire never induced the slightest dulness or discontent. With a Church, and a Chapel of Ease three or four miles off, to serve, and with a tolerably large parish to care for, the “Old Stager” was not without considerable clerical duty; and, added to this, he most unwillingly undertook the responsibilities of the magisterial office. Notwithstanding the avocations thus indicated, time was always found for literary pursuits, for receiving and imparting knowledge, for refreshing and renewing his powers of mind, in order to the successful communication, either by voice or pen, of his thoughts and ideas to his neighbours and to the general public. Amid the many written utterances of the “Old Stager’s” ready and comprehensive mind, we must enumerate these notes upon men and things in our good old town, penned with very considerable pleasure to their writer, as being the jottings down of his own personal experiences and recollections of a place and of a people very deeply rooted in the affections of this true son of Liverpool.

We well remember the bright and genial countenance of the “Old Stager,” as he thought aloud upon his old and early associations. Liverpool was his home, as against all other homes. His father had been its chief magistrate so long ago as 1803. His sons, or some of them, had adopted it as their abiding place; and thus, for several generations, this thriving community seemed to the “Old Stager” to smile upon him and upon his belongings, and as a consequence, not at all unnatural, the “Old Stager” felt a devotion to the town, and towards its inhabitants, which kept it and them ever in his grateful remembrance.

The original intention of the Author was to amuse the younger readers of the Albion , by dashing off a few sketches of “men and things,” as he recollects them in Liverpool a few years since. For this purpose all that was worth telling, he thought, might be comprised in about two papers, or chapters. The public, however, like hungry Oliver Twist, revelling on the thin workhouse gruel, flatteringly asked for “more”; and with this request he, not being of a nature akin to that of Mr. Bumble, has willingly complied to the extent of his ability. Nor is this all for which the naughty public is to be held responsible. The chapters having been spun out to the length which they now occupy, greedy Oliver again cries out for “more,” and demands that, instead of being left to die out, and be forgotten, as the ephemeral occupants of the columns of a newspaper, they shall be collected, and re-published in a more abiding form; and once more our good nature triumphs over our prudence, and we comply. Under such circumstances, the writer of these sketches and reminiscences neither courts nor deprecates criticism; his only object in perpetrating these “trifles light as air” was, he repeats, to set before the rising generation a picture of the “good” old town, at the commencement of the present century, and to show them how “men and manners,” and customs and fashions, have changed since the times in which their grandfathers “ruled the roast,” and were the heroes of the day. In working out this design, the Author has had neither dates nor memoranda to refer to, but has trusted entirely to his own powers of recollection, even as far back as the period when he reached the mature age of six years! It is satisfactory, however, to add that, although he has painted wholly from memory, no one has yet disputed the accuracy of any of the characters which he has drawn, the events which he has related, or the anecdotes which he has revived. This may be fairly assumed as a testimony in favour of their correctness. For the rest, he has only once more to say, with Horace, “ Non meus hic sermo ,” etc.; that is, our re-appearance is no fault of our own. Oliver Twist “has done it all,” and must bear the blame.

We are not great at statistics. We do not pretend to be accurate to an hour in dates, chronology, and so forth. We write, indeed, entirely from memory, and therefore may perhaps occasionally go wrong in fixing “the hour for the man, and the man for the hour,” as we dot down a few of our recollections of the “good old town of Liverpool,” from the time when we cast off our swaddling clothes, crept out of our cradle, opened our eyes, and began to exercise our reasoning powers on men and things as in those days they presented themselves to our view. We think that our memory has a faint glimmering of the illuminations which took place when peace was made with Napoleon, in 1801. We also remember being called out of our bed to gaze at the terrible flames when the Goree warehouses were burnt down, and how we crept out of the house at day dawn, and rushed to see the blazing mass and all its tottering ruins in dangerous proximity.