Friday, February 24, 2023 – THE DARK HISTORY OF A GRAND BUILDING
FROM THE ARCHIVES
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2023
ISSUE 922
St George’s Hall Tour,
Liverpool: Grand Building’s Ugly
Connection to Australia
TRAVELLER
Traveller is an Australian publication that covers interesting and historic sites all over the world. Step away from New York and learn the good and bad history of the Liverpool landmark.
Once considered the grandest building in all of Britain, St George’s Hall in Liverpool has a dark underbelly with a strong connection to Australia. Photo: iStock
“They were very clever, the Victorians. They were also incredibly cruel.”
The words are spoken by John, a volunteer guide at St George’s Hall in Liverpool, England, as he shows me the building’s air conditioning vents.
An ingenious system of air shafts, water fountains and canvas flaps kept the occupants cool in summer. Opened in 1854, the enormous Neoclassical building is widely considered to be the world’s first to feature an air conditioning system.
The History Whisperer tour takes you into the underbelly of St George’s Hall.
But the engineering and architecture, as clever as it is, is not what I’m here for. Today I’m getting a taste of that Victorian cruelty instead.
Once considered the grandest building in all of Britain, St George’s Hall in Liverpool has a dark underbelly with a strong connection to Australia.
But the engineering and architecture, as clever as it is, is not what I’m here for. Today I’m getting a taste of that Victorian cruelty instead.
Once considered the grandest building in all of Britain, St George’s Hall in Liverpool has a dark underbelly with a strong connection to Australia.
In 1839 the city announced a competition to design a grand hall for public events. Then 25-year-old architect Harvey Lonsdale Elmes won, but before starting work he won a second competition to also design Liverpool’s courthouse. In the end, they decided to combine the two.
But it’s this latter part of St George’s Hall that is the focus of a new interactive exhibition, The History Whisperer, telling the stories of some of the prisoners who found themselves facing justice, if that is the right word, in the courts.
Thousands of prisoners were sentenced to transportation to Australia here, often for minor offences like the theft of a pen.
The History Whisperer takes you through the holding cells, which were often packed with up to 30 prisoners in each cramped space. Each one uses projections and lighting effects to tell stories of various people who passed through, what their crimes were and how they were each sentenced.
Throughout, we’re also given the narrative story of Livie, a young Irish immigrant whose brother Jack is arrested and sentenced to transportation. While the characters are fictional, their experiences are not. It’s a heart-rending look at a terrible time for common people living in Britain, where judges were ordered to meet quotas for transportation in order to deliver a workforce to the new colony and reduce the overcrowded prisons of the UK.
While there’s plenty of information to be had through the exhibits, there are often volunteer guides like John on hand to offer further detail. After the cells, I ascend a spiral staircase that leads into the Crown Court, the same way prisoners would have entered, where clever use of projections recreates a trial from the era (the average “trial” reportedly lasted just eight minutes).
The courtroom is in remarkably good condition, but perhaps it’s not all that surprising when I learn they were still in regular use until 1984 and even temporarily went back into use after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in order to cope with a backlog of cases.
The verdict (guilty, of course) and sentence (transportation, of course) handed down, my visit is at an end.
It strikes me that, right next door in the same building is the Great Hall – an opulent space with an ornate vaulted ceiling, chandeliers and a spectacular mosaic-tiled floor (consisting of 30,000 tiles, it was once the world’s largest and is now covered with a wooden removable floor, unveiled to the public for a limited time once a year). Behind this, the Concert Hall is smaller but no less impressive, with its Greek-style caryatids and 2824-piece chandelier.
It is a cruel irony that in these grand spaces, where many attended pleasurable events, others faced such pain in the adjacent room. Cruel indeed.
The courtroom, where the History Whisperer tour ends. Photo: kenb
DETAILS
The History Whisperer experience at St George’s Hall is open hourly from 10am to 3pm, Tuesday to Saturday. Tickets are £6 for adults.
St George’s Hall is directly opposite Liverpool’s main train station, Lime Street at St George’s Place.
See https://www.stgeorgeshallliverpool.co.uk/
The writer visited as a guest of Visit Liverpool.
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
ONE OF THE 5 KIOSK ENTRANCES AT THE FOOT OF THE
QUEENSBORO BRIDGE.
JUDY SCHNEIDER, ELLEN JACOBY, NINA LIBLIN
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
TRAVELLER
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
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