Catalogue description Records of the Roscoe Club and Liverpool Athenaeum.

Associated Material Old no. Hf 107

David Lewis Northern Hospital, 1834-1978, Liverpool

Presented to the Library by Joseph Boult, Esq., 26 May, 1881.

• Liverpool

The formation of the Roscoe Club and Liverpool Athenaeum was the outcome of a public meeting held on 22 April, 1847. A petition of the inhabitants to the Mayor had requested such a meeting [see 942 MD 32] and several preliminary meetings had already been held as the result of a series of letters to the "Liverpool Weekly News" by G.T. Stewart, urging the need, in Liverpool, for a club combining the benefits of social intercourse and intellectual stimulas. Many of the leading Liverpool men of the day fostered the scheme and the Club was intended, especially, for the "large body of young men engaged in business", on the lines of the Whittington Club in London and the Manchester Athenaeum. The Club's facilities included a Library and Reading Room and its activities covered concerts, conversazioni, soirées, etc.

However, by September, 1850, the Club's expenditure was so far exceeding its income that its activities had to be suspended, never, apparently to be resumed.

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