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Canon Thomas Major Lester 1829 - 1903 |
Thomas Major Lester was born on 26 August 1829 at Grove Cottage, Fulham, where his mother and father, Elizabeth and John Lester lived. He was their second son and had three brothers and two sisters. Both he and his brothers were educated at Christ's College Cambridge.
He was ordained in Chester Cathedral in 1852 and was licensed as Curate to St. Barnabas' Church, Parliament St., Liverpool. His first position as priest was as Curate at St, Mary's Kirkdale, Liverpool in 1853. After a brief spell in a Manchester parish, he returned to St Mary's Kirkdale in 1855. He took up residence at 294 Netherfield Road North (which later became part of the Victoria Settlement) where he continued to live until his death. During his time there he witnessed immense social, cultural and economic change in the area.
"The handsome mansions and elegant villas of wealthy merchants and others were to be replaced by interminable streets of brick tenements, tier upon tier, standing upon the site of what were once the green fields, trim gardens and pleasure-grounds of Everton. The clear space between Mr. Lester's residence and the sea is now 'a new world of sleepless industry and never-ceasing toil'' with docks innumerable, and a perfect maze of streets and workmen's dwellings..." (Grey-Edwards 1906: 23)
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Everton from Gt. Mersey Street, 1818 (294 Netherfield Road, Major Lester's residence can be seen) |
Everton and Kirkdale from St. George's, 1950s (The tower on the right is that of Our Lady Immaculate School) |
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Everton and Kirkdale in this period were places of stark contrasts, then, between the affluent mercantile classes and the increasing numbers of the impoverished working classes who inhabited the sprawling victorian terraces and courts of the slopes from St George's Hill down to the dock area.
Although the congregations of St Mary's swelled under Major Lester's incumbency, he was struck by the vast numbers of poverty-striken and frequently orphaned and homeless children who roamed the streets destitute.
Prompted by such destitution, in 1856 he inaugurated a mission room over a coal store in Kirkdale Road (previously a school known as "Evans' Academy") for the benefit of the poorest in the area. It was whilst engaged in this otherwise evangelical and spiritual ministry that Major Lester realised "the comparative inutility of such work, as regards the little ones, while their bodies were unclad and unfed, and their minds contaminated by vicious surroundings." (Grey Edwards, 1906:50)
Other rooms in Walton Road and Christopher Street were taken for the expansion of this mission and ultimately, in 1860, the Major Street Ragged Schools were opened. This was the beginning of his great life work - the Kirkdale Child Charity - the first of its kind established in Liverpool.
The Kirkdale Industrial Ragged School in Major Street, named after Major Lester
The school comprised a tailor's shop, a printer's shop, a carpenter's shop and shoemaker's shop, as well as providing facilities for the manufacture of matchboxes and paper bags. There was also a boys schoolroom, a girls and infants schoolroom and a brass band was established. The children were schooled, fed and partly clothed and could buy clogs made for them in the shoemaker's shop. The industrial part of the school was run on a commercial basis, as the accounts for 1901-02 will reveal.
The costs of running the schools were met partly by profit from these commercial enterprises but largely from charitable donations, many of which arrived in response to personal appeals from Major Lester himself. He wrote by hand thousands of letters to potential benefactors and published many appeals for subscriptions in the local press. Here is one from 23 February 1898:
| "This weather has its charms, and special delights; but it also makes us feel our increased responsibility. How can we keep up a worthy supply of lobscouse, and find clogs for the naked and cold-bitten feet, without the means? More fires, more meat, more vegetables, more clogs, and more cash. If this sharp bright weather continues, it will bring home personal responsibility to a multitude of thinking and feeling folk. Coals, meat, flour, rice, clogs, or money can be sent to the schools (Major Street), and all will be eagerly and gratefully welcomed." |
He headed this letter with his nickname "Lobscouse and Clogs"- derived from the way in which he fed and shod his charges. Lobscouse, a meat and vegetable stew, was brought to Liverpool originally by Scandinavian seamen, and was called Labskause. This was shortened to Scouse and is the origin of the nickname Liverpudlians are given today.
In 1864 a separate Home for Girls was opened in Walton Road and an adjoining schoolroom added in 1886. This Home catered for seventy to eighty girls. Grey-Edwards calculates that over 10 000 children passed through the Homes during the forty-eight years they were in existence.
The Girls' Home in Walton Road, opened 1864
Grey-Edwards reproduces a ballad, written and composed by George Repton Webb for the Kirkdale Industrial Ragged School and respectfully dedicated to Major Lester:
When passing through a narrow street Chorus A trembling boy came up to me, Chorus "Then wipe those tears and come with me, "You will be clothed from head to foot; "My humble thanks I now return; "Now I've a home, friends to protect, |
Major Lester's motto was
Give the Child a Fair Chance
and he clearly attempted to do this throughout his work in Kirkdale and Walton not just during the lives of the children but even after their deaths: he owned four graves in Anfield Cemetery and, apart from the grave he is buried in himself (CE section 8 no. 1571), the other three contain bodies of children many of whom have been entered in the burial registers as having their addresses either at the Major Street or Walton Road Homes or as Stanley Hospital, an institution in which he was centrally involved.
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The Stanley Hospital, Stanley Road, Kirkdale |
In addition to his priesthood and preaching and his charitable work for children through the Homes, Major Lester was also a prominent educationist at a key time in the development and provision of public education in England. In the 1870s, following the Forster Education Act, partially state funded board schools were set up to provide primary (elementary) education in areas where existing provision was inadequate. Board schools were managed by elected school boards. In the 1870s Major Lester obtained premises in Everton Valley for St. Mary's Schools (my mother attended here from 1926 until 1935) and raised funds for the building of St. Lawrence's School in Kirkdale which opened in 1873.
In 1891, having served as a member for several years, he was elected Chairman of the Liverpool School Board, following in the footsteps of Christopher Bushell (1870-1873) and S.G. Rathbone (1873 -1891). The names of these three men appear interwoven in the architecture of the front elevation of the Education Offices in St. Thomas Street.
In addition to this he held many other public and voluntary offices including:
- Chairman of the Liverpool Self-help Emigration Society
- President of the Liverpool Food Association
- Committee member of the Liverpool Scripture Readers Society
- Chairman of the Home Colonisation Society
- Chairman of the Kirkdale Burial Board
- President of the Liverpool Ruskin Society
- Chairman and President of the Stanley Hospital
Major Lester died on 3 November 1903 and his remains were laid to rest on Saturday 7 November at Anfield Cemetery. As Grey-Edwards describes it, Liverpool had seldom witnessed so remarkable and touching a spectacle as his funeral.
Signs of mourning were everywhere displayed in the north end of the city; and in the neighbourhood of the deceased's residence, an enormous crowd gathered to witness the departure of the courtège; and traffic was for a long time almost entirely blocked. In the cemetery itself a very touching scene was witnessed, as the procession, headed by 500 of the poorest children in the city, approached the gates with about thirty mourning and private carriages following the hearse, and a large number of boys from the Roman Catholic Homes of Monsignor Nugent and Father Berry, and children from other institutions, with a vast concourse of people who had flocked thither from all parts; there being between 45,000 and 50,000 people present. |
Amongst many local memorials, a statue was commissioned, funded by £1700 raised by public subscription, from George Frampton, RA. Cast in bronze this stands ten feet high and is set on a pedestal twelve feet high in St. John's Gardens, behind St. George's Hall.
A sketch of the memorial statue
The statue in situ in St John's Gardens
Thanks to Dave Wood for use of the image
Visit
Patrick Neil's Memorials site
The final school to be built by the Liverpool School Board before it was replaced in 1903 was named the Major Lester School in Sherlock Street, off Walton Breck Road.
I attended Major Lester from 1955 - 1961, returned as a student teacher on school practice in 1973 and, after a probationary year at St George's Everton, was employed at Major Lester as Scale 2 teacher from 1974 - 1982. I was there in 1978 when the school celebrated its 75th anniversary and a copy of the drawing below was presented to every pupil and member of staff. It was undertaken by Frank Green who also painted a large watercolour which was hung in the school.
I returned there in 2003 to join in the celebrations of the school's 100th anniversary.
Unfortunately the school is no longer named after Major Lester. A few years ago it combined with another nearby school and is now called Hope Valley.
I am indebted to Dot Bromilow who was kind enough to present me with a copy of "A Great Heart, or the Life of Canon Major Lester" on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary celebrations of Major Lester School, in July 2003. I'd been searching for a copy for years and her gift came unexpectedly and gave me great happiness.
Thanks, Dot!
Page created 6 February 2005
Last Update 15 February 2005
Copyright © Dave Evans 2005
unless otherwise indicated
Visitors to this page since 6 Feb 2005
