History of the Liverpool teaching hospitals until 1907.

KING John gave us a charter but little good came of it because Liverpool remained a small fishing village for a long time owing to the difficulty of access, not only to the town but to the port. In the seventeenth century ships became more efficient and trade had now expanded outside the confines of the Irish sea. Daniel Defoe in his book, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain points out that in 1709 the citizens 'made a large basin or wet dock ... where, at immense charge . . . they brought the tide from the Mersee ... and the ships lye as in a millpond ... the like is not to be seen in any place in England'. Defoe writes of 'the fineness of the streets ... the beauty of the buildings ... many of the houses all of free stone ... as handsomely built as London itself'. High praise indeed. He must have seen it in fine weather because others later wrote of narrow streets, by no means clean, and badly drained. Indeed towards the end of the century William Moss, a Liverpool surgeon, wrote a guide to Liverpool with the object of ventilating matters 'needing attention' and mentions that the poorest people live overcrowded in cellars, intemperate in habits and neglectful of their children. The expectation of life in Liverpool in the early nineteenth century was less than in most other places. New factors were making an impact, notably the Assiento Pact of 1713, which allowed Britain to regulate the slave traffic, which was mainly conducted from London and Bristol with Liverpool entering as a competitor. Slaves were not sold in these ports but the trade was a shipowner's dream because he was never compelled to sail an empty ship. He took merchandise to Africa, loaded in exchange a cargo of slaves which he sold in the West Indies or America, then loaded with sugar in the West Indies for delivery to England. It was a fully-laden triangular trip. From America, indigo and rice were shipped, but later cotton became the most important crop. It was because of sugar imports that Liverpool became and still remains the main centre of sugar refinery. Liverpool became wealthy and fortunes were made, amongst others, by the Gladstone family, while in 1798 Pitt stated that of the overseas trade revenues no less than four-fifths came from the West Indies. Liverpool had surpassed Bristol because the latter was not favourably placed; in the hinterland of Liverpool, Lancashire factories had grown apace during the industrial revolution and they required an outlet for their goods. Lancashire was building its 'dark, satanic mills'; Liverpool was building its dark, satanic warehouses. Canal transport, booming in 1760, had made conveyance of goods easier. In Britain, the earlier agricultural revolution had improved food supplies and increased the population. All seemed set fair. The increasing population necessitated a proper provision for the sick so that the