The research commences

I have started researching the names on this memorial following my usual practice of exhausting online sources before tackling the archives (besides, the Liverpool archive is closed for another month) and a few interesting details have come up.

I already knew that a lot of the names were men who had attended the Industrial School, and Capt. Chavasse's name is there due to his link with the school. It would appear that several of the other names are of men whose work in some way connected them with the school. I am hoping that the records of the industrial school will show whether they were patrons, volunteers or worked there etc. At the moment  I have one man who worked as an Assistant Medical Inspector (Health) for Liverpool, a doctor with the RNVR Birkenhead who was himself orphaned at a young age - he didn't attend this school but I can imagine he would have been interested in helping such a charitable institution, also a school master who in the 1911 census was working in a similar type of school for disadvantaged boys. Did he work at Holy Trinity Industrial School also? I hope that further research will clarify their connections to the school (or the church)

The connection with the school means that many of the names I have identified so far came from very disadvantaged backgrounds. Court housing was common in the streets around Upper Parliament Street and the appalling conditions in these places were well documented.  Quite a few of them were orphaned at an early age or lost one parent leaving the remaining parent with several children to look after. The census returns for the school show that not all the boys were from Liverpool. There are one or two from other parts of Lancashire, and a few from Derbyshire but, to my surprise, I found that quite a few of the "inmates" were from London. This is another puzzle that I hope the records will solve - why were boys from London attending a charitable church school in Liverpool?

I am pleased to say that despite my early misgivings about being able to identify these men without their first-names, the first routes of enquiry have shown a good number of them to be identifiable, either through unusual surnames or service papers surviving showing them living within a few streets of the church. I plan to finish this first stage myself then open up the other names to the local family history society forum for help. When I get to the archives I have a long list of things to look up but I will get around to the Holy Trinity records as soon as I can.