Liverpools forgotten tragedy

[big g]

I was recently sent the following link - makes very interesting reading.

http://www.thelancashiremagazine.co.uk/ ... n-tragedy/
http://www.acadian-cajun.com/livrpool.htm

More of the Acadians history http://www.acadian-cajun.com/livrpool.htm

[MaryA]

Thank you, I suspect that is something that has been overlooked by many of us before.

[Blue70]

I get the impression the writer of the article on the Lancashire Magazine website doesn't know and doesn't like Liverpool. I can't imagine a "ghetto" in the 18th century village of Woolton:-

"What to do with these unwelcome guests? There was no such thing as a prison or even a detention centre for them so they were marched to the suburb of Woolton where some accounts say they were incarcerated in disused pottery factories. They were given an allowance of sixpence a day per adult and three pence a day for the under sevens, ordered to stay within the vicinity of their makeshift quarters and instructed ‘not to be found drunken.’

But, within days, weakened by their months of privation they were stricken with smallpox. Day after day there were deaths – nine in one terrible day – until October when more than 100 of the 336 Acadians had been buried. Those figures were imprecise but six years later, in November, 1762, official records listed the number of survivors at 215 of which 44 were children who had been born in the ghetto."

I would have thought two or three hundred French people landing at Liverpool docks and living in Liverpool for several years would have been mentioned in at least one of the old histories of Liverpool. Thomas Burke's "Catholic History of Liverpool" should certainly have mentioned it with them being Catholics. I wonder whether the supposedly Acadian entries in the Liverpool RC registers are from this group they would likely have had their own priests to carry out baptisms, marriages and funerals. I would have expected more entries and where were their dead buried? More detail please.


Blue

[MaryA]

This could lead to a major discussion if we get any responses from the originator of the article.

Valid points made by Blue, after all we know about say, Germans in Liverpool, where they worshipped etc.

[big g]

These links were forwarded to me by a friend who has an interest in all things connected to Liverpool; no connection to the Lancashire Magazine, nor the article's author Matthew Lee who published it on 7 May 2013.

[Blue70]

Interesting links I was able to jump straight in because we recently discussed the Arcadians in Liverpool on another forum. After first expressing sadness about these events we struggled to find historical sources to back it up. The references to RC records are flimsy we don't know for sure if those people in the records were Arcadians. There were supposed to have been a lot of deaths but there's no record of them. Some writers say they were in Woolton others say their exact whereabouts in Liverpool are unknown. It is true that Arcadians were relocated on the grounds that they were a threat to British Canada but there is nothing in their story that makes me think Liverpool is to blame for anything bad that might have happened to them.


Blue

[BarbaraW]

Very interesting, I've never heard of this before.