1871 cover front sent from JAMAICA to LIVERPOOL bearing SG13 1/-.

The recipient was WILLIAM CLIFF now largely forgotten but an important figure in the commercial and social fabric of 19th century Liverpool.

He was the son of a West Indies merchant Adam Cliff and built a successful shipping business, which capitalised on the families connections to the West Indies, to the extent that when he died in the 1890s he left over £319,000 - a huge amount.

He was also perhaps the city’s most active philanthropist of his day, and his legacy lives on in bricks and mortar. He founded the home for Ancient Mariners at Seaforth, the city’s oldest boys club the Gordon’s Boys Club, and was the main driving force behind the LSPCC, the country’s first children’s protection society that paved the way for the NSPCC.

His wife Mary Ann Frater was Jamaican, the daughter of a plantation owner and his ‘housekeeper’. She was by all accounts the main beneficiary of his will. Her story is untold and one surely worth exploring. As is the story of how Cliff’s wealth was amassed.