Charles Dickens' Links to Liverpool

[neilsturrock]

Rather annoyingly, there are no dates there.
My initial interest was in the fact that Dickens was made a (Honarary) Special Constable in Liverpool due to his visits to a police station.
Recently, the Bridewell in Campbell Street has been said to be the place, but it didn't open until 1860.
Opinions differ on when Dickens last visited Liverpool, but he'd been coming here since the 1840s, when there was already a police station next to the back-to-back houses in Duke Street.
It's shown on an OS map of 1848.
Kelly's Directory of 1936 still lists this police station and it was listed next to 88 Seel Street.
Therefore the Masque name probably stems from Dickens' literary connections, and may be a comparitively recent name, IMHO after WW2 perhaps.
There certainly was never a Masque Theatre anywhere in Liverpool, and I've never heard of any private theatres (apart from Knowsley Hall), at least not private theatres where plays, etc., were put on.
There were lecture theatres, and the nearby Royal Institution had one.
It's stretching the imagination somewhat to think that a private theatre would become an operating theatre, but conceivable that a lecture theatre could be.

I'd be interested to know how you came up with 1860 as the date for this Bridewell (incidentally early Kelly's Directories give its address as No 17 Argyle Street - not Campbell Street). The Watch Committee requested the building of a Bridewell ' near to Duke Street' in 1836.
The ventilation system used indicates that it predates Pentonville (1842). The system is similar to that in Perth Prison (1840) but an improvement on Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia 1829). The Perth system is that favoured by Dr David Boswell Reid ('Ventilator' to St George's Hall and Houses of Parliament) in his book of 1844 and it could be that Reid had a hand in this building - that is something I am currently trying to establish. Cheapside Bridewell has a Pentonville ventilation system and that was built in 1859. The style of the cells at Argyle Street/Campbell Street would certainly indicate that this is a lot earlier.
A banquet was given in honour of Dickens in St George's Hall on 10th April 1869 and, since he died the next year, this may well have been his last visit.