10. A LIVERPOOL CELEBRITY PECULIAR POSTCARDS
JAN BONDESON shares another deltiological discovery from his prodigious collection of postcards. This month’s pictorial blast from the past celebrates an unusual urban hermit and one-time fixture of Liverpool Harbour.
The postcard reproduced here is the major claim to fame of an obscure Liverpool hermit of Edwardian days, Annie Garvey, also known as the ‘Pier-head Squatter’. Described as a maiden lady, about 100 years old, she had come to Liverpool from Craik in Armagh, Ireland, as a young girl, along with her mother. They had made their home in a shanty to the north of the floating bridge at the landing-stage in Liverpool Harbour, but they had to move when a permanent bridge was built. They erected a small hut on the floating bridge leading to the landing-stage, but the mother died soon after, allegedly from a broken heart after her original shanty had been demolished. For 40 years, Annie lived alone in her tiny hut, selling apples, oranges and confectionery. As Liverpool Harbour expanded, the Dock Board tried their best to evict Annie, but she refused to move. Some charitable people supported her, and they made sure she was supplied with victuals. These friends tried their best to have the stubborn old lady put into an old people’s home, but Annie preferred to stay in her little wooden hut.
The photograph of Annie shows a woman, who certainly looks very old, although she is able to stand up without assistance. She was said to have one or two relations in Liverpool, but being of hermitical habits, she did not want anything to do with them. As a newspaper expressed it, “As may be imagined, she was a woman of great strength of mind and tenacity of purpose. She was a religious woman, and regularly attended Mass at St Mary’s, Highfield Street, the clergy of which church took an interest in her physical as well as her spiritual welfare.” In the 1910s, Annie became something of a local celebrity, and people often came to see her: “Her shanty was often visited by the curious, and the old lady is said to have received a goodly portion of her income from the contributions of such visitors. Many of the police and other officials of the Landing-stage knew her well, and among these the view was held that she was not as old as she was represented, or as she represented herself.” And indeed, the 1911 Census gave her date of birth as 1826 and her age as 86, adding that she “Keeps small shop, sells confectionery at home. Postal address: shed on Riverside on George’s Pierhead.”
In May 1914, Annie left her hut one day to draw her oldage pension. She collapsed in the street and was taken to the Northern Hospital in an unconscious state, the result of heart disease. In Liverpool Harbour, rumours circulated that Annie had died, but she made it out of the hospital alive, being transferred to the Brownlow Hill workhouse infirmary. On admission, she indignantly denied that she was a centenarian, claiming to be 86 years old, just as she had back in 1911; she rallied for a week or two, before suffering a relapse and dying. The workhouse officials advertised for her relations, but nobody seems to have come forward to claim the hermit’s humble estate. Both the Liverpool Echo and the Liverpool Catholic Herald published her obituary, expressing regret that one of the quaint celebrities of Old Liverpool was no more.