Liverpool, Medicine, and Unnatural History

Professor Carl Larsen and a group of University of Liverpool students are leading a walkshop titled Liverpool, Medicine, and Unnatural History on Friday 30 October, starting at the Victoria Gallery & Museum on Ashton Street. It's a guided walk through the city that traces the links between Liverpool's scientific history and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and it's open to all ages.

The walk begins at the Victoria Gallery & Museum, the founding site of the University of Liverpool, which was established in 1881. From there, the group works its way through the city's streets, stopping at several sites that connect the city's medical and scientific past to its role in the slave trade. You'll pass the former Ashton Street Lunatic Asylum and the Liverpool Royal Institution on Colquitt Street, which was founded in 1814 by Liverpool merchants and inaugurated by the abolitionist sympathiser William Roscoe. The route also takes you to the former Liverpool Royal Infirmary, where surgeons trained, and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which was established to treat diseases affecting plantation workers and trade ship crews.

Along the way, the tour engages with specific figures from the city's history, including Thomas Parr, after whom Parr Street is named, Henry Smeathman, and Dr Charles White, and confronts the legacy of scientific racism. It's a walk that doesn't just look at the buildings, but at the people and the ideas that shaped them, and how they tie back to the trade that built so much of the city.

It runs from 12:00 to 13:30, so it's a ninety-minute session that fits into a lunch break if you're working nearby. The whole thing is led by Professor Carl Larsen, and since it's open to all ages, you can bring anyone along. It starts at the Victoria Gallery & Museum, Ashton Street, Liverpool L69 3DR, on Friday 30 October, 12:00-13:30.