Thanks to its massive dock system, ‘as solid and enduring as the Pyramids, the most stupendous work of its kind that the will and power of man have ever created’, Edwardian Liverpool, the proud (and prosperous) ‘second city of empire’, promoted itself as the pre-eminent cosmopolitan hub, the commercial and human entrepôt linking the old world and the new:

On a ‘democratic promenade’ along the famous landing stage, renowned for its ‘cosmopolitanism, comprehension and catholicity’, the flaneur encountered the world in one city: ‘all sorts and conditions of men, of all colours … everybody seems to be here, from everywhere. This is representative humanity.’ Jumma prayers at the local Mosque (one of the first in the country) attracted ‘coloured races’ of ‘a cosmopolitan kind’, an ‘ingathering of the representatives of all nations’ with varied dress and ‘polyglottic’ tongues. While engaged in ethno-sectarian defence of its large migrant flock from across the Irish Sea, the local Catholic press sought reassurance and perspective from the city's demographic profile,