In 1879, Tom Johnson, a young man of only twenty, paid a call to a brothel and he took young Eliza Parton upstairs. There was trouble, and Eliza ran downstairs in distress, her face marked after some fight or struggle. But worse was yet to come. Johnson followed her, and he brandished a knife. After stabbing her in the neck, he ran away into the streets. This strong young man, solidly built and tough, was soon in the arms of the law, and in the dock, he collapsed in a fit of weeping when he knew that he was to hang.

It has to be said, to redress the balance a little, that, as Dr John Archer has shown, reported violence by women in Liverpool was twice the national average. He notes that ‘North West women had a fearsome reputation for being more violent than anywhere else in the country.’ He makes the point that women accounted for over thirty per cent of common assault prosecutions in Liverpool between 1850 and 1914. Maybe, in many cases, they were having to fight back against such a tide of rage and hatred from their menfolk.