ABSTRACT
The Muspratt family was always interested in political ideas, with liberalism and free trade at the core. James had taken a keen interest in Irish politics from his early days in Dublin and this continued during his time in Liverpool, where there was a large Irish population comprising both Catholics and Protestants, although he shied away from party politics. In 1836 James took his first (and only) step into ‘formal’ politics when, following the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, he stood as a Reform candidate for the Vauxhall Ward in the elections for Liverpool Town Council. Later, James’s sons, Richard and Edmund, and then Edmund’s son, Max, continued the family’s traditional political interests of liberalism and free trade, taking an active part in the rising movement of civic responsibility that manifest itself among businessmen and other prominent people in the towns and cities of Britain during the nineteenth century and into the first few decades of the twentieth century. Their commitment to improving the public services in Liverpool, in particular education and public health, reflected the dramatic changes taking place over the period at both the local and national levels. From the 1880s the pursuit of these goals at a national level brought members of the family to challenge for Parliamentary representation.
