Liverpool
As to local efforts to regulate the street-trading evil, the first steps were taken in Liverpool. In this city the condition of child street traders was particularly bad; half of them were girls, and the stock in trade was usually newspapers and matches—the children were dirty, ragged and running the streets at all hours of the night, the apparent trade in newspapers and other articles being frequently used to cover up much worse things; in fact, many of the girls were practically prostitutes. Quite a number of these children were nothing more or less than beggars, and deliberately appeared in ragged clothing for the purpose of exciting sympathy. A local association undertook to supply them with clothing, but many refused this aid "because it would interfere with their trade." Commenting on similar practices among the street traders of Dublin, Sir Lambert H. Ormsby, M.D., said in 1904: "They sell other things besides ... matches principally. Of course the selling of matches is merely a means of evading being taken up by the police for begging. The matches are only humbug; they do not want to sell them ... they do it for begging purposes."[163] In 1897 the Liverpool Watch Committee appointed a subcommittee to consider the question of children trading in streets, and this subcommittee reported that: "The practice is attended, first, with injury to the health of the children; second, with interference with the education of such as are of school age; third, with danger to the moral welfare of the children inasmuch as the practice frequently leads to street gambling, begging, sleeping out and other undesirable practices, and in some cases to crime." They were of opinion—in which the inspector of reformatories concurred—that much of the money earned by the children went to indulge the vicious and intemperate propensities of parents and guardians.
By the Liverpool Corporation Act, 1898, Parliament gave the city power to regulate street trading by children, and accordingly the following provisions were made by the city council: (1) no licenses to any child under eleven; (2) boys eleven to thirteen and girls eleven to fifteen inclusive, to be licensed if not mentally or physically deficient, with consent of parent or guardian; (3) licenses good one year; (4) badges also to be issued; (5) no charge for license or badge; (6) licenses may be revoked by Watch Committee for cause; (7) no licensed child to trade after 9 P.M., nor unless decently clothed, nor without badge, nor in streets during school hours unless exempted from school attendance, and no licensed child may alter or dispose of badge, or enter public houses to trade, or importune passengers. These regulations took effect May 31, 1899, and marked the formal beginning of the movement against street trading by children.
In 1901 the Liverpool subcommittee reported that it was "of opinion that the application of the powers conferred by the Act has had the effect of greatly reducing the number of children trading in the streets, especially during school hours and late in the evenings, and of improving the condition, appearance, and behaviour of those children who still engage in street trading." This subcommittee recommended raising the boys' age limit for licenses from fourteen to sixteen years, and was inclined to advise the total prohibition of street trading by girls.[164]