The Founders of St. Anne's
The four Liverpool merchants behind the founding of St Anne’s
St Anne’s was established in the 1830s through the support of four prominent Liverpool merchants: John Moss, Charles Stewart Parker, John Abraham Tinne and Josias Booker.
Each belonged to the commercial world that shaped nineteenth-century Liverpool, and each brought wealth, influence and local connections to the creation of the new church in Aigburth.
An imagined group portrait of the four men associated with the founding of St Anne’s.
Front row: John Moss; Charles Stewart Parker | Back row: John Abraham Tinne; Josias Booker
AI-assisted composite image based on surviving portraits and photographs believed to depict the four founders.
The men did not pose together for this image, and some identifications remain provisional.
The Men Who Founded St. Anne's
John Moss
1782 - 1858
Banker, railway pioneer and owner of Otterspool
John Moss was one of the most influential Liverpool businessmen of the early nineteenth century. Born into a prosperous mercantile family, he entered his father’s business before developing extensive interests in banking, overseas commerce and transport. He lived at Otterspool House, overlooking the Mersey, and became a prominent figure in the rapidly developing district around Aigburth.
Moss is particularly remembered for his role in the birth of the railway age. He was among the leading promoters of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830, and subsequently chaired the Grand Junction Railway linking the North West with Birmingham. He also supported railway development elsewhere in Britain and continental Europe. These ventures placed him at the centre of the transport revolution that transformed Liverpool’s commerce and helped establish the modern railway network.
As a local landowner and businessman, Moss joined Charles Stewart Parker, John Abraham Tinne and Josias Booker in providing for a new Anglican church at Aigburth. The four men undertook to fund the church and its vicarage and became trustees and patrons of the living. St Anne’s was completed and consecrated in 1837, serving a district whose population was increasing as Liverpool expanded southwards.
Otterspool House, shortly before its demolition in 1931
The wealth and influence that enabled Moss to support projects such as St Anne’s cannot be separated from slavery and the colonial economy. He and his brothers inherited interests in Caribbean estates and approximately 1,000 enslaved people. Following abolition, the family participated in substantial compensation claims paid by the British government to slave owners. Moss also worked with John Gladstone in introducing indentured Indian labour to Caribbean plantations after emancipation - a system that remains deeply controversial.
John Moss was buried at St Anne’s following his death in 1858, and the churchyard contains memorials to members of the wider Moss family. These monuments provide a tangible link between the church and the family whose wealth, influence and local presence helped bring it into being. They also show how St Anne’s became not only their place of worship, but a place of family memory across subsequent generations.
John Moss therefore represents both the extraordinary enterprise of nineteenth-century Liverpool and the human cost on which much of its prosperity depended. His legacy survives in the railways he helped establish, in the family memorials within the churchyard and, most visibly, in St Anne’s itself. That legacy should be understood in the full context of the commercial and colonial world from which his wealth emerged.
Charles Stewart Parker
1800–1868
Liverpool merchant and partner in Sandbach, Tinne & Company
Charles Stewart Parker was a leading Liverpool merchant whose business career was closely connected with British Guiana and the wider Atlantic economy. Born into a Scottish mercantile family, he became a partner in Sandbach, Tinne & Company, one of Liverpool’s most prominent West India trading houses. The firm imported sugar, coffee, rum and molasses and developed extensive interests in shipping, plantations and overseas commerce. Parker lived in Aigburth and also maintained connections with Fairlie in Ayrshire.
Parker’s place within Liverpool’s commercial elite was reinforced through marriage. In 1826 he married Anne Sandbach, daughter of Samuel Sandbach, another senior figure in the firm. These closely connected merchant families combined business, property and kinship across several generations. Parker remained associated with Sandbach, Tinne & Company throughout his working life, helping to sustain a business that became exceptionally wealthy through trade with the Caribbean.
As a local merchant and resident, Parker joined John Moss, John Abraham Tinne and Josias Booker in establishing a new Anglican church at Aigburth. The four men undertook to finance the church and its vicarage at the time and were constituted trustees of the church and patrons of the living. St Anne’s was consecrated in 1837, when the surrounding district was still largely rural but beginning to attract merchants and families moving south from central Liverpool.
The wealth that gave Parker the means to support St Anne’s was directly connected to slavery. He shared ownership interests in sixteen estates in British Guiana involving more than 400 enslaved people. After emancipation, Parker and his business partners received compensation from the British government for the loss of what the law treated as their property; no compensation was paid to the formerly enslaved. Sandbach, Tinne & Company continued its Caribbean operations after abolition and later participated in the movement of indentured labourers to plantation colonies.
Charles Stewart Parker’s legacy therefore combines local philanthropy with direct participation in a coercive colonial system. He helped provide Aigburth with a church that continues to serve its community, but the resources behind that contribution came substantially from plantation production and enslaved labour. Presenting both aspects together allows his role in the founding of St Anne’s to be understood within the full commercial and moral context of nineteenth-century Liverpool.
John Abraham Tinne
1807–1884
Liverpool merchant with extensive Caribbean business interests
John Abraham Tinne was born in Demerara, now Guyana, into a family already deeply established in Caribbean commerce. His father, Philip Frederic Tinne, was one of the principal partners in Sandbach, Tinne & Company, the Liverpool merchant house with which John would also become closely associated. The firm traded in sugar, coffee, rum and molasses, owned ships and plantations, and linked Liverpool’s commercial economy directly with British Guiana. John later made his home at Briarley in Aigburth, where he lived from at least 1851 until his death in 1884.
His marriage to Margaret Sandbach further united two of the families at the centre of the business. She was the daughter of Samuel Sandbach, another leading partner in the firm. Commercial partnerships, marriages and inherited wealth bound the Sandbach, Tinne and Parker families together across several generations, creating a powerful mercantile network extending from Liverpool and Glasgow to the Caribbean.
As an Aigburth resident and local landowner, Tinne joined John Moss, Charles Stewart Parker and Josias Booker in establishing a new Anglican church for the growing district. The four men undertook to build both the church and its clergy house and became trustees of St Anne’s and patrons of the living. The church was consecrated in 1837 and became the centre of the new parish as Liverpool expanded southwards.
The wealth behind the Tinne family’s position was inseparable from slavery. Sandbach, Tinne & Company owned plantations in Demerara on which enslaved people produced sugar, coffee, cotton, rum and molasses. Following emancipation, the firm received approximately £100,000 in government compensation for the loss of enslaved labour; the formerly enslaved received nothing. The company later became involved in indentured labour, a system used to supply Caribbean plantations with workers after slavery and the post-emancipation apprenticeship scheme had ended.
The Tinne name remained prominent in Aigburth long after John Abraham’s death. His grandson, Dr Philip Frederic Tinne, married Emily Margaret McCulloch in 1910. Emily assembled an extraordinary wardrobe of more than 700 surviving garments, many purchased from Liverpool shops or commissioned from local dressmakers. Donated to National Museums Liverpool by their daughter Alexine, the Tinne Collection is the largest collection of one individual’s clothing held by a UK museum. Philip and Emily are also commemorated by a memorial in the grounds of St Anne’s, providing a direct link between this later generation of the family and the church founded with John Abraham Tinne’s support.
The Tinne Collection is the largest collection of a single person’s clothing in any UK gallery.
John Abraham Tinne’s legacy therefore reaches from nineteenth-century Caribbean commerce to the founding of St Anne’s and the later social history preserved in Emily Tinne’s wardrobe. It combines local benefaction and family continuity with the exploitative colonial system from which the family and its business derived much of their prosperity.
Josias Booker
1793 - 1865
Liverpool merchant, shipowner and founder of Josias Booker & Company
Josias Booker was born in Over Kellet, near Lancaster, the son of a miller. In 1815 he travelled to Demerara, now part of Guyana, where he worked first on a cotton plantation and later managed a sugar estate. He returned to Liverpool in 1827 and established Josias Booker & Company, creating a commercial link between Liverpool and British Guiana. The business traded in plantation produce and developed interests in shipping, estate management and overseas commerce.
Booker was later joined in British Guiana by his brothers George, William and Richard. Their activities formed the beginnings of the extensive Booker enterprise, which grew throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into one of the dominant commercial forces in Guyana. In Liverpool, Josias also became a prominent businessman and served as the founding chairman of the Royal Insurance Company. He lived at Poplar Grove in Aigburth, placing him among the wealthy merchants who settled in the developing suburbs south of the city.
As a local resident, Booker joined John Moss, Charles Stewart Parker and John Abraham Tinne in founding a new Anglican church at Aigburth. The four men undertook to build the church and its vicarage and became trustees of St Anne’s and patrons of the living. The connection was also personal: Booker’s son, John Horrocks Booker, is recorded as the first child baptised at St Anne’s, on 29 March 1837, shortly before the church was formally consecrated.
The wealth generated by the Booker family’s Caribbean interests was inseparable from slavery. Josias managed plantations worked by enslaved people, while he and his brothers held interests in estates in British Guiana. Following emancipation, the Booker brothers received government compensation for 52 enslaved people; those who had been enslaved received no payment. In 1829, Josias was awarded a medal for introducing cattle and machinery “in aid of slave labour” on a Demerara plantation—a stark illustration of how commercial innovation operated within, rather than apart from, the system of enslavement.
The company that grew from the Booker brothers’ activities remained deeply influential long after Josias’s death. It eventually became Booker Brothers, McConnell & Company and acquired such extensive control over Guyana’s plantations, shops and industries that the country was sometimes described as “Booker’s Guiana.” The modern Booker Prize also takes its name from this later company, which began sponsoring the literary award in 1969. The connection is therefore indirect, but it gives the Booker name an international cultural legacy far removed from its origins in plantation commerce.
Josias Booker’s legacy reaches from the plantations of British Guiana to Liverpool’s shipping and insurance industries, the later Booker business empire and the founding of St Anne’s. His contribution to the church formed part of a wider record of enterprise and local benefaction, but it was made possible by wealth and experience accumulated within a colonial economy dependent upon enslaved labour.
A complicated inheritance
St Anne’s remains the most visible part of the founders’ shared legacy. Their wealth, influence and willingness to fund a new church helped create a place that has served generations of people in Aigburth since 1837.
Their stories also reveal how closely nineteenth-century Liverpool’s prosperity was connected to slavery, plantation commerce and colonial expansion. Remembering the founders therefore requires more than celebration or condemnation. It means acknowledging both what they built here and the human systems from which much of their wealth was derived.
The church they founded has outlived them and the commercial world they inhabited. Its continuing task is not simply to preserve their memory, but to understand it honestly - and to use the inheritance they left in the service of the community today.
An imagined gathering of St Anne’s four founders outside the church they helped to establish.
AI-assisted composite image based on surviving portraits. The men did not pose together for this image.