Greetham Street, which ran from Gilbert St to Park Lane, was a popular residence for Hispanic Liverpudlians from the 1880s until the First World War, and home to at least two Hispanic boarding houses: the De la Cruz Filipino boarding house at no. 19 (c.1879-1881) and the Bilbao Basque boarding house at no. 17 (c. 1904-1911). Originally laid out as a residential street in the 1700s, during the twentieth century its houses were gradually replaced by industrial and public buildings, which in turn have been replaced by modern housing. But it isn't all gone - a trace of the old Greetham Street survives in the cast-iron street sign attached to the corner with no. 73 Park Lane (left).

Greetham Street was numbered from south (at its junction with Park Lane) to north (at its junction with Gilbert Street). By 1908, when the map on the left was drawn, the biscuit works had already replaced numbers 1-13 (between Park Lane and Upper Frederick Street on the NW side), which in 1901 had included at least four homes. Most of the Hispanic residents lived in the central block, between the junctions with Upper Frederick and Pitt Street (NW nos. 15-21 and SE 16-28), or close to the corner with Gilbert Street (NW nos. 23-29 and SE 30-36). Hispanic family names recorded on the censuses between 1881 and 1911 include Florentine, De la Cruz, Toribio, De Asha and Mangileyo from the Philippines; Saes and Lubeck from Chile, and Urizar and Bilbao from the Basque Country, but they weren't the only ones. Many others lived there between census dates, such as Galician-born Micaela Vilarelle, whose daughter Pilar was born at no. 15a in 1908.

19 Greetham Street, a Filipino Boarding House

Greetham Street's first recorded Hispanic residents were the extended Florentine-De la Cruz family. In around 1879, Eustaquio de la Cruz and his Liverpool-born wife Mary Jane took over an old baker's shop and attached house, and set up a sailors' boarding house. Eustaquio was from the Philippines; he gives his birthplace sometimes as Manila, and sometimes as Cebu. Kelly's 1881 Liverpool Directory records Eustaquio also working as a baker, while the 1881 Census shows just how busy the boarding house was. On census night, Eustaquio and Mary Jane, their seven children (of an eventual sixteen) and three servants were hosting one annuitant and twenty-two sailors, all from the Philippines, and possibly a ship's crew awaiting instructions to board. On the other side of the street at no. 30 were Mary Jane's mother Elizabeth and Spanish-born stepfather Charles or Sincio Florentine, living with their younger daughter, Elizabeth Toribio. Charles, who had arrived in Liverpool in the mid-1850s, was in the boarding house business too; he had previously run a sailors' boarding house at 26 Drury Lane, which he handed on to Eustaquio (who was in charge on the 1871 census), before they all moved to Greetham Street.

A Terrible Murder

In September 1880, the Spanish-Filipino boarding house run by Eustaquio and Mary Jane de la Cruz at no. 19 Greetham Street was caught up in a gruesome and widely reported crime. One of their residents, a young West Indian sailor called Matthew Deroze Deadone, was charged with murdering an 'unfortunate woman' (i.e. a prostitute) called Cecilia Rigby in an alleyway off Upper Frederick Street. He was apprehended at ten to one the same morning, in his bed at the boarding house. Mary Jane de la Cruz was called to give evidence; she told the court that the prisoner had been boarding with them for about three weeks, and that on the night of the murder he had gone out at around 7.30pm and returned at about a quarter to twelve. Deadone was convicted of manslaughter and sent to Dartmoor. The 'Frederick Street murder' was so high profile that Deadone's release from Dartmoor sixteen years later, in November 1896, was reported by the Morning Post and the Pall Mall Gazette among others.The murder must have been quite a shock for the De la Cruz family. They left Greetham Street soon afterwards, moving around the corner to Frederick Street, where Mary Jane took on the Gun Boat Public House.

Nos. 36-30 Greetham Street at the corner with Gilbert Street in 1938. Courtesy of Liverpool Record Office. 

17a Greetham Street, a Basque Boarding House

A quarter of a century after Eustaquio and Mary Jane De la Cruz, another Hispanic family set up a sailors' boarding house in Greetham Street. Pedro Bilbao and his wife Carmen Larrocea had come to Liverpool from the Basque villages of Arratzu and Ea in around 1878, along with Pedro's brother Miguel Bilbao, a shipping master, and his wife Antonia Ortuzar. Pedro and Carmen ran successive boarding houses at 58 Park Lane (1886-1901) and 54 Pitt Street (1901-1904), before arriving at 17a Greetham Street in around 1904. The property, which had seven rooms in addition to the kitchen, had a long history as a German and Scandinavian boarding house. The Bilbao family were at the centre of Liverpool's Basque networks, witnessing marriages, acting as godparents to babies, and hosting migrants and other visitors to the city. On the night of the 1911 census, Pedro and Carmen were at 17 Greetham Street with their grownup daughters Leocadia and Gloria, their schoolboy son Aurelio, and three Spanish sailors. Across the street, at no. 18, were a fellow Basque, Josefa Urizar nee Madariaga and her daughter Teresa, both cattle fodder bag makers.

A Chilean Enclave

Although Liverpool's Hispanic community had huge numbers of Basque, Filipino and Galician residents, there were also smaller groups from other nations. At the turn of the twentieth century, Greetham Street was home to Liverpool's small Chilean enclave, centred around the home of Ruperto (or Roberto) Saes. Ruperto, a sailor whose ships included the Scholar, Westernland and Rowanmore, had moved to Liverpool from his home city of Valparaiso and married local girl Anne Creighton in 1889; they had six children, of whom four survived. They are first recorded at 27 Greetham Street in Gore's 1900 Liverpool Directory; on the night of the 1911 census, their family occupied six of the property's eight rooms. Ruperto lived at no. 27 until his death in 1920, aged 60. By 1911, a fellow Chilean, Antonio Lubeck, had moved in across the street at no. 22. Like Ruperto, Antonio had originally come to Liverpool as a sailor; in 1875, he married Liverpool-born Annie Fox at St Peter's Church, and they too had six children of whom four survived. Having run a boarding house at 73 Pitt St for many years, Antonio was now retired and, as he proudly told the census enumerator, 'kept by my children'. He eventually moved to St Joseph's Home, and died in 1916 at the age of 68.

Greetham Street in the 20th century

The 20th century saw Greetham Street's houses and shops gradually cleared and replaced by industrial or public buildings. The John L Eills (later Titan) Biscuit Works had replaced the block previously numbered 1-13 by 1908, while the Pitt Street tenements were built on the site of numbers 15-21 in 1928.The 1938 Kelly's Directory shows only three properties remaining in Greetham Street (the biscuit works, a shop and a butchers), while a 1954 Ordnance Survey map shows the street cleared and awaiting construction of the new St Vincents Primary School. In 2015, the street has been repopulated with modern houses; the only survivor of the earlier period is the former no. 73 Park Lane, seen on the left hand corner in this photogra[h.

Left: Greetham Street from Park Lane, 1938. Kent Gardens tenements are visible at the far end. Courtesy of Liverpool Record Office.