William Roscoe was born in Liverpool on 8 March 1753 near what is now Hope Street. After leaving school,  he went on to become a self-made man of many talents. A champion of freedom for all, a poet, writer, scholar, patron of the Arts, lawyer, banker, bibliophile, and botanist. 

At this time, much of the wealth of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was built on the slave trade, where people were taken from their homes and forced to work without pay. Not all of Liverpool's leading citizens at the time were supporters of slavery, and the city produced some of the most forceful and prominent campaigners for abolition, including William Roscoe.

Roscoe was an outspoken critic of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. He published poems and pamphlets against it and used his brief period as the MP for Liverpool to vote, in 1807, in favour of its successful abolition. He showed great courage when he campaigned for this to happen. 

Roscoe also transformed the cultural life of Liverpool. Described as ‘Liverpool’s greatest citizen’ he played a key role in ‘Renaissance Liverpool’ during the early 19th century. 

He was a founding member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, Liverpool Royal Institution and the Athenaeum Library. 

William Roscoe also loved the natural world and liked to learn about flowers and insects. He wrote a famous poem called: The Butterfly’s Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast and we have a special mural in our school to display this. Our school badge is butterfly and we have a beautiful butterfly forest area. 

William Roscoe was a man ahead of his time.