Liverpool’s Four ‘First Mayors’ — Four Different Jobs Across 700 Years

Who was Liverpool’s first mayor?

It sounds like a question with one answer. In Liverpool, it has at least four.

John de More in 1292, William Wallace Currie in 1835, Robert Durning Holt in 1893 and Joe Anderson in 2012 can all be described as a “first mayor” — but not because they held the same job.

They did not.

Across more than seven centuries, the meaning of the word mayor changed dramatically. The medieval mayor belonged to a small borough governed by burgesses. The mayor of 1835 presided over a newly reformed elected corporation. The Lord Mayor created in 1893 carried the prestige and civic authority of a great Victorian city. And the directly elected mayor introduced in 2012 was a political executive with powers much closer to those of a modern council leader — but with a personal mandate from voters across the whole city.

So the real story is not simply who came first?

It is how the job itself changed as Liverpool changed.

Four “first mayors” — four different offices

Swipe to see all four columns.

1292 — John de More

The earliest named mayor on Liverpool’s civic roll

Liverpool’s first “first mayor” belongs to a world very different from ours.

King John’s Letters Patent of 28 August 1207 proclaimed Liverpool a free borough. Liverpool City Council describes the place before that point as a small settlement of fishing and farming communities within the West Derby Hundred. The new borough status offered trading privileges intended to attract settlers and commerce. ^[1]

The modern Liverpool civic roll records the years 1207 to 1291 as “UNKNOWN”. Then, in 1292, one name appears:

John de More.

He is listed again in 1293 and 1309. On that basis, Liverpool City Halls treats him as the earliest named mayor in its surviving civic sequence. ^[2]

But there is an important historical complication.

An early twentieth-century study of Liverpool’s medieval records by John Elton argued that the first surviving document he could find which explicitly described a man as mayor of Liverpool was a deed of 4 April 1352, naming William, son of Adam. Elton therefore questioned the older assumption that the earlier names could all be securely demonstrated from surviving contemporary documents. ^[3]

That does not make Liverpool’s modern civic roll useless. It does mean we should distinguish between two things:

• John de More is the earliest named mayor in Liverpool’s official civic roll.
• The earliest surviving document yet identified that explicitly calls someone mayor of Liverpool is later.

That distinction is exactly why medieval civic history needs careful wording.

What did a medieval Mayor of Liverpool actually do?

The medieval mayor was not a modern chief executive, party leader or ceremonial figure in the later sense.

Liverpool was a borough community of burgesses — freemen who possessed particular rights and obligations. The mayor emerged as one of the principal officers through whom the borough acted collectively. Later records show Liverpool’s mayor and bailiffs working with the burgesses and commonalty in the government of the town. ^[4]

The job sat at the intersection of local administration, trade, law and borough privilege. A medieval mayor could witness legal instruments, act in the name of the borough, participate in local courts and help oversee the rights and customs enjoyed by the burgesses.

It was an office in a very small town. There was no large municipal bureaucracy, no cabinet and no directly elected citywide mandate.

What mattered was that the mayor represented the corporate community of Liverpool itself.

For John de More, we have a name and repeated appearances in the civic roll. We do not have enough surviving evidence to reconstruct a modern-style record of policies, budgets or achievements from his time in office. His importance lies in what he represents: the emergence of Liverpool’s mayoralty in the surviving civic story.

1835 — William Wallace Currie

The first mayor of a newly reformed Liverpool corporation

By the time William Wallace Currie became mayor, Liverpool bore almost no resemblance to the borough John de More had known.

The port had expanded enormously. The population had surged. Docks, warehouses, shipping, merchants and industry had transformed Liverpool into one of Britain’s most important commercial towns.

Yet its municipal government still rested on an old corporation dominated by a relatively small body of freemen.

Before reform, Liverpool’s Common Council had become largely self-selecting. A study of the old corporation describes a body of forty-one common councillors controlling municipal affairs, while the wider freeman body retained a role in choosing the mayor and bailiffs from within that circle. ^[5]

The Municipal Corporations Act 1835 changed that structure fundamentally.

Liverpool was divided into 16 wards. Each ward elected three councillors, producing 48 elected councillors, who then selected 16 aldermen. The new council chose the mayor from among its members. ^[6]

The first municipal elections under the new system took place on 26 December 1835. Reformers won an overwhelming majority — 43 of the 48 councillor seats according to research on Liverpool’s municipal politics. ^[7]

From that new council came Liverpool’s second “first mayor”:

William Wallace Currie.

How was Currie’s role different?

Currie did not suddenly acquire all the powers of a modern city mayor.

The big change was where the authority around him came from.

Instead of presiding over an old corporation dominated by a narrow freeman elite, Currie became mayor of a council created through the new municipal franchise and ward system.

The mayor chaired and represented the corporation, but municipal power was distributed through the full council, aldermen, committees and officers. The newly reformed corporation quickly established committees to take control of the town’s administration. ^[8]

Currie’s mayoralty therefore marks the point at which Liverpool’s mayor became the leading civic officer of a much more recognisably modern municipal authority.

What did Currie actually do?

One surviving example gives us a glimpse of the mayor doing practical civic business.

After Liverpool obtained its own Court of Quarter Sessions, the new council held a special meeting on 20 April 1836 to elect a borough coroner. The meeting was chaired by Mayor William Wallace Currie, with fourteen aldermen and thirty-two councillors present. ^[9]

That may sound routine, but it illustrates the transition perfectly. Currie was not merely a figurehead. He was presiding over the machinery of a newly constituted corporation as it established offices and structures under the reformed system.

Currie was also not a newcomer to civic affairs. Before municipal reform he had served as a bailiff under the old corporation. Contemporary recollections remembered him in that earlier role, meaning that his career effectively bridged Liverpool’s pre-reform and post-reform civic worlds. ^[10]

1893 — Robert Durning Holt

The last Mayor — and Liverpool’s first Lord Mayor

Robert Durning Holt’s “first” was different again.

He did not become mayor because Liverpool had created a new democratic system. He was already Mayor of Liverpool for 1892–93.

What changed was the dignity of the office itself.

In 1893 Liverpool’s mayoralty was raised to a Lord Mayoralty. Liverpool City Halls records Holt first as Mayor for 1892–93 and then separately as Liverpool’s first Lord Mayor in 1893. ^[2]

So Holt was both the last man to serve under the old title at that transition and the first to carry the new one.

Why did Liverpool want a Lord Mayor?

By the late nineteenth century Liverpool was no longer merely a large borough.

It had received city status in 1880 and had become one of the great commercial and maritime centres of the Victorian world. Its civic buildings, docks, institutions and merchant wealth projected the status of a city operating on an international scale.

The Lord Mayoralty reflected that status.

But the new title did not mean Holt suddenly received the kind of executive powers that would belong to Joe Anderson more than a century later. The Lord Mayoralty was an elevation of Liverpool’s existing civic office rather than the creation of a separate political executive.

The modern Lord Mayor is now explicitly described by Liverpool City Council as the city’s first citizen and chosen representative, representing Liverpool at civic engagements, promoting the city, supporting charities, receiving visitors and chairing council meetings. ^[11]

In Holt’s day the boundaries between civic prestige, council politics and municipal leadership were less sharply separated than they are today. Holt himself was no politically neutral ornament.

Who was Robert Durning Holt?

Holt was a Liverpool cotton broker, Liberal politician and philanthropist. He came from the powerful Holt family: his brothers included figures connected with major Liverpool shipping interests, including Alfred Holt and the Blue Funnel tradition. He was also a leading Liberal figure on Liverpool’s council. ^[12]

His civic standing extended well beyond ceremonial duties.

In 1893, while still Mayor of Liverpool, Holt was appointed to the Royal Commission considering the proposed amalgamation of the City and County of London. The government specifically wanted members experienced in the municipal government of major cities. Holt was therefore being used nationally as a representative of Liverpool’s municipal experience. ^[13]

That tells us something important about what the office represented at the time.

Liverpool’s mayor was not simply attending dinners and wearing chains. The mayoralty sat at the summit of a powerful urban corporation governing one of Britain’s largest and richest cities.

And when Holt became Lord Mayor, Liverpool was signalling that its civic head should possess a dignity equal to the city’s national and international standing.

And no — the Liver Building was not there

One visual misconception is worth correcting.

Holt’s Liverpool in 1893 did not have the familiar Pier Head skyline. The Royal Liver Building was still almost two decades away from completion.

The city he represented was the Liverpool of the Town Hall, Exchange, docks, warehouses, shipping offices, St George’s Hall and dense Victorian streets.

That is why modern illustrations of Holt’s mayoralty should not casually place the Three Graces behind him.

2012 — Joe Anderson

The first mayor Liverpool voters elected directly

Joe Anderson’s office was the most radical break of all.

Until 2012, Liverpool’s mayoral tradition had involved an office chosen within the municipal system.

The new mayor would be chosen directly by Liverpool’s electorate.

Liverpool City Council decided in February 2012 to adopt the Mayor and Cabinet model without first holding the referendum that had been expected. The inaugural mayoral election took place on 3 May 2012. Anderson won 59 per cent of first-preference votes. ^[14]

This was not the Lord Mayor with a new electoral method.

It was a different office entirely.

What powers did the directly elected mayor have?

Under the elected mayor and cabinet model, the mayor was the political executive leader of Liverpool City Council.

The mayor could:

• appoint and chair the cabinet;
• allocate executive responsibilities;
• set the political direction of the administration;
• propose the council’s budget and policy framework;
• exercise executive functions personally or delegate them;
• represent the city in negotiations with government and investors.

The Local Government Association describes the elected-mayor model as one in which the mayor has greater powers than an ordinary council leader and proposes the budget and policy framework while appointing and chairing the cabinet. ^[15]

That made Anderson’s office fundamentally different from Holt’s Lord Mayoralty.

One was an executive political job.

The other was a civic office.

What did Anderson do with the role?

One of the clearest early examples was Liverpool’s relationship with central government through the City Deal.

In later evidence to Parliament, Anderson argued that Liverpool’s elected-mayor model gave the city a visible point of accountability and helped it negotiate directly with government. He pointed to powers and resources connected with new schools, housing, investment zones, enterprise zones and mayoral investment funds. ^[16]

Whether one supported or opposed the mayoral model politically, there was no ambiguity about the constitutional difference: Anderson was not simply representing Liverpool ceremonially. He was leading the council’s executive administration.

And because he was directly elected, his democratic mandate came from voters across the city rather than from fellow councillors choosing one of their number.

How could Liverpool have two mayors at once?

This is the part that caused understandable confusion.

From 2012, Liverpool had:

A Lord Mayor of Liverpool
The historic civic office — first citizen, representative of the city, chair of full council and participant in ceremonial and community life.

A directly elected Mayor of Liverpool
The political executive — elected by the public to lead the council administration.

The two offices shared one word but not one function.

It is roughly the difference between representing the civic identity of Liverpool and running the political executive of Liverpool City Council.

Why did the directly elected mayor disappear?

The system did not last.

Liverpool ended the directly elected mayoral model in 2023 and returned to a Leader and Cabinet system.

Today, Liverpool City Council has a council leader and cabinet for executive political leadership, while the Lord Mayor remains the city’s first citizen and civic representative. ^[17]

That means one of Liverpool’s four “firsts” now belongs to a closed chapter of civic history.

So who really was Liverpool’s first mayor?

There is no single useful answer unless we define the question.

John de More — 1292
Earliest named mayor on Liverpool’s modern civic roll, representing the medieval borough tradition.

William Wallace Currie — 1835
First mayor under the reformed municipal corporation created after the Municipal Corporations Act.

Robert Durning Holt — 1893
The sitting Mayor whose office was elevated, making him Liverpool’s first Lord Mayor.

Joe Anderson — 2012
First person directly elected by Liverpool voters to serve as the council’s executive mayor.

They were not four versions of the same job.

They were four markers in the evolution of Liverpool government.

John de More belonged to a medieval borough of burgesses. Currie presided over a newly elected Victorian corporation. Holt embodied the prestige and political importance of a great imperial city’s civic leadership. Anderson held a modern executive office designed around direct electoral accountability.

That is why the question “Who was Liverpool’s first mayor?” tells us much more about the city than a single name ever could.