In response to a Petition presented on behalf of the citizens of Liverpool, Queen Victoria incorporated by Charter on 18 Oct 1881 a University College which was housed on a site and in buildings acquired and transferred to the College by the Corporation of the City of Liverpool. Generous support was readily given to the College by the people of Merseyside and within three years fourteen Chairs were established. In view of this rapid progress and of its growing prestige as a centre of higher learning, the University College was in 1884 admitted as one of the constituent colleges of the Victoria University which in 1880 had been incorporated by Royal Charter upon the Petition of Owens College, Manchester. In the same year the Royal Infirmary Medical School estabilshed in 1834 and based initially at the Liverpool Royal Institution was incorporated in University College, Liverpool and became the nucleus of a Faculty of Medicine.

In 1902 the University College presented a petition to King Edward VII, supported by a Petition of a committee appointed at a public meeting of the inhabitants of Liverpool applying for the Grant of a Royal Charter as a separate and Independant University. The Royal Charter, granted on 15 Jul 1903, incorporated the University of Liverpool with full powers to administer its affairs and confer degrees upon its students. On 14 August 1903 the Royal Assent was given to an Act of Parliament, entitled the Liverpool University Act 1903, which separated University College, Liverpool from the Victoria University and merged it into the University of Liverpool