The Liverpool Food Association was founded in 1893 by Herbert Lee Jackson Jones, a pioneer in the introduction of the middle-classes into social work. Under Jones, as Honorary Secretary, and the City Coroner, as President, the Association took premises in Limekiln Lane, Scotland Road, Liverpool and put up soup boilers. In the first season, dinners at ½d each (or free to the poorest) were distributed to eleven schools. Other services followed, such as the distribution of food to housebound invalids by voluntary Lady Attendants. The range of charitable activities increased and diversified to include the notion of cultural ”betterment”, for example open-air concerts were provided in slum areas ”to elevate the seared mind or brighten the dulled hour amongst the poor and the poorest poor". As a protest against ”an increasing, professional, over-paid philanthropy”, Jones founded the League of Welldoers, who took the notion of personal service to the extent of martyrdom, living in the service of the Association on no more than £15 a year, plus uniform and austere board and lodgings. The League published The Welldoer. Organ of the Food and Betterment Association. A critical record of benevolence. Nonsectarian and nonpolitical.

The records comprise seven folio volumes of sourced and dated press cuttings on subjects of interest to the Association, particularly social problems related to drink, slum housing and malnutrition. The main sources for local events such as the Charity Bazaar of Feb. 1907, are the Liverpool Courier, Liverpool Post and Mercury and Liverpool Echo, with other local titles including the Protestant Standard and Porcupine. Volumes 5-7 reuse pages of The Welldoer as scrap. Sources for general issues include a very wide range of local, regional and national newspapers, and magazines such as the Spectator, and the British Medical Journal

The archive of Eric Hardwicke Rideout was collected during the late 1920s and early 30s. Rideout was interested in the Shipping Ports of the North West during the period 1700-1850, especially in terms of Customs and Excise and related topics such as trade and quarantine.

The main areas of research for Rideout were: the Ports of Liverpool, Chester, Poulton, Isle of Man, and Whitehaven; their Customs Houses, Trade, Quays, and Quarantine regulations. The archive also contains material relating to Rideout MA thesis, submitted to the University of Liverpool in 1931, on Navigation Law in the 18th Century.

Much of Rideout's research was done at various Customs Houses in the North West with a huge body of transcriptions being made from the Customs Letter Books of the various Customs Houses. These recorded the day-to-day activities of the Houses and the events of the port. The archive is littered with these transcripts, both typescript and manuscript but the majority are based upon Rideout's original transcripts which, recorded onto index cards, are gathered at Rideout II.2.

Also of use will be a file of letters located at Rideout I.6 which includes his correspondence with various individuals concerning his research, visits to various Customs Houses and correspondence concerning the publishing of his findings.