1) The Liverpool Blue Coat School, also referred to as the Charity School or the Blue Coat Hospital, was the original occupier of the present Bluecoat building in School Lane. The school, set up for the town’s orphaned and destitute children, had been founded in 1708 by the Rector of Liverpool, Reverend Robert Styth and Bryan Blundell, a master mariner, much of whose fortune he invested in the school as it grew.

2, 3) The Female Orphan Asylum was founded in 1840, at the instigation of Mrs James Aikin, the wife of a prominent Liverpool merchant and magistrate. Its object was to provide a home for orphan girls who had lost both parents.

4) The Asylum for Orphan Boys was established in Liverpool in 1850 at the suggestion of the businessman and philanthropist Mr Harmood Banner, to run in parallel with the Female Orphan Asylum founded a decade earlier.

5) The Infant Orphan Asylum was established in Liverpool in 1858 and run in association with the existing Female Orphan Asylum and Orphan Boys' Asylum, for children too young to enter these institutions.