About us
The Liverpool Merchants’ Guild was instituted in the year 1880 for the purpose of taking over and managing a fund bequeathed by the Will of Catherine Wright, of Liverpool, who died in the month of September 1868.
Catherine Wright by her Will bequeathed the sum of £10,000 to the Trustees for the purpose of founding an Institution to be called “Wright’s Institution,” the object of which was to grant pensions to persons who had been unable to make adequate provision for their declining years.
At the Annual Meeting of the Governors and friends of “Wright’s Institution,” held on the 16th December 1880, under the Presidency of the Mayor of Liverpool, it was unanimously resolved that it was desirable to extend the area of “Wright’s Institution,” and that henceforth the title should be the “Liverpool Merchants’ Guild.”
By 1912 the funds administered by the “Liverpool Merchants’ Guild,” had grown considerably and the Governors decided to petition the Privy Council for a Royal Charter, which was eventually granted on 8th April 1914.
With the assistance of the Charity Commission, schemes were drawn up in 1972 and then in 2006 to enable all the separate funds that comprised the “Liverpool Merchants’ Guild” to be administered as though they were one.
In 2006, the Board of Management decided to have the Royal Charter amended and updated to reflect the change in the structure of society and administrative procedures that had taken place since the original Royal Charter was granted. A revised Royal Charter, which entirely replaced the original document, was granted on 15th December 2006.