Founded back in 1893 in an empty cotton warehouse, the League of Welldoers (or Liverpool Food Association as it was first known) was set up initially to provide school meals to starving children throughout Liverpool, Everton & Bootle. Meals were also delivered by a team of female volunteers to the bedridden at a time when no work meant no money and no money meant starvation. From the very beginning people nicknamed the organisation ‘The Lee Jones’ after the founder Herbert Lee Jackson Jones who was born in Runcorn in May 1868; even today, the nickname is more widely used. In 1948 the introduction of the Welfare State in Britain meant that families could receive financial support from the Government to help them through the bad times; and so the services the League had provided for more than half a century evolved and continued to grow over the years. The organisation is still on the same site, in Limekiln Lane (sandwiched between Scotland Road & Vauxhall Rd) and is proud of what it can offer to the people who pass through its doors each and every day.
When it was known, in October 1936, that Lee Jones was dying, crowds knelt outside the front corner of the building, praying for their true friend and benefactor.
The front of the building was destroyed in the May 1941 blitz and only rebuilt in 1952. The figures above the door, dated 1953, are by M. Newton.
May 2018 we will celebrate our 125th Anniversary.
