In November 1902 the Invalid Children’s Aid branch of the Liverpool Kyrle Society established a workshop for disabled children and young adults who were unable to work. The hope was that they would be able, in the course of time, to learn a trade and provide for themselves, or at least have a better living than relying on the charity of relatives and chance sympathisers. Bookbinding was seen as one of several trades that could be adapted for disabled workers This was chiefly at the instigation of Mrs Arthur Rathbone, one of the family of Liverpool nonconformist merchants and ship-owners who were known to engage in philanthropy and public service. ‘As Mrs. Arnold Rathbone had considerable knowledge of bookbinding and could help in supervising the work, it was decided to try that trade. It seemed to have great advantages. It offered opportunities for the training of boys and girls together. The work was not so heavy as to tax the strength of the weaker ones unduly. The different processes could be so graded as to enable the unskilled and the skilled to work side by side. Bookbinding seemed further to offer the pretty certain prospect of enabling workers to gain a good livelihood after they had been trained at the workshop, and to give scope for the exercise of any artistic talent which might be found among them. Besides invaluable help in advising and in superintending the work, Mrs. Arnold Rathbone gave a large amount of the plant necessary for bookbinding.’ [The Charity Organisation Review – Vol. 16, 1904]. There were some two boys and five girls involved in bookbinding with ages ranging from sixteen to twenty-five under the instruction of a Mr Manning by 1904 and the work continued at 97 Islington until about 1908. How Mrs Rathbone came to have knowledge of bookbinding is unknown, however as she had her own bookbinding equipment to give to the Kyrle Society she would have been part the circle of women described in Marianne Tidcombe. Women Bookbinders, 1880-1920. The binding itself is a rather plain and solid type of work, certainly well done and durable but also interesting as a by-product of the women bookbinders movement. Original Poems for Infant Minds by several young persons was originally published by Darton & Harvey in 1804, this edition being the first to be illustrated. OCLC records two copies in the UK, at Cambridge and Nottingham, and four in North America, at Yale, Colorado, Florida State and Whittier college. See : Mrs. Frank Fletcher ‘The Kyrle Workshop for Cripples, Liverpool.’ Charity Organisation Review, September 1904.