On This Day

24 September 1896

William Gladstone delivers his last major public speech

William Ewart Gladstone delivers his last major public speech at Hengler’s Circus, Liverpool. In a speech lasting an hour and twenty minutes he denounced the Turkish atrocities in Armenia and called on the Government to take action. Writing in his diary, Sir Charles Hobhouse noted, ‘Today Mr G addresses 6,000 people in Liverpool on the Armenian massacres. Europe, as in 1490 disunited, looks on while the Turk slaughters Christians. Such is our advance!’