Organised religion played such a central part in Victorian life that it is impossible to understand this era without some reference to it. Yet the question, which worried the Victorians, still remains, how religious was the mass of Victorian society? Recent scholarship has challenged the orthodoxy that the working classes, and the working classes of large urban centres in particular, were irreligious. Yet Liverpool, with its large migratory population, including Roman Catholics from Ireland and Nonconformists from Wales and Scotland, appeared to offer unpromising ground for the Anglican...