D'Aeth resigned from his post at Leytonstone in July 1905 and took up his appointment as a junior lecturer at Liverpool University a month later. How that dramatic translation came about is a matter for speculation, but before pursuing that elusive question it is essential to an understanding of all that followed to grasp the context in which it came about. As the previous chapter strongly emphasised, the fortunes of the man and those of the city were so closely intertwined that neither can be described without reference to the other.

It can reasonably be supposed that D'Aeth entered on his new life in a mood of immense elation at his liberation from the despondency of recent years. Being a man of quick imagination, he must surely have been moved by an equally intoxicating awareness of the totally different prospect offered to him in Liverpool. His commitment to the search for a solution to the problem of chronic poverty had been dulled by his disillusion with the church, but, in the context of the progressive community in which he now found himself, it was miraculously revitalised.

His sense of jubilation must at the same time have been tempered by the habitual humility with which he approached any new opportunity, especially in view of the events of the previous decade. He was under no illusion that he came as a saviour bearing great gifts of leadership to a community that was lost in the wilderness; he saw himself as a novice who found himself swept up in what was a particularly vibrant going concern. The city offered him an opportunity to participate in a situation that was a unique blend of people and principles, purpose and need, such as existed nowhere else in the whole country.