Hi Fran,
I know your posting is a while ago but I just spotted it.
I'm building someone's tree, and discovered his grandmother was May Palin, born in Bootle in 1892, and the Palins are a very big family as far as I can tell.
I've got May's line back to a family in Northwich in Cheshire in the early 1800s, and there seems to have been a general move from Cheshire to the Liverpool area during that century.
I found them quite hard to track because there were so many, and it was hard to separate two different branches at one time.
Having looked at the people you are looking for it is a different branch, but if any of this crosses over with the family you are searching, let me know.
Maggie