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Science in the City: The London Institution, 1819–40

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

J. N. Hays
J. N. Hays
Affiliation:
Department of History, Loyola University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60626, U.S.A.
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Extract

In the first half of the nineteenth century the largest and wealthiest ‘popular’ scientific establishment in London was the London Institution, founded by a group of prominent City men in 1805. During most of its early years this Institution had over 900 members; within a year of its foundation it had accumulated funds of £76,000, which dwarfed those possessed by any similar body in this period; by 1819 it had erected an imposing building in Finsbury Circus, a structure with a splendid library, a lecture theatre, and provision for laboratories, as well as meeting rooms. In that theatre eminent men of science and literature delivered lectures; by the 1840s William Robert Grove, then in the midst of his scientific career, was installed as ‘Professor of Experimental Philosophy in the London Institution’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , July 1974 , pp. 146 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1974

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References

1 The London Institution has been almost completely neglected by modern historians. There has been no historical treatment of the organization since the slighting notice of Becker, Bernard H., Scientific London (London, 1874), pp. 189–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, although there is some discussion in Kelly, Thomas, George Birkbeck: pioneer of adult education (Liverpool, 1957), pp. 47–8Google Scholar and passim. The Institution itself issued An historical account of the London Institution, with a sketch of the scientific history of the establishment, and of the various courses of lectures which have been delivered in the theatre (London, 1835)Google Scholar, as well as A descriptive catalogue of the lectures delivered at the London Institution (London, 1854)Google Scholar. The background information discussed in this paragraph is derived from those two works, and from two sources contemporary with the foundation of the Institution: Proposed plan of the London Institution: with a list of the proprietors (London, 1805)Google Scholar, and Plan and bye-laws of the London Institution, for the advancement of literature and the diffusion of useful knowledge (London, 1806).Google Scholar

2 The Royal Institution, founded in 1799, was to a large extent the model for the London Institution, but the latter's resources were in some ways more impressive. By 1801 the Royal Institution had raised slightly over £19,000; see Jones, Bence, The Royal Institution: its founder and its first professors (London, 1871), p. 180Google Scholar. Other suggestions for comparisons between these two bodies will follow in this paper. They were the most highly developed of a group of scientific and lecturing societies, founded in the metropolis in those years, whose existence betrays itself in contemporary newspaper advertisements; a few of these societies, such as the Russell and the Philomathic Institutions, are mentioned in Hudson, James William, The history of adult education (London, 1851), pp. 166–7.Google Scholar

3 Grove (1811–96) was a distinguished barrister who later became a judge. During the late 1830s and the 1840s he pursued an active scientific life, during which time he was one of the first to enunciate the doctrine of the interconvertibility of forces; most of his scientific work occurred during his London Institution professorship. See the article on him in the Dictionary of national biography.

4 London Institution, Proposed plan …, op. cit. (1). This work is not paginated.

5 Butler, Charles, The inaugural oration, spoken on the 4th day of November 1815, at the ceremony of laying the first stone of the London Institution, for the Diffusion of Science and Literature (London, 1816), p. 30.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., pp. 30–9.

7 Ibid., p. 39. A stronger proof was seldom required by the speakers and writers of the time, for whom the safety lamp was a classic example of the union of science and utility. The Times, in describing Butler's speech, was particularly pleased by his notice of the ‘most gratifying’ device; see The Times, 8 11 1815, p. 3.Google Scholar

8 Butler, , op. cit. (5), p. 40.Google Scholar

9 For Faraday's education, and the extent to which institutional lecture programmes were a part of it, see Williams, L. Pearce, Michael Faraday (New York, 1965), pp. 10–94Google Scholar. Faraday, of course, had the advantage of working for years in the Royal Institution laboratory as a part of his self-education; in the plans of the London Institution a similar laboratory was envisaged there.

10 Butler, , op. cit. (5), p. 28.Google Scholar

11 The Times, 6 11 1815, p. 3.Google Scholar

12 Brande, William Thomas, An introductory discourse, delivered in the amphitheatre of the London Institution, on Wednesday the 5th of May, 1819 (London, 1819).Google Scholar

13 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

14 Ibid., p. 15.

15 Ibid., pp. 24–5. Brande used nearly identical words at the Royal Institution; see Journal of science and the arts, iii (1817), 367.Google Scholar

16 Brande, , op. cit. (12), pp. 30–2.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 32–6.

18 The lectures given in 1820 are listed in London Institution, A descriptive catalogue …, op. cit. (1), p. 15Google Scholar. This source is generally accurate; in future notes I shall refer to it for information about the make-up of lecture programmes, and shall indicate other sources only when A descriptive catalogue is in error.

19 Minutes of the Board of Management of the London Institution, iii (8 May 1823). These manuscript minute books are in the Guildhall Library, London, MS. 3076; they are cited hereafter as LIMM, with the appropriate volume number and date.

20 London Institution, A descriptive catalogue …, op. cit. (1), p. 16Google Scholar. For the details of the 1828 lecture series, by Norton Webster, see a separately printed London Institution handbill, dated simply 1828, which gives a summary of the lectures. The Guildhall Library, London, has a collection of such handbills, filed under printed books, catalogue number AN 16.8. Hereafter such handbills will be cited as LI Handbill, followed by the name of the lecturer and the date. In some cases the date (only the year is given) on the handbill will not correspond with that given in the text; this is because the year given in the text will be that of a lecture ‘season’ which began late in the previous year.

21 Handbill, LI, Hemming, , 1831.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., Brande, 1834.

23 Ibid., Hemming, 1836.

24 Ibid., Smith, 1826.

25 Ibid., Spurzheim, 1827.

26 Ibid., Smith, 1832. The great cholera outbreak was almost certainly responsible for interest in such subjects.

27 Ibid., Dickson, 1835.

28 Ibid., Lardner, 1832.

29 London Institution, Plan and bye-laws …, op. cit. (1)

30 Handbills, LI, Roget, , 1824 and 1825.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., Harwood, 1826.

32 Ibid., Rennie, 1831.

33 Ibid., Pereira, 1833; London Institution, An historical account …, op. cit. (1), p. 25.Google Scholar

34 Handbills, LI, Grant, , 1835Google Scholar; Birkbeck, , 1836Google Scholar; Truman, , 1837Google Scholar; and Solly, , 1838.Google Scholar

35 Shaw, George, Zoological lectures delivered at the Royal Institution (London, 1809), i. 1.Google Scholar

36 The idea of such conversazioni was approved by the Institution's managers in November 1827; the managers stated that they were following the successful precedent of the Royal Institution, where Friday evening meetings began in 1825. See LIMM, iv (8 11 1827).Google Scholar

37 There were fifty conversazioni at the Institution between 1831 and 1840, and twenty-two of these dealt with music, literature, history, and similar non-scientific subjects. The relevant lectures are listed in London Institution, A descriptive catalogue …, op. cit. (1), pp. 17–21.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., pp. 16–17.

39 Ibid.

40 The London Institution's medical lectures constituted a regular portion of the programme for its members. At the Royal Institution, on the other hand, Brande (eventually assisted by Faraday) offered lengthy courses of lectures primarily for medical students, who paid separately for the course. Brande had begun this lecturing at Hunter's Anatomical School and then moved the lectures to the Royal Institution; see Ironmonger, Edward, ‘Forgotten worthies of the Royal Institution: (1) William Thomas Brande (1788–1866)’, Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, xxxviii (1960–1961), 454Google Scholar. For a typical syllabus of Brande's Royal Institution course, a far more ambitious undertaking than the hasty surveys offered in the regular lecture programmes, see Journal of science and the arts, i (1816), 307–19.Google Scholar

41 Handbill, LI, Truman, , 1837.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., Clark, 1832.

43 Ibid., Clark, 1828.

44 Quoted from a London Institution lecture in Lady [Pleasance] Smith, (ed.), Memoir and correspondence of the late Sir James Edward Smith, M.D. (London, 1832), ii. 414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Handbills, LI, Roget, , 1824 and 1825Google Scholar. Roget, 's Bridgewater treatiseGoogle Scholar was entitled Animal and vegetable physiology considered with reference to natural theology.

46 Handbill, LI, Levison, , 1832.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., Solly, 1838.

48 Ibid., Smith, 1839, and Truman, 1837. Smith's opening lecture concluded with a discussion of ‘final causes’.

49 At the London Mechanics' Institution, where they both lectured, Birkbeck and Wallis often exclaimed on the beauty of Divine Arrangements. See, for instance, Wallis, 's raptures as reported in London mechanics' register, iv (1826), 69.Google Scholar

50 Handbill, LI, Brande, , 1823.Google Scholar

51 Wallis is an example of that little-studied character, the itinerant science lecturer. For some tentative suggestions about such lecturers in some provincial cities, see Inkster, Ian, ‘A note on itinerant science lecturers, 1790–1850’, Annals of science, xxviii (1972), 235–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 London mechanics' register, iii (1826), 402 and 409.Google Scholar

53 Handbills, LI, Wallis, , 1829 and 1835Google Scholar; London Institution, An historical account …, op. cit. (1), p. 33.Google Scholar

54 See the annual auditors' reports in the Minutes of the General Meetings of Proprietors of the London Institution. These manuscript minutes are bound in ledger volumes in the Guildhall Library, London, MS. 3075; they are cited hereafter as LIGMP, with appropriate volume number and date.

55 London Institution, Proposed plan …, op. cit. (1).

56 London Institution, An historical account …, op. cit. (1), contains a somewhat sketchy account of those early years; my summary of this phase of the Institution's history is based partly on that source, but is chiefly reconstructed from an examination of LIMM and LIGMP.

57 For example, in 1825 the London Institution enjoyed a total income of £3,034; of this sum, £1,110 was derived from investments, and £1,869 from the annual payments of the proprietors. See LIGMP, i (27 04 1826).Google Scholar

58 LIMM, iii (12 04 1827Google Scholar). The gas system had given trouble as early as 1822; see Ibid., iii (24 October 1822).

59 Ibid., iii (8 November 1827).

60 Ibid., iv (9 October 1828 and 10 April 1829).

61 LIGMP, i (30 04 1829).Google Scholar

62 In addition to the economies discussed in this paragraph, the Institution in these years realized £762 by selling proprietary shares which it declared had been forfeited (ibid., 29 April 1830); it ordered a reduction in the salaries of some of its servants (ibid.; LIMM, iv, 13 08 1829Google Scholar); it announced a saving of £325 per annum as a result of purchasing gas from a company (LIGMP, i, 29 04 1830Google Scholar); and it attempted to refine its purchasing procedures by a reorganization of managerial committees (LIMM, iv, 10 09 1829).Google Scholar

63 For the rejections of the applications of scientific lecturers, see ibid., iv (10 September and 10 December 1829). London Institution, A descriptive catalogue …, op. cit. (1), p. 17Google Scholar, lists the lectures given; also listed (on p. 35) are four lectures on botany by the scientific charlatan John Frost, but there is no other evidence that such lectures were delivered.

64 LIMM, iv (10 12 1829).Google Scholar

65 The lectures offered in 1830, which contained a minimum of science, ‘have excited an interest and approval beyond all precedent in the history of the Institution’, boasted the managers; see ibid., iv (16 April 1830). The managers also agreed with the librarian of the Institution that English history and literature were the most important subjects for the book collection; see ibid., iv (8 April 1830).

66 Ibid., 11 June 1829 and 16 April 1830; LIGMP, i (29 04 1830).Google Scholar

67 LIMM, iv (20 04 1831).Google Scholar

68 Based on auditors' reports in the annual LIGMP. In 1823 lecture expenses were £857; in 1825, £752; in 1826, £867.

69 See London Institution, A descriptive catalogue …, op. cit. (1), pp. 15–20Google Scholar, for a summary of these facts.

70 The title of a lecture by Edward William Brayley in 1833.

71 The cautious response to real and imagined financial pressures meant that the Institution's management was not able to impose a systematic view of the sciences on its lecture programmes in its early years. This situation is in marked contrast with the picture of the Royal Institution drawn by Berman, Morris, in his ‘Social change and scientific organization: the Royal Institution, 1799–1810’ (The Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. thesis, 1971)Google Scholar. Berman argues that the early Royal Institution reflected the interests and conceptions of the wealthy ‘improving’ landlords who dominated it. In addition, as I hope to show in a forthcoming article, the Royal Institution in the 1820s and 1830s was likewise under financial pressures, to which its management responded both by increasing the proportion of non-scientific entertainment (as did the London Institution) and by encouraging creative innovations in the scientific programme (which the London Institution did not). But by the 1820s and 1830s some haphazard elements had entered the Royal Institution's programmes, and lecture programmes in Albemarle Street and Finsbury Circus looked much alike.

72 LIMM, iv (14 04 1828).Google Scholar

73 Ibid., iv (9 June, 11 August, 13 October 1831); ibid., v (8 October, 12 November, 26 November, and 10 December 1840).

74 The lectures on chemical manipulation were delivered by Michael Faraday in 1827, a year before he presented the same subject to the Royal Institution. The course consisted of ‘the processes described in his work on that subject, subsequently published,—as were capable of being explained to a general audience’; see London Institution, An historical account …, op. cit. (1), p. 31Google Scholar. Charles Frederick Partington offered lectures on manipulation in natural philosophy in 1829; for Lee's lectures see LI Handbill, Lee, 1826.

75 Ibid., Rennie, 1831.

76 The careers of Michael Faraday and Sir Roderick Murchison may be taken as examples of scientists inspired by institutional lectures. See among others Cardwell, D. S. L., The organisation of science in England (London, 1957)Google Scholar, and Reader, W. J., Professional men: the rise of the professional classes in nineteenth-century England (New York, 1966)Google Scholar, as well as the classic Merz, J. T., A history of European thought in the nineteenth century (London, 1904), i. 226–301.Google Scholar

77 Among the Institution's officers in this period were Francis Baily (the astronomer) and Thomas Furly Forster and Edward Forster (brothers and anatomists). All were also City men.

78 London Institution, A descriptive catalogue …, op. cit. (1), pp. 15–20Google Scholar. John Taylor read lectures on practical mining in 1820 and metallurgy in 1823; Henry Samuel Boase presented lectures on tin and copper in 1838.

79 The limited evidence available in the relevant handbills (LI Handbills, Brande, 1834; Phillips, 1837 and 1838) tends to confirm the judgment of Gillispie, Charles Coulston, in his Genesis and geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), pp. 88–9Google Scholar, that popular geology eschewed controversy in these years.