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Meeting places: the scientific congress and the host town in the south-west of England, 1836–1877

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2012

LOUISE MISKELL
LOUISE MISKELL*
Affiliation:
College of Arts and Humanities: History and Classics, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK
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Abstract:

This article presents a case-study of ‘parliaments of science’ and their impact on towns in the south-west of England in the second half of the nineteenth century. These were the week-long annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and other national associations for different branches of knowledge which became a much publicized feature of the social and intellectual calendar of Victorian Britain. With particular reference to Exeter, it is argued that these events were used by towns and cities to assert their status and reputation and to compete with rival urban centres, and it is contended that they should be viewed, along with other cultural initiatives, as an important instrument in the shaping of urban and civic identity in mid-Victorian Britain. The study demonstrates the role of towns as scientific locations in the nineteenth century and suggests that they deserve attention in place-centred studies of Victorian science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , May 2012 , pp. 246 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

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61 Ibid.

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63 Devon Weekly Times, 27 Aug. 1869.

64 Ibid., 27 Aug. 1869.

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73 An account of the week's events can be found in Woolmer's Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 7 Aug. 1841.

74 See reports in the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 14 Sep. 1872, and Jackson's Oxford Journal, 21 Sep. 1872.

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76 WSL, s707.4 PLY Catalogue of the Fine Art Exhibition, St Andrew's Hall, Westwell Street, Plymouth.

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