¹ For applications of the social control thesis to middle-class sponsored education for the poor, see two articles by Johnson, Richard, “Educational Policy and Social Control in Early Victorian England,” Past and Present, no. 49 (1970), pp. 96–120Google Scholar, and “Educating the Educators: Experts and the State, 1833–1839,” in Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain, ed. Donajgrodski, A. P. (London, 1977), pp. 77–108Google Scholar. The moral attitudes toward an independent working-class culture that motivated middle-class reformers are explored by Robert D. Storch, “The Problem of Working Class Leisure. Some Roots of Middle Class Moral Reform in the Industrial North 1825–1850,” in Donajgrodski, ed., pp. 138–62. For a useful and trenchant critique of social control as an analytical concept, see Thompson, F. M. L., “Social Control in Victorian Britain,” Economie History Review, 2d ser., 34 (1981): 189–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Williams, Raymond, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York, 1976), pp. 76–82Google Scholar.

³ Manchester Iris (February 23, 1822).

⁴ The history of mechanics' institutes has been well mined. See, e.g., Tylcote, Mabel, The Mechanics' Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire before 1851 (Manchester, 1957)Google Scholar; Royle, E. P., “Mechanics' Institutes and the Working Classes,” Historical Journal 14 (1971): 305–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the meanings of science in this context, see Shapin, Steven and Barnes, Barry, “Science, Nature, and Control: Interpreting Mechanics' Institutes,” Social Studies of Science 7 (1977): 31–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The educative uses of political economy are treated in Berg, Maxine, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy: 1815–1848 (Cambridge, 1980), esp. pp. 146–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an account of working-class response to middle-class educational patronage, see Kirby, R. G., “An Early Experiment in Workers' Self-Education: The Manchester New Mechanics' Institute 1829–1835,” in Artisan to Graduate, ed. Cardwell, D. S. L. (Manchester, 1974), pp. 87–98Google Scholar. While working-class institutions and the motivations of their middle-class patrons have been closely scrutinized, very little research has focused on similar institutional growth wholly within the middle class. For the Royal Manchester Institution (RMI), see R. F. Bud , “The Royal Manchester Institution,” in Cardwell, ed., pp. 119–34. A more specialized treatment of the RMI is found in Darcy, C. P., The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Lancashire: 1760–1860 (Manchester, 1976)Google Scholar. A recent volume of essays has begun the process of directly addressing the history of Manchester's Victorian middle classes. See Kidd, Alan J. and Roberts, K. W., eds., City, Class and Culture: Studies of Social Policy and Cultural Production in Victorian Manchester (Manchester, 1985)Google Scholar. See especially Kidd's introductory essay, “The Middle Classes in Nineteenth Century Manchester,” and Michael E. Rose, “Culture, Philanthropy and the Manchester Middle Classes.” A similar approach to the history of the middle classes in Leeds has been outlined by Morris, R. J.. See “Middle Class Culture, 1700–1914” in A History of Modem Leeds, ed. Fraser, Derek (Manchester, 1980), pp. 200–222Google Scholar. Morris has also sketched a suggestive conceptual outline of middle-class institutional activity in his “Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 1780–1850: An Analysis,” Historical Journal 26 (1983): 95–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Manchester Guardian (October 30, 1839).

⁶ For Dalton and the Lit. and Phil., see Kargon, Robert H., Science in Victorian Manchester: Enterprise and Expertise (Baltimore, 1977)Google Scholar, chap. 1. After his death, Dalton lay “in state” in the town hall, and 40,000 people passed in mourning. The funeral procession was nearly a mile long (Kargon, pp. 41–42). The Lit. and Phil.'s cultural role has been explored by Thackray, Arnold, “Natural Knowledge in Cultural Context: The Manchester Model,” American Historical Review 79, no. 3 (1974): 672–709CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thackray's analysis of the Lit. and Phil.'s formative years provoked my original interest in the Manchester milieu.

⁷ Royal Manchester Institution Council Minute Book, August 6, 1823. M 6/1/1/1, Manchester Central Reference Library (MCRL), Archives Department.

⁸ Membership list in RMI papers, M 6/1/19/1, MCRL.

⁹ RMI Council Minute Book, pp. 43–44.

¹⁰ RMI Council Minute Book, p. 48.

¹¹ RMI Council Minute Book, pp. 109–10.

¹² Manchester Athenaeum Addresses 1835–1885 (Manchester, 1888), pp. 81–82Google Scholar. Sir Thomas Potter worked closely with Cobden in the campaign for municipal incorporation and was elected Manchester's flrst mayor after the incorporated borough received its charter in 1838. See the biographical sketch in Baker, Thomas, Memorials of a Dissenting Chapel (Manchester, 1884), pp. 117–18Google Scholar.

¹³ Manchester Athenaeum Board of Directors' Minute Book, 1:3–8, October 21, 1835. M 2/1/1, MCRL.

¹⁴ All Athenaeum subscribers over the age of twenty-one stood eligible for directorship, though in practice directors tended to be eut from slighfly finer middle-class cloth. Thirty-five of forty-five directors identifiable in Manchester directories for the years 1837–41 were either merchants, manufacturers, or professionals. By contrast, an occupational analysis of 390 ordinary subscribers identified from an 1836 membership list shows 142 merchants and manufacturers, 137 clerks, salesmen, and retail tradesmen, 58 professionals, and 53 skilled craftsmen or artisans. A marginal but significant social distance separated subscribers and directors.

¹⁵ Annual Report of the Directors of the Manchester Mechanics' Institution (Manchester, 1836), p. 19Google Scholar.

¹⁶ In his first address to the Mechanics' Institution membership in 1825, Heywood promised the studious workman an utterly transformed existence. Weaned from the profligate sensuality he assumed to be the worker's “natural” condition, Heywood assured them that “instead of heaviness and want of vigour in their work on the following day, they shall return to it with a clear head, a light heart, and a skilful hand. Your wives and your children will necessarily share in your improvement; your moral condition will be advanced; higher and nobler thoughts will occupy your minds; you will be better, as well as happier men.” SirHeywood, Benjamin, Addresses Delivered at the Manchester Mechanics' Institution (Manchester, 1843), pp. 16–17Google Scholar. By the early 1830s, steady resistance to this kind of moralizing forced Heywood and his colleagues to reshape their institution. Elementary classes in reading, writing, and arithmetic proved far more popular than chemistry and mechanics. Entertainment, in the form of musical and dramatic Presentations, played an increasingly larger role. Though originally directors were chosen from a list of honorary members paying life subscriptions, by 1834 members had fought and won a “democratie revolution” in which directors were elected from the body of ordinary subscribers. Tylcote (n. 4 above), pp. 135–37. Certainly the most fundamental problem Heywood faced was attracting a substantial number of mechanics. The institution kept careful records of members' occupations. The 1828 membership roll listed 471 subscribers, among whom were ninety-four clerks, forty-four merchants and manufacturers, and twenty-seven warehousemen. Though the total number of subscribers rose considerably over the following decade, the proportion of businessmen, retail tradesmen, clerks, and even a smattering of professionals remained substantially the same. Using the 1835 membership list as a rePresentative sample, only 24 percent of the 1,526 subscribers were categorized as either craftsmen, mechanics, or engaged in textile manufacture in capacities other than as principals. Given the numbers who fit this rather generous description of “working class,” the institution's problems are plain to see, Mechanics' institutions in smaller towns and villages generally recruited workmen more easily. Occupational breakdowns of membership figures were printed in the directors' annual reports.

¹⁷ The place of public buildings within the urban fabric fashioned by the industrial middle classes had cultural, economie, and political implications. For a more extensive discussion of the “social creation of the town,” see Morris, R. J., “The Middle Class and British Towns and Cities of the Industrial Revolution,” in The Pursuit of Urban History, ed. Fraser, Derek and Sutcliffe, Anthony, eds. (London, 1983), esp. pp. 295–97Google Scholar. The contiguous vista formed by the RMI and Athenaeum structures makes up a similar cultural presence in contemporary Manchester. The RMI building houses the Manchester City Art Gallery while the neighboring Athenaeum building, its facade emblazoned with the inscription “For the Advancement and Diffusion of Knowledge,” today serves as the gallery's annex.

¹⁸ Annual Report of the Directors of the Manchester Mechanics' Institution (Manchester, 1837), p. 11Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Annual Report).

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 12.

²⁰ Ibid. Occupations are taken from Manchester directories. For Newton, Isaac, see Annual Report, 1834, pp. 11–12Google Scholar. The report, which describes Newton as a “journeyman cotton spinner,” also tells us he opened his own evening school.

²¹ Annual Report, 1843, p. 15Google Scholar.

²² Report of the Literary and Scientific Society connected with the Manchester Mechanics' Institution, read at the first annual meeting of the society March 11, 1846 (Manchester, 1846), p. 5Google Scholar.

²³ Manchester Athenaeum Board of Directors' Minute Book (n. 13 above), 1:178. Much like his brother Benjamin's contributions at the Mechanics' Institution, James Heywood gave time, money, and great energy to the Athenaeum. He studied at Cambridge with William Whewell and in later years served as president of the Manchester New College and on the London University Senate.

²⁴ Yearly lists of essays Presentee! to the society are contained in the Athenaeum Annual Reports for the years 1837–51.

²⁵ Manchester Athenaeum Board of Directors' Minute Book, 3:25. M 2/1/2, MCRL.

²⁶ Manchester Athenaeum Board of Directors' Minute Book, 3:26–29.

²⁷ Eleventh Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Manchester Athenaeum (Manchester, 1847), p. 14Google Scholar.

²⁸ Manchester Athenaeum Board of Directors' Minute Book, 4:233. M 2/1/4, MCRL.

²⁹ Manchester Athenaeum Board of Directors' Minute Book, 5:6. M 2/1/5; The Athenaeum Essayists and Debaters; A Retrospect of Fifty Years (Manchester, 1886)Google Scholar.

³⁰ RMI Council Minute Book, pp. 445–46. M 6/1/1/2, MCRL. The metropolitan lecturing environment is explored by Hays, J. N., “The London Lecturing Empire, 1800–1850,” in Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture, 1780–1850, ed. Inkster, Ian and Morrell, Jack (Philadelphia, 1983), pp. 91–119Google Scholar.

³¹ RMI Council Minute Book, p. 471. M 6/1/1/2.

³² RMI Lecture Course Syllabi, M 6/1/70, 75–90.

³³ RMI Lecture Course Syllabi, M 6/1/70, 81–90.

³⁴ RMI Lecture Course Syllabus, M 6/1/70/83. Their professorial responsibilities included giving an annual set of free lectures. Turner had a long and illustrious career in Manchester as a physician and founder of the Pine Street School of Medicine and Surgery, for a time the town's foremost medical school. Born near London in 1819, Crace-Calvert had spent ten years studying, teaching, and practicing applied chemistry in France before moving to Manchester in 1846. He had made his professional reputation with a number of chemical papers, and once settled in Manchester he assumed the chemistry chair at Turner's Pine Street School as well as the RMI professorship. Kargon (n. 6 above), pp. 97–99. For Thomas Turner, see Brockbank, E. M., Honorary Staff of the Manchester Infirmary, 1752–1830 (Manchester, 1904), pp. 275–80Google Scholar.

³⁵ RMI Lecture Course Syllabus, M 6/1/70/67.

³⁶ RMI Lecture Course Syllabus, M 6/1/70/38.

³⁷ John Phillips to George William Wood, May 17, 1827, RMI Letter Book, p. 83. M 6/1/50.

³⁸ RMI Lecture Course Syllabus, M 6/1/70/8. The format of Tayler's history consisted of assigning particular accomplishments to individual societies. Indians thus developed a separate priestly caste, the Phoenicians a highly organized international commerce, and the Chaldeans astronomy. Chinese civilization contributed universality of education and equality of law, but these marks of progress were tempered by an “absence of individuality of character.” The Hebrews, of course, gave monotheism to the historical process.

³⁹ The Reverend John Corrie to Sir Benjamin Heywood, November 4, 1830, RMI Council Minute Book, p. 306. M 6/1/1/1.

⁴⁰ The Reverend William Turner, Jr., to T. W. Winstanley, February 8, 1831, RMI Letter Book, p. 145. M 6/1/50.

⁴¹ Read, Donald, Cobden and Bright: A Victorian Political Partnership (London, 1967), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

⁴² Athenaeum Minute Book, 1:94. M 2/1/1; Athenaeum Fifth Annual Report (Manchester, 1841), p. 7Google Scholar.

⁴³ For Bardsley, see entry in Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Bardsley published a volume of case histories based upon his infirmary experience: Medical Reports of Cases and Experiments, with Observations chiefly derived from Hospital Practice (Manchester, 1807)Google Scholar. He also published two contributions to the Lit. and Phil. Memoirs: “Party Prejudice” (1798) and “The Use and Abuse of Popular Sports and Exercises” (1803).

⁴⁴ Bardsley's letter to Winstanley, T. W. in RMI Lecture Committee Minute Book, pp. 81–82, November 7, 1838. M 6/1/7Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ This interpretation is indebted to Steven Shapin's analysis of phrenology's place in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh. See his “Homo Phrenologicus: Anthropological Perspectives on an Historical Problem,” in Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture, ed. Shapin Steven and Barnes Barry (London, 1979). Shapin identifies phrenology as a naturalized symbolic expression of the social aspirations of Edinburgh's “new men.” In this sense, it challenged the prevailing social order of “law, land, and university” and the elitist or hierarchical tendencies of eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosophy. The latter comprised the chief context of Samuel Bardsley's education. For a more extensive treatment of phrenology's social meanings in early nineteenth-century British scientific culture, see Cooter, Roger, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth Century Britain (Cambridge, 1984), esp. chap. 2Google Scholar. Cooter's prosopographical analysis of phrenologists and antiphrenologists reveals a correlation between scientific belief and socioeconomic status similar to that between the accomplished Bardsley and an aspiring parvenu like Lynill.

⁴⁶ Charles Royce to George Royce, November 6, 1846. Royce Family Papers, M 70/3/18, MCRL.

⁴⁷ Charles Royce to George Royce, December 10, 1845. M 70/3/7. Carpenter was professor of physiology at the London Royal Institution. Aside from the popular course at the RMI, Carpenter gave a private course often lectures to his medical colleagues, one of whom was Royce's employer, Thomas Turner.

⁴⁸ Charles Royce to George Royce, October 23, 1846, and undated April 1846. M 70/3/17; M 70/3/8.

⁴⁹ In a lecture about Dawson given at Birmingham University in 1909, A. W. W. Dale paraphrased the controversy this way: “The creed of the church laid stress on the salvation of man by our Lord's death; Dawson laid stress on the salvation of man by our Lord's life. The church thought of Him as the divine Mediator; Dawson thought of Him as the divine Example.” Dale, A. W. W., “George Dawson,” in Nine Famous Birmingham Men, ed. Muirhead, J. H. (Birmingham, 1909), p. 80Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 81.

⁵¹ Ireland, Alexander, Recollections of George Dawson and his Lectures in Manchester in 1846–1847 (Manchester, 1882), pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

⁵² Dawson, George, Biographical Lectures, ed. Clair, George St. (London, 1887), p. 390Google Scholar.

⁵³ Ibid., p. 391.

⁵⁴ For Dawson's place in formulating Birmingham's “civic gospel,” see Briggs, Asa, Victorian Cities (London, 1963Google Scholar; reprint, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), pp. 195–201; Ireland, , Recollections of George Dawson …, p. 21Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Dale, , “George Dawson,” in Clair, George St., ed., pp. 93–94Google Scholar; Ireland, , Recollections of George Dawson …, pp. 9–17Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Athenaeum Directors' Minute Book, 3:338–339. M 2/1/3.

⁵⁷ Athenaeum Directors' Minute Book, 4:127–128, 147, 225, 235. M 2/1/4. Special Committee Minute Book, M 2/8/2.

⁵⁸ Parliamentary Papers (PP), 1849, 17:1308Google Scholar. Select Committee on Public Libraries, Minutes of Evidence.

⁵⁹ Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Rusk, Ralph L. (New York, 1939), 4:10Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ PP, 1849, 17:viii. Report of the Select Committee.

⁶¹ PP, 1849, 17:1225. Minutes of Evidence.

⁶² Dawson, , Biographical Lectures (n. 52 above), p. 391Google Scholar.

⁶³ Provincial dissenting intellectuals such as Tayler were strongly drawn to the German “higher criticism.” In 1835 Tayler spent a year attending lectures at Gottingen and Bonn. For an example of his scholarly contributions, see an article he wrote in two parts for the Unitarian journal Christian Teacher: “The Nature and Design of Christianity investigated from an Analysis of its Primitive Records, Contained in the New Testament,” Christian Teacher, n.s., vol. 2, nos. 7 and 9 (1840)Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ George Wareing Ormerod (RMI Secretary) to John James Tayler, November 15, 1845, RMI Correspondence Book, p. 293. M 6/1/49/3. Ormerod to Tayler, February 9, 1846, RMI Correspondence Book, p. 25. M 6/1/49/4.

⁶⁵ Ormerod to Absalom Watkin, September 22, 1847, RMI Correspondence Book, p. 292. M 6/1/49/4. Rough Minutes of RMI Lecture Committee, September 22, 1847. M 6/1/3/5.

⁶⁶ Manchester Guardian (October 5, 1844).