Science in provincial society: The case of Liverpool in the early nineteenth century

References

• See Beckwith F. The Eighteenth-Century Proprietary Library in England Journal of Documentation 1947–8 3 81 98 (p. 85); for the earlier ‘Lit and Phil’ see T. Kelly, Adult Education in Liverpool, a Narrative of Two Hundred Years (Liverpool, 1960), p. 11.
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• See Kelly The Eighteenth-Century Proprietary Library in England Journal of Documentation 1947–8 3 81 98
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• The census figures include estimates of seamen absent from Liverpool and the populations of the outlying town and suburbs. The ancient borough of Liverpool had a population of 77 653 in 1801, excluding these two groups. Baines Thomas History of the Commerce and Town of Liverpool, and of the Rise of Manufacturing Industry in the Adjoining Counties London and Liverpool 1852 507 508 584
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• The estimate was by William Rathbone. See Tolley B.H. The Liverpool Campaign against the Order in Council and the War of 1812 Liverpool and Merseyside, Essays in the Economic and Social History of the Port and its Hinterland Harris J.R. London 1969 98 146 in (p. 102)
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• 1828 . Report and Proceedings of the Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts, at the Half Yearly Meeting of the Members, held at the Lecture-Room, Union News-Room, Slater Street, March 11, 1828 3 – 3 . Liverpool
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• See Tolley The Liverpool Campaign against the Order in Council and the War of 1812 Liverpool and Merseyside, Essays in the Economic and Social History of the Port and its Hinterland Harris J.R. London 1969 98 146 in
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• Tolley . 1969 . “ The Liverpool Campaign against the Order in Council and the War of 1812 ” . In Liverpool and Merseyside, Essays in the Economic and Social History of the Port and its Hinterland Edited by: Harris , J.R. 115 – 116 . London 130
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• Tolley . 1969 . “ The Liverpool Campaign against the Order in Council and the War of 1812 ” . In Liverpool and Merseyside, Essays in the Economic and Social History of the Port and its Hinterland Edited by: Harris , J.R. 111 – 111 . London in
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• The quotation is from Ian Sellers William Roscoe, The Roscoe Circle and Radical Politics in Liverpool, 1787–1807 Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 1968 120 45 62 (p. 62)
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• Menzies . 1972 . The Freeman Voter in Liverpool, 1802–35 . Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire , 124 : 88 – 88 .
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• Baines . 1852 . History of the Commerce and Town of Liverpool, and of the Rise of Manufacturing Industry in the Adjoining Counties 528 – 528 . London and Liverpool
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• Quoted from the Minutes of Anderson's Institution in Kelly T. George Birkbeck, Pioneer of Adult Education Liverpool 1957 25 25
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• 1812 . The Stranger in Liverpool; or, An Historical and Descriptive View of the Town of Liverpool and its Environs , 3rd edn 134 – 134 . Liverpool For the Botanic Garden's regulations etc., see [William Roscoe], An Address, Delivered before the Proprietors of the Botanic Garden, in Liverpool, Previous to Opening the Garden, May 3, 1802. To which are added, the Laws of the Institution, and a List of the Proprietors (Liverpool, 1802).
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• 1826 . Scientific Institutions . Quarterly Review , 34 : 153 – 179 . (pp. 168–9)
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• 1812 . The Stranger in Liverpool , 3rd edn 191 – 191 . Liverpool
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• For instance, a Mr. Goyder of Bristol lectured at the Royal Institution in 1825 and John Dalton at the Mechanics' School of Arts in 1828. Ormerod H.A. The Liverpool Royal Institution, A Record and Retrospect Liverpool 1953 23 23 Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts Report (footnote 8), 6.
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• Shaw , G.T. 1898 . History of the Athenaeum, Liverpool, 1798–1898 3 – 4 . Liverpool
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• Shaw , G.T. 1898 . History of the Athenaeum, Liverpool, 1798–1898 3 – 4 . Liverpool especially 8, 25–7
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• Jennings , James . 1823 . A Lecture on the History and Utility of Literary Institutions. Delivered at the Surrey Institution, London, on Friday November 1st and again at the Russell Institution, on Thursday December 20th 1822 28 – 29 . London
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• 1830 . Catalogue of the Liverpool Library, at the Lyceum Liverpool T. Kelly, A History of Adult Education in Great Britain (Liverpool, 1962), p. 86. (The figures are from the lists of proprietors in the library catalogues of the years concerned.)
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• The figures given are the number of volumes of each class, not the number of works. The number of novels might be particularly inflated because of this (as most novels were two or three volumes) but in other classes the proportions were much the same of single to multi-volume works. Figures are from Catalogue of the Liverpool Library; To which are Prefixed, the Laws of the Institution, and a List of the Proprietors Liverpool 1801 and these figures augmented by the totals of additional works listed in the appendices of 1804, 1808 and 1811. David Hinton's thesis ‘Popular Science in England, 1830–1870’, (University of Bath Ph.D. thesis, 1979), contains very thorough quantitative analyses of the content of various libraries from the 1820s onwards. See especially Chapter 7
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• The actual numbers were: Natural History and Botany 615 volumes, Medicine 347 volumes, Chemistry 152 volumes and Natural Philosophy 241 volumes (see Catalogue Catalogue of the Liverpool Library, at the Lyceum Liverpool 1830
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• Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society Minute Books Vol. I , 1 – 2 . Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society Centenary Roll, 1812 to 1912, compiled by J. Hampden Jackson, lists the members and their date of entry into the Society (Liverpool City Libraries 060 LIT3 1/2). The Socieyy also elected men not living in Liverpool to Corresponding Membership. The first such members included John Murray, William Henry and Alexander Marcet, all proposed by John Bostock (Minutes, I, 17–18).
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• Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society Minute Books Vol. I , 4 – 5 . 8, 84, 111
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• Biographical information is derived principally from DNB and the biographical notes entered by J. H. Jackson in the Society's Centenary Roll Liverpool Literary and Philosophical society Centenary Roll Hampden Jackson J. 1812 to 1912 I The quotation is from a letter of Miss Eleanor Rathbone's, in the roll, under Houlbrooke's name.
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• See entries in Liverpool Literary and Philosophical society Centenary Roll Hampden Jackson J. 1812 to 1912 1
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• See especially Thackray A. Natural Knowledge in Cultural Context: The Manchester Model American Historical Review 1974 79 672 709 and S. Shapin. ‘The Pottery Philosophical Society, 1819–1835: An Examination of the Cultural Uses of Provincial Science’, Science Studies, 1 (1972), 311–36
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• Chapter IV, rule 9 of the Laws of the Society in Minutes Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society Minute Books I 9 9 In later years four Anglican ministers joined the Society Revs.
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• Tattershall , Thomas , Monk , J.B. , Prince , J.C. and Budd , R.P. 1979 . That articles forbidding discussions of politics and religion may have been essential to avoid social control over the activities of this type of society has been suggested in I. Inkster, ‘London Science and the Seditious Meetings Act of 1817’ . British Journal for the History of Science , 12 : 192 – 196 . (195). Inkster briefly touches on Liverpool and the interaction of the law with debating societies there in I. Inkster, ‘Seditious Science: A Reply to Paul Weindling’, British Journal for the History of Science, 14 (1981), 181–7 (185). The Liverpool Royal Institution was required to obtain a licence ‘for the purpose of delivering Philosophical Classical and Mathematical Lectures and Discourses’ but this appears to have been no problem for such a prestigious institution. The licence is preserved in the records (Liverpool University Library R.I. Arch.51.18)
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• Baines , Edward . 1824–5 . History, Directory, and Gazetteer, of the County Palatine of Lancaster, with a variety of Commerical and Statistical Information Vol. I , 198 – 198 . Liverpool 2 vols
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• From an 1868 report in the Centenary Roll Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society Centenary Roll Hampden Jackson J. 1812 to 1912 1 under William Rathbone's name
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• The poem is attributed to Shepherd by Jackson J.H. Society's Centenary Roll, but the Kaleidoscope, or Literary and Scientific Mirror 1824) 188 188 in the New Series 4 attributed it to Thomas Binns, a Quaker merchant and treasurer of the Liverpool Royal Infirmary (1818–19)
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• Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society Minute Books Vol. I , 44 – 44 .
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• 1828 . Addresses delivered by the Presidents of the Liverpool Philomathic Society, at the Royal Institution, on the Opening and Closing of the Sessions 1826–7 27 – 27 . Liverpool
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• Musson A. Robinson E. Science and Industry in the late Eighteenth Century Economic History Review 1960–61 13 222 244 2nd Series interprets the ‘Lit and Phils' as places where industrialists and men of science could discuss problems and exchange information (see e.g. p. 240). G. Roderick and M. Stephens, Scientific and Technical Education in Nineteenth-century England (Newton Abbot), 1972) interprets them as primarily to help the wealthy adjust to the developments of ‘the new industrial age’ (see Chapter viii, especially p. 136). Thackray (footnote 35) says that science acted as a ‘coherent explanatory scheme for the unprecedented, change-oriented society in which [the members] found themselves unavoidably if willingly cast in leading roles’ (see p. 682); Shapin (footnote 35) says that science acted as a ‘coherent explanatory scheme for the unprecedented, change-oriented society in which [the members] found themselves unavoidably if willingly cast in leading roles’ (see p. 682); Shapin (footnote 35) says that science was favoured because it embodied the middle-class world-view (see pp. 335–6)
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• Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society Minute Books Vol. I , 155 – 155 .
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• The Literary and Philosophical Society bought the mineral collection of a Mr Corlett specially to donate to the Royal Institution's when they moved into the building
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• Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society Minute Books Vol. II , 2 – 2 .
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• For the Royal Institution see Ormerod The Liverpool Royal Institution, A Record and Retrospect Liverpool 1953 23 23 Most of the Institution's archives were destroyed by bombing in 1941, but some material does remain in the Liverpool University Library; this information is from Ormerod, p. 10.
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• 1817 . Address At a General Meeting of the Subscribers in the Liverpool Institution, held on the 28th April Liverpool (Liverpool University Library R.I. Arch. 50.9).
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• 1817 . Address At a General Meeting of the Subscribers in the Liverpool Institution, held on the 28th April Liverpool (Liverpool University Library R.I. Arch. 50.9).
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• See the Resolutions of the meeting of 31 March 1814 (R.I. Arch. 1)
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• ‘Report by the Secretary, 27 February, 1822’, p. 12 in Resolutions, Reports and Bye-Laws of the Liverpool Royal Institution, March 1814-March 1822 Liberpool 1822
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• See Berman Morris Social Change and Scientific Organization, The Royal Institution 1799–1844 London 1978
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• The Philomathic Society was a small discussion group of business and professional men. It has sixteen members when opened in 1826. See Addresses Delivered by the Presidents of the Liverpool Philomathic Society, at the Royal Institution, on the Opening and Closing of the sessions 1826–7 Liverpool 1828 27 27
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• Resolutions of a General Meeting of the Subscribers on June 20th, 1814 7 – 7 . in Resolutions etc. (footnote 7) lists the members of this committee
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• Some lecturers, e.g. Roget P.M. Koster J.T. actually lectured at the London and Liverpool Royal Institutions
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• For the Royal Institution at this time see Berman (footnote 58), especially chapter 4. For the London Institution see Hays J.N. Science in the City: The London Institution 1819–40 British Journal for the History of Science 1974 7 146 162 and J. C. Cutler, ‘The London Institution 1805–1933’, (Leicester University Ph.D. thesis, 1976). The science content figure is from Cutler, Appendix VI, Table I
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• Report of the Liverpool Institution, for the Promotion of Literature, Science, and the Arts, July 17th, 1817 22 – 22 .
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• Report of the Liverpool Institution 10 – 10 .
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• See Address Delivered by Thomas Stewart Traill, and Resolutions Adopted at a General Meeting of the Inhabitants held on the 8th June, 1825; with an Exposition of the Objects and General Regulations of the Institution Liverpool 1825
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• Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts, Minutes September 1825 7 The Kaleidoscope, New Series 5 (1825), 413.
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