Owens College

“ In 1873 Owens College was housed in new buildings. Jevons contributed a paper on the ‘Railways and the State’ to the volume of ‘Essays and Addresses,’ by the publication of which in 1874 the professors of the college commemorated the event. But though he conscientiously performed his college duties, to which in 1868 a London examinership in political economy had been added, he found the strain of work rather heavy. ”

“ Jones interested himself in the reform of university education, and in 1836 a paper of his was read before the Statistical Society of Manchester, urging the inhabitants to establish in their town a university college in connection with the university of London. The suggestion was not acted upon, but on Jones's return from France he started a college of his own in Manchester; this, however, met with little success, and was shortly afterwards abandoned, though it prepared the way for the establishment of Owens College in 1851. ”

“ In 1865 Jevons, who also held a small appointment at Queen's College, Liverpool, was appointed lecturer in logic and political economy at Owens College, and in May 1866 the trustees of the college were at last enabled to create him professor of these subjects and of mental and moral philosophy. ”

“ To Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, M.P., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., etc., Emeritus Professor of Chemistry in the Owens College, Manchester, February 16, 1889.
We, the undersigned students of the Owens College, who have had the privilege of being your pupils, desire at the close of your active work as a teacher to offer you some recognition of the value of the services you have rendered to your College during the time you have laboured as one of its professors. For upwards of thirty years you have had the control and direction of the chemical department of the Owens College. ”

“ Most of the provincial colleges may indeed be regarded as technical schools with a literary side. In order that they may provide university education in addition to sound technical instruction, it is necessary that they should be placed on a sound and satisfactory footing by means of state endowment. Of the more recently erected English colleges, the Owens College at Manchester is the most important, combining the faculties of a German university with those of a polytechnic school. The Yorkshire College, Leeds, possesses a special school for the teaching of weaving and dyeing. ”

“ Christie's interest in the progress and prosperity of Owens College was in no degree relaxed by his ceasing to be a member of its teaching body. In 1870 the movement which had long been in preparation for the rehousing of the college in commodious buildings on a new site, and for the reconstitution of its system of government on broader and more suitable lines, took definite shape; and an extension committee was formed for carrying out these objects, of which Thomas Ashton, for many years one of the foremost public men at Manchester, became the chairman and the guiding spirit. ”

“ OWENS, JOHN (1790–1846) , merchant, and founder of Owens College, Manchester, the first and for four years the only college of the Victoria University, was born in Manchester in 1790. His father, Owen Owens, a native of Holywell in Flintshire, went to Manchester when a young man, and started in business as a hat-lining maker, ultimately becoming, with the aid of his son John, currier, furrier, manufacturer, and shipper, he married in his twenty-fifth year Sarah Humphreys, who was six years older than himself ”

“ To create a new university, in which the Owens College, Manchester, and such other institutions as may now or hereafter be able to fulfil the conditions of incorporation laid down in the Charter, may be incorporated colleges. ”

“ I should think there are!" replied Wadge. "Why, think of our Mechanics' Institute. We have more than a thousand students there. They all come of an evening, after work, and they pay next to nothing for their lessons; but I've known lots of them who have got on so well that they have been able to go to Owens College at Manchester—even taken degrees. And there is no end to the possibilities for the chap who has taken a degree." ”

“ Subject as aforesaid, the said institution shall be open to all applicants for admission without respect to place of birth, and without distinction of rank or condition in society.' The net amount realised from the legacy was 96,654l. 11s. 6d. Accordingly Owens College was founded, and was opened in 1851. ”

“ The ultimate effect of all this will be a still clearer recognition by the community that the permanence and eventual success of our manufacturing industries depends upon the intelligent application of science.
We are thus able to perceive how Roscoe’s action in helping on the development of Owens College on modern lines and in raising it eventually to the status of a university has reacted, and is bound still further to react, upon the intellectual and material welfare of this country. ”

“ It is not the further endowment of Oxford and Cambridge that is continued by one rich man, but the foundation of new colleges, art galleries, and schools of art. Angerstein, Vernon, Alexander, Tate, are some of our benefactors in art.
The endowments of Owens College, the Mason College, the Firth College, University College, London, are gifts of private persons. Since we do not produce rich men so freely as America, our endowments are neither so many nor so great ”

“ As a result of that conference a special committee was appointed, on whose behalf he prepared the draft of Henry Austin Bruce's education bill of 1868. He was an active member of the Manchester school board from its constitution in 1870 to his death, and secretary to the Owens College extension committee, which raised about a quarter of a million sterling for the erection and equipment of a new collegiate building, and for the further endowment of the college. ”

“ Barnes—drew up “proposals for establishing in Manchester a plan of liberal education for young men designed for civil and active life, whether in trade or in any of the professions,” which may be said to have anticipated the foundation of Owens College. The management was to be free from sectarian exclusiveness. “A plan formed for public utility should be generous and enlarged, so as to extend itself as widely as possible for the common interest. Science and arts are of no political or religious party.” ”

“ His business prospered, and the firm traded with China, India, South America and the United States, dealing in many other commodities. His large fortune he suggested leaving to his friend and partner George Faulkner (1790–1860) , already a rich man. But by the latter's advice he bequeathed it to trustees for the foundation of a college (Owens College, Manchester, opened 1851, now part of Victoria University) , based upon his own ideas of education. He died in Manchester on the 29th of July 1846. ”

“ In November 1874 he writes that his books are beginning to pay at last, and that he is much oppressed by the too abundant exercises of his logic class (Letters and Journal, p. 324) . Early in the year he had taken another holiday abroad, and there was every disposition during these years at Owens College to do what was possible to retain him. But his heart had been for some time set on London, and as the professorship of political economy at University College was in 1875 virtually placed at his disposal, he in October 1876 quitted Manchester, and settled on Branch Hill, Hampstead. ”

“ Roscoe, and, having studied abroad, became professor in succession at Owens College, the North Staffordshire School of Science, Firth College, Sheffield, University College, Dundee, and the University of Aberdeen. ”

“ Gaskell exercised great influence in Manchester, especially in the promotion of education and learning. Though an effective and polished speaker, he rarely appeared on platforms. At Owens College he conducted the classes of logic and English literature during the illness of Principal Scott. On the formation of a working man's college in 1858 he was appointed lecturer on English literature, and retained that office on the amalgamation (1861) of this scheme with the evening classes of Owens College. ”

“ When Owens College was founded in 1851 he was made its Professor of Biology and Geology, his researches having already won him an election as a F. R. S. Later this professorship was divided, and for many years he had held the chair of botany. He was the first to announce the existence in some of the deeper seas of what is now known as the foraminiferous ooze. He also made important researches upon the teeth and scales of fishes, and upon the fossil plants of the coal measures. He received the Royal Medal of the Royal Society, and the Wollaston gold medal of the Geological Society. ”

“ When the Manchester Free Library was opened in 1852 he suggested that a series of popular literary lectures should be given in connection with that institution. The suggestion was adopted, and he delivered one of the courses himself, his subject being ‘Poetry and Fiction.’ Subsequently he gave a series of lectures at Owens College, extending over several years, on the ‘Relation of Religion to the Life of the Scholar.’ In all these addresses he made skilful use of his deep learning and knowledge of the languages and literature of many nations. ”

“ On Easter Mondays the villagers and working folk used to crowd in to be married, as many as two hundred couples being despatched at a blow, the same service answering for all simultaneously. The city may be proud of its Victoria University, the development of Owen’s College, founded in 1847. ”

“ Of all gratifying and far too flattering addresses which I am to-day receiving, none come so near my heart as that signed by three hundred of my former students.
What can a teacher value more than the sympathy and good opinion of his pupils, and this you have given me in full measure.
If I succeeded in forming a School of Chemistry at Owens, it was because, in the first place, I learnt from Bunsen how the foundations of such a school must be laid; secondly, because I fortunately secured the co-operation in the task of good men and true, like Schorlemmer and Dittmar ”

“ Meanwhile, in April 1836, he had been made first Hunterian professor of comparative anatomy and physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons, with the obligation to deliver twenty-four annual lectures illustrative of the Hunterian collections; and this duty he fulfilled regularly down to his retirement from the college in 1856. He was always more widely known by the title of ‘Professor Owen’ than by the knightly addition of his later years.
Owen's scientific reputation grew rapidly. ”

“ Owen matriculated as a member of the same college on 16 Dec. 1608, and became chaplain of New College, whence he graduated B.A. (as Owen Morgan) 5 July 1613; he proceeded M.A. from Hart Hall, 4 June 1616. He was introduced to the notice of Laud when bishop of St. David's, and was appointed his chaplain, and subsequently, through his influence as chancellor of the university of Oxford, he was made D.D. (at the time of the king's visit to Oxford) , 31 Aug. 1636, then being described as of Jesus College. Wood (Athenæ Oxon. iv. 803) describes him as well beneficed in Wales. ”

“ The roll of deans contains such names as those of John Owen, the most famous of Puritan preachers, John Fell, theologian and founder of the greatness of the Oxford Press, Henry Aldrich, universally accomplished as scholar, logician, musician, architect, Francis Atterbury, Jacobite and plotter, Cyril Jackson, who ruled Christ Church with a rod of iron, and who ranks first among the creators of nineteenth-century Oxford, Thomas Gaisford and Henry George Liddell, great Greek scholars. It seems that a college gains something by having its head appointed from outside ”

“ John Owen, whose proficiency in learning was such, that he was admitted to the University when he was a child only twelve years old; and who pursued his studies with such diligence that, for several years, he allowed himself but four hours’ sleep a-night; tall in stature, affable in temper, charitable in spirit, and a friend of peace; a man of enormous learning, and whose labours as a minister were almost incredible; eminent for piety, an excellent preacher, and whose writings are almost enough to fill a library. ”

“ Five years—said Owen—had passed since his elevation to office, and for two years after that elevation the critical situation of the University had been a subject for astrologers and newspapers—to such a pitch did things arrive that to have advocated public schools would have been reckoned offensive to religion. Everything disgraceful was imputed to the advocates of learning. Affairs were in confusion, and on the edge of the pit, and the University was saved by a miracle. ”

“ For even at home the general uneducated public, taking but a passing interest in educational details, is apt to be hopelessly at sea as to the mutual relation of Colleges and Universities. In the public mind the College probably represents the University: an Oxonian will be sometimes spoken of as 'at College;' University officials are confused with heads of houses, and Collections with University examinations. That foundation which is consecrated to the education of Welsh Oxonians is generally referred to in the remote fastnesses of the Cymru as Oxford College. ”

“ The well-known Socialist reformer, Robert Owen, and his disciples built that college—a fine edifice occupying a healthy position—and called it Harmony Hall, as it was meant to inaugurate the millennium ”