The Owens College: its Foundation and Growth, and its Connection with the Victoria University, Manchester

Abstract

THE future historian of the progress of education in England during the nineteenth century will regard the foundation of the Owens College, Manchester, as an event of the first importance. The idea of establishing, in the midst of our great manufacturing towns, institutions devoted to the higher learning was not new. The experiment had been tried in various forms in Manchester itself, but had always failed. A College of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1783 by some of the leading men in the town and county, but, owing to “a superstitious fear of a tendency of a taste for knowledge to unfit young men for ordinary business, this excellent institution had not a long existence.” In 1836 meetings were held, and a scheme was drawn up for the establishment in Manchester of a College for general education. In the spring of 1837 it was proposed to elect a Medical Faculty in connection with the College; but, before another year passed, the scheme was abandoned, as very few pupils came forward.

The Owens College: its Foundation and Growth, and its Connection with the Victoria University, Manchester.

By Joseph Thompson. (Manchester: J. E. Cornish, 1886.)