Constructing South Kensington: The buildings and politics of T. H. Huxley's working environments

British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 435-468

  Forgan, Sophie ^a   Gooday, Graeme ^b  

^a TEESSIDE UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CONSTRUCTION WORK AND ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENA; HISTORY; INFORMATION CENTER; UNITED KINGDOM; UNIVERSITY;

FACILITY DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; MUSEUMS; NATURAL HISTORY; UNIVERSITIES;

EID: 0030323917     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0007087400034737     Document Type: Article

References (146)

1. L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 2 vols., London, 1900, i, 476.
2. G. de Beer (ed.), Charles Darwin and T. H. Huxley: Autobiographies, Oxford, 1974, 100; Huxley's 'autobiography' was originally published in L. Engel, From Handel to Hallé, London, 1890.
3. For example, Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise, Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin, Cambridge, 1989.
4. Examples of this genre are J. Vernon Jensen, Thomas Henry Huxley: Communicating for Science, London, 1991, and J. Paradis, T. H. Huxley: Man's Place in Nature, Lincoln, NA, 1978. While C. Bibby, T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist and Educator, London, 1959, the oldest 'modern' biography, is somewhat distinct, it also places great emphasis on Huxley's writings and speeches.
5. Examples of this genre are J. Vernon Jensen, Thomas Henry Huxley: Communicating for Science, London, 1991, and J. Paradis, T. H. Huxley: Man's Place in Nature, Lincoln, NA, 1978. While C. Bibby, T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist and Educator, London, 1959, the oldest 'modern' biography, is somewhat distinct, it also places great emphasis on Huxley's writings and speeches.
6. Examples of this genre are J. Vernon Jensen, Thomas Henry Huxley: Communicating for Science, London, 1991, and J. Paradis, T. H. Huxley: Man's Place in Nature, Lincoln, NA, 1978. While C. Bibby, T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist and Educator, London, 1959, the oldest 'modern' biography, is somewhat distinct, it also places great emphasis on Huxley's writings and speeches.
7. A. Desmond, Huxley: The Devil's Disciple, London, 1994, covers only the years up to 1870 of the projected two-volume biography.
8. This is not to say that Desmond ignores the social tensions inside such spaces. Nevertheless there is much contrary evidence cited by both Desmond and Bibby that Huxley was far from being a marginal figure in the 1850s and 1860s. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851 at the tender age of 26 after winning prizes and medals since his student days in the 1840s, first became a Council member 1853-54, and again in 1859-60 and 1866-67.
9. There are parallels with the historiography of Desmond's earlier works, for example, in Archetypes and Ancestors, Chicago, 1982.
10. Desmond, op. cit. (5), 292; see also 208-11, 292-4 for Huxley's views on his working-class audiences.
11. M. Di Gregorio, T. H. Huxley's Place in Natural Science, New Haven, 1984, 172-3; and Huxley, op. cit. (1), i, 279-83.
12. M. Di Gregorio, T. H. Huxley's Place in Natural Science, New Haven, 1984, 172-3; and Huxley, op. cit. (1), i, 279-83.
13. Desmond, op. cit. (5), 351-4. Eyre was not in fact prosecuted.
14. The nomenclature of the institutions in South Kensington is confusing. The Royal School of Mines (itself so named from 1863) encompassed several areas of science teaching and had from 1853 incorporated the Royal College of Chemistry. When partially moved to South Kensington in 1871-72 the name was retained, though it was generally known simply as the Science Schools. In 1881 the name Normal School of Science was chosen with the Continental model of a teacher-training 'école normale' in view, although the Royal School of Mines continued to retain its name and something of a separate identity within the larger school. The 'Normal School' was never a popular name and in 1890 the school was renamed the Royal College of Science.
15. Bibby, op. cit. (4), 141, and 117, 'the dream of a great central school of science at South Kensington became a reality'. This view, based on the 'Note of conversation' of 1869 is discussed in Appendix 1; Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, xxxii, 194 ff.
16. It was not until 1872 that the formal decision was taken for the departments of physics, chemistry and natural history to move to South Kensington. These eighteen years were those in which Huxley created his scientific reputation based upon an extraordinarily productive range of books and papers, and the years in which he established his public reputation, both as a controversialist and as someone with views on a wide range of public issues.
17. Desmond, op. cit. (5), 201 ff.
18. Robert Stafford, Scientist of Empire, Cambridge, 1989, ch. 8.
19. Desmond, op. cit. (5), 302.
20. Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction, 1872 [c. 536] XXV, Reeks evidence, qu. 457, pp. 29-30; hereafter Devonshire Commission.
21. Huxley, op. cit. (1), i, 131-3.
22. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1858, v, 7.
23. This was not finally published until 1865 when the arrangement of the cases was finished; Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1858, v, 94-5.
24. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1859, vi, 45; 1860, vii, 156.
25. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1859, vi, 45; 1860, vii, 156.
26. For Salter's career and decline, see James A. Secord, 'The rise and fall of a Victorian palaeontological career', in From Linnaeus to Darwin: Commentaries on the History of Biology and Geology (ed. A. Wheeler and J. H. Price), London 1985, 61-75. As Secord points out, Salter was unfitted to take decisions on theoretical questions, and his views on stratigraphical questions were regarded by certainly one of the Survey's field men as unsatisfactory and evasive.
27. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1859, vi, 6.
28. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1861, viii, 157, and 1862, ix, 136.
29. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1861, viii, 157, and 1862, ix, 136.
30. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1862, ix, 136.
31. This is discussed in S. Forgan, 'Bricks and bones: architecture and science in Victorian Britain' (forthcoming).
32. Photograph no. 24 in Desmond, op. cit. (5). The main entrance to the Museum was in Jermyn Street, with the steps, doorway and staircase appropriately decorated with different British stones and marbles. This was always used by the public. A small private entrance onto Piccadilly was planned, but was not included when the Museum was actually built.
33. Huxley, op. cit. (1), i, 88. Leonard Huxley records that Huxley later often recounted this incident against himself.
34. With thanks to Anne Barrett for her information on Working Men's Lectures in the Museum.
35. Between 1860 and 1870 the numbers ranged between five (1862, 1866) and a high point of twenty-four (1869). Figures given in the annual Report of the Department of Science and Art.
36. W. J. Sollas, 'The master', Nature (1925), 115, 747. This article (and others cited below) were published as a supplement to Nature to mark the centenary of Huxley's birth.
37. H. E. Armstrong, 'Our need to honour Huxley's will', Huxley Memorial Lecture, London, 1933, 10-11.
38. See Report of the Department of Science and Art, e.g. 1861-62: Tyndall - 283, Huxley-138; 1862-63: Tyndall - 123, Huxley - 64.
39. For example, Armstrong recalled that 'attending Tyndall's marvellously illustrated lectures on Physics, also at Jermyn Street, I was enraptured. His Icelandic Strokur, spouting up to the ceiling, ever lives in my mind's eye'; Armstrong, op. cit. (32), 12.
40. Autobiography, op. cit. (2), 108, and Desmond, op. cit. (5), 339-40. Vernon Jenson, op. cit. (4), examines, for example, Huxley's first lecture at the Royal Institution, but deals more with substance of the argument than with actual techniques of delivery.
41. Autobiography, op. cit. (2), 108, and Desmond, op. cit. (5), 339-40. Vernon Jenson, op. cit. (4), examines, for example, Huxley's first lecture at the Royal Institution, but deals more with substance of the argument than with actual techniques of delivery.
42. Autobiography, op. cit. (2), 108, and Desmond, op. cit. (5), 339-40. Vernon Jenson, op. cit. (4), examines, for example, Huxley's first lecture at the Royal Institution, but deals more with substance of the argument than with actual techniques of delivery.
43. Desmond, op. cit. (5), 281, and N. Rupke, Richard Owen, Victorian Naturalist, Yale, 1994, 93-5.
44. Desmond, op. cit. (5), 281, and N. Rupke, Richard Owen, Victorian Naturalist, Yale, 1994, 93-5.
45. For example, Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1859, vi, 49; 1860, vii, 162; 1862, ix, 138.
46. For example, Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1859, vi, 49; 1860, vii, 162; 1862, ix, 138.
47. For example, Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1859, vi, 49; 1860, vii, 162; 1862, ix, 138.
48. W. T. Thistleton-Dyer, Nature (1925), 115, 709, quoting W. H. Flower. Huxley always maintained that drawing was an essential skill that could be mastered by anybody. See also the references to his drawing skills by W. Bateson, H. E. Armstrong and E. F. Russell, ibid., 741, 743, 752.
49. W. T. Thistleton-Dyer, Nature (1925), 115, 709, quoting W. H. Flower. Huxley always maintained that drawing was an essential skill that could be mastered by anybody. See also the references to his drawing skills by W. Bateson, H. E. Armstrong and E. F. Russell, ibid., 741, 743, 752.
50. Select Committee on Scientific Instruction, 1867-68, [432] XV, 397-403, qu. 7958. It should of course be remembered that the Select Committee had specifically been set up to deal with such matters, and scientists were naturally going to make the most of such an opportunity.
51. As stated in Bibby, op. cit. (4), 117,
52. and Desmond, op. cit. (5), 302.
53. See Edgar A. Bowring, 'South Kensington', Nineteenth Century (June 1877), 563-82, on the district where 'silence and solitude reigned throughout'.
54. For example, as stated in a contemporary account by E. Edwards, Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, London, 1870, 594. Cole authorized the construction of the underground station at South Kensington in 1864; Survey of London, London, 1975, xxxviii, 65.
55. For example, as stated in a contemporary account by E. Edwards, Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, London, 1870, 594. Cole authorized the construction of the underground station at South Kensington in 1864; Survey of London, London, 1975, xxxviii, 65.
56. R. C. Denis, 'The Brompton Barracks: war, peace, and the rise of Victorian art and design education', Journal of Design History (1995), 8.1, 11-25, discusses Cole's unpopularity, as does Desmond's forthcoming volume 2.
57. Bibby, op. cit. (4), 124, and see Huxley's remarks on 'teaching for the pot', in 'Technical education', 1877, reproduced in T. H. Huxley, Science and Education: Essays, London, 1905, 420.
58. Bibby, op. cit. (4), 124, and see Huxley's remarks on 'teaching for the pot', in 'Technical education', 1877, reproduced in T. H. Huxley, Science and Education: Essays, London, 1905, 420.
59. Bibby, op. cit. (4), 124, and see Huxley's remarks on 'teaching for the pot', in 'Technical education', 1877, reproduced in T. H. Huxley, Science and Education: Essays, London, 1905, 420.
60. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1865, xii, p. x. On the changing importance of such juxtaposition, see S. Forgan and G. Gooday, 'A fungoid assemblage of buildings', in History of Universities, xiii, 1994, 153-92.
61. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1865, xii, p. x. On the changing importance of such juxtaposition, see S. Forgan and G. Gooday, 'A fungoid assemblage of buildings', in History of Universities, xiii, 1994, 153-92.
62. Meanwhile the collection of naval models grew, and in 1868 another long gallery was added to the rooms holding the collection. On the School of Naval Architecture building, see Forgan and Gooday, op. cit. (45), 161-4.
63. Desmond, op. cit. (5), 251-2. When in 1860 Lord Elcho suggested that the British Museum natural history collections ought to move into Burlington House, it must have caused Huxley a start. This was almost opposite the Geological Museum, and home to the Royal Society, where Huxley needed to cultivate influence. Nothing came of that, nor of the proposal to put the proposed Natural History Museum by the new Embankment along the Thames. In May 1862, Huxley again publicly applauded the defeat of the government's bill to purchase some of the land at South Kensington.
64. M. H. Port, Imperial London: Civil Government Building in London 1851-1915, New Haven, 1995, ch. 6, gives an excellent account of the various parliamentary manœuvres.
65. Hansard, 1868 (3rd series), cxcviii, 160.
66. Huxley's relations with Murchison were generally friendly; Murchison supported him from the start, ensured his election to the Athenaeum, and was always generous in attitude; but by the mid-1860s Huxley was finding Murchison a 'very trying old party'; Huxley to Hooker, 15 July 1865, quoted in Bibby, op. cit. (4), 112.
67. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1863, x, 192.
68. He defended the Survey's need to have a chemist and a palaeontologist on site. Devonshire Commission, 1872, xxv, 151-2. However, it is clear from the 'Note of conversation' reproduced in Appendix 1, that it was Huxley who recommended transferring the whole School.
69. Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1867, xiv, 232-3.
70. When questioned himself in the proceedings of the Select Committee on Scientific Instruction in July 1868, Huxley was generally circumspect. He agreed with Cole's proposal for a 'central college of science' in London (though its lack of central location was not mentioned), averred he knew little about the School of Naval Architecture, but emphasized that the separation, indeed the 'partial independence', of the School of Mines and the College of Chemistry was a 'lamentable circumstance'. Select Committee on Scientific Instruction, 1867-68 (432), XV, 399-400.
71. Devonshire Commission, 1872, XXV, 30.
72. 'X' Club colleague Edward Frankland was also happy to agree that the building for the School of Naval Architecture in South Kensington would probably be big enough to provide enough space for the School of Mines as well.
73. Devonshire Commission, Supplementary Report to First Report, XXV, 28 February 1872, pp. ix-x.
74. L. Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley: A Character Sketch, London, 1920, 60.
75. Minutes of Council, Royal School of Mines, i, 5 July 1872, Imperial College Archives, D/4/1 563.
76. Huxley used the Devonshire Commission to continue his battle over territory with Owen, as he wrote to Hooker, 'We had Owen before us today and the old fool had the impudence to make a bad attack upon me - but as I hope I need not tell you, he did not take much by his motion - The Plans for the new Natural History Museum we settled our way', 18 March 1871, Huxley Papers 2.172, Imperial College Archives.
77. 'Z', 'The Royal College of Science', Educational Times (1893), 46, 393.
78. For background, see D. Layton, Science for the People: The Origins of the School Science Curriculum in England, London, 1973, and A. Hatjievgeniadu, 'English Science Education in the 1870s', M.Sc. thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1990.
79. For background, see D. Layton, Science for the People: The Origins of the School Science Curriculum in England, London, 1973, and A. Hatjievgeniadu, 'English Science Education in the 1870s', M.Sc. thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1990.
80. G. Gooday '"Nature" in the laboratory: domestication and discipline with the microscope in Victorian life science', BJHS (1991), 24, 307-41; and E. Ray Lankester 'Instruction to science teachers at South Kensington', Nature (1871), 4, 362.
81. G. Gooday '"Nature" in the laboratory: domestication and discipline with the microscope in Victorian life science', BJHS (1991), 24, 307-41; and E. Ray Lankester 'Instruction to science teachers at South Kensington', Nature (1871), 4, 362.
82. The DSA's system of paying its schoolteachers by the examination results of their students was an effective incentive for these teachers to come to South Kensington for laboratory training - not least in biology because Huxley himself was the main examiner for this subject, Gooday, op. cit. (63).
83. This sketch is undated, but almost certainly belongs to the period 1870-72 when the internal arrangements for the Science Schools building were being finalized.
84. Drawing on the work of Beale, Carpenter and others, and on his own experiences at Charing Cross Hospital and on board HMS Rattlesnake in the 1840s, Huxley made constant daily use of the microscope, the key feature of his teacher-training programme. On establishing the institutional laboratory as the key site for microscopy, see Gooday, op. cit. (63).
85. Extant models are stored in Imperial College Archives.
86. Huxley, op. cit. (1), i, 365-7. The adverse effects of Huxley's ill health from this period onwards is emphasized by Desmond in his forthcoming volume 2.
87. Huxley, op. cit. (1), i, 427-41.
88. T. H. Huxley, 'On elementary instruction in physiology', 1877, in Huxley, op. cit. (44), 300-2.
89. Patrick Geddes, 'Huxley as teacher', Nature (1925), 115, 741. The practice of a daily professorial visit was well known to British scientists from the German model, exemplified in England by Augustus Hofmann at the Royal College of Chemistry. It may also be compared with the daily round of the physician or surgeon to the hospital wards.
90. F. O. Bower, 'Teaching of biological science', Nature (1925), 115, 712.
91. Gooday, op. cit. (63), 336-40.
92. H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 2 vols., London, 1934, i, 201.
93. Thistleton-Dyer later admitted that when undertaking a botanical variant of Huxley's physiological course, the 'difficulties' faced by him and his Oxford-based assistant Lawson were 'enormous'; they were 'generally up half the night' preparing materials freshly arrived from Kew Gardens and 'rehearsing' demonstrations for the laboratory exercises on the following day. Fortunately, they were able to work the class up to a high pitch of receptive 'enthusiasm', and some of the 'more expert men' apparently had 'good luck in "getting things out"', so much so that they succeeded in showing 'shoals of things which had never been seen in England before'. W. Thistleton-Dyer: 'Plant biology in the seventies', Nature (1925), 115, 711.
94. C. V. Boys, 'Personal impressions', Nature (1925), 115, 751.
95. Wells, op. cit. (74), 201.
96. Wells, op. cit. (74), 206-18.
97. Wells, op. cit. (74), 201.
98. Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, 1882 [c. 3981-11], Huxley evidence, qu. 3037, pp. 331-2; hereafter Mundella Commission. Compare with another anecdote cited by Huxley, in Gooday, op. cit. (63), 307.
99. Wells, op. cit. (74), 201-2.
100. G. Geison, Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology, Princeton, 1978, 130-47.
101. Copy in the Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, xlii, 157. Walter Crane (1845-1913) was a well-known designer and illustrator, active in the Arts and Crafts movement and design education; see DNB and G. Naylor, The Arts and Crafts Movement, London, 1971.
102. Bibby's claim is that Huxley 'generally seemed to get his way' (Bibby, op. cit. (4), 231).
103. See Bibby, op. cit. (4), 126, and the thorough rebuttal in an archivist's note in Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,865/7.
104. Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,813, Minutes of Executive SubCommittee, unpaginated.
105. Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, xlix, 54. See also Huxley, op. cit. (44), 'Technical education' (1877), 404-26.
106. Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, xlix, 55.
107. Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,813, 19 December 1877.
108. This report was discussed and negotiated with Huxley and Donnelly over the next three months; at the end of March, Donnelly invited the various Guild dignitaries over to South Kensington; Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive MS 21,813, 25 March 1878.
109. J. Lang, City and Guilds of London Institute Centenary, London, 1978, 14-53.
110. 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 135.
111. S. Waterlow to General Scott, 25 October 1879, 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 137-8.
112. Scott to Bramwell 16 May 1879, 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 151-2.
113. See report in Nature (1879), 21, 139 and 221; compare with Huxley's letter to George Howell of 2 January 1880 in Huxley, op. cit. (1), i, 476 cited below.
114. Huxley to John Watney, 21 October 1879, Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,906/1.
115. Waterlow to Scott, 25 October 1879; 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 137-8.
116. Huxley to George Howell, 2 January 1880, in Huxley, op. cit. (1), i, 476.
117. Letter Huxley to Scott, 20 February 1880, 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 124.
118. For details of the problems of construction see Forgan and Gooday, op. cit. (45), 166-72.
119. Evidence to the Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), 1883, qu. 4424.
120. Sir S. Waterlow et al., Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4420.
121. Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4441.
122. Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4439.
123. Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4422.
124. Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4455 and 4542. These four companies subscribed £10,000 each.
125. Huxley, op. cit. (1), ii, 49-50.
126. Bibby, op. cit. (4), 128-9.
127. Huxley, op. cit. (1), i, 475.
128. Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,819/1, Minutes of SubCommittee A, 18 February 1884, 109-12.
129. See the record of the proceedings in City and Guilds of London Report to Governors (1884), 1, Imperial College Archives.
130. Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,819/1, Minutes of SubCommittee A, 23 January 1885, 147.
131. Donnelly to Huxley, 13 February 1885, Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, 42.53.
132. Donnelly to Huxley, 13 February 1885, op. cit. (113). Philip Magnus was the Secretary to the City and Guilds of London Institute, and later MP for London University. Roberts, as noted above, was a member of the Clothworkers Company.
133. In the first full year 1885-86 there were fourteen students in Mechanical Engineering, thirteen in Applied Physics and eight in Chemistry - a total of thirty-five; Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,914.
134. See details of appointments in the 'Old students notes' in volumes of The Central, from 1903 to c. 1920, Imperial College Archives.
135. See G. Gooday, 'The premisses of premises' in Crosbie Smith and J. Agar (eds.), Making Space (forthcoming). Note also that John Watney resigned from his post as City and Guilds Secretary on 17 July 1885 in protest at the huge budgetary overspend in which the subcommittee had indulged the Professor of Chemistry, H. E. Armstrong. Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,819/1, Minutes of SubCommittee A, 1885, 186-7.
136. Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, 42.158.
137. Published on 19 February 1887, Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, 42.158.
138. See Donnelly to Huxley, 27 February 1887, Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, 14.76.
139. Memorandum of Proceedings at a Drawing Room Meeting for the Promotion of Technical Education, 1887, 40, copy in Imperial College Archives; see commentary in Electrician (8 April 1887), 480-1.
140. Memorandum of Proceedings at a Drawing Room Meeting for the Promotion of Technical Education, 1887, 40, copy in Imperial College Archives; see commentary in Electrician (8 April 1887), 480-1.
141. Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,819/1, p. 180, 4 June 1885.
142. For a total of eighty-one teachers from as far afield as Edinburgh, Stoke-on-Trent, Cardiff and Barnstaple. Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,906/1.
143. See Gooday, op. cit. (117).
144. The forthcoming volume 2 of Desmond's biography reflects this strongly.
145. Science and Art, 1893-94, p. 122, Imperial College Archives E 1/1 1028.
146. Bibby, op. cit. (4), 122.