The Right Honourable Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe P.C., D.C.L., F.R.S. / A Biographical Sketch

by T. E. Thorpe

It was significant of what the town thought of the financial outlook of the College that the new professor should be refused the tenancy of a house when the landlord learned that he was one of its staff.

Its ill-success was the subject of leading articles in the local press. The Manchester Guardian of July 9, 1858, wrote: “Explain it as we may, the fact is certain that this College, which eight years ago it was hoped would form the nucleus of a Manchester university, is a mortifying failure.” And Professor Roscoe was blamed for not awarding the Dalton scholarship because he had the hardihood to say that none of the laboratory students was sufficiently qualified to be worthy of it. The Manchester Examiner was somewhat more appreciative of the efforts of the little band who were gallantly striving to raise the very low standard of middle-class education in Manchester at that time.

We are compelled (it said) to look for the causes of non-success elsewhere than in the collegiate machinery. If an objection can be raised against the College at all, it is that such an institution is either in advance of our felt wants, or altogether unsuited to the economical conditions of Manchester life. Still, this is the fault of the community, not of the College. The worst that can be said of it is that it is too good for us.

This might certainly be said, in a certain sense, of the first Principal of the College. Excellent in many respects as a man, and inspiring as a teacher, he was altogether unfitted to direct the development of the young and struggling institution in such a community and at such a time.

Principal Scott, whom Mrs. Oliphant described as “a man whose powerful, wilful, and fastidious mind has produced upon all other capable minds an impression of force and ability which no practical result has yet adequately carried out,” had little constructive or directive power. Earnest, upright, and conscientious, he was essentially an idealist—almost a visionary—a man of words—forceful and even eloquent at times—but with no capacity for action. As a thinker he lived a strenuous and exhaustive life. Although only forty-six at the date of his appointment, his constitution, never very robust, was already undermined and his nervous energy impaired. He was frequently ill, and his repeated absences from the College necessarily interfered with his administrative work. After struggling for six years with the duties and responsibilities of a position for which circumstances and the times in nowise fitted him, he tendered his resignation as Principal a few months before Roscoe was appointed to the chair of Chemistry and was succeeded by Professor Greenwood.

The public criticism to which the College was subjected was not altogether without a salutary effect on its policy. It must be remembered that it was the first attempt of the kind to bring the higher training, and something of the spirit of collegiate life, directly within the reach of the middle-class youth of a great business community, and it was necessary to have some regard to the conditions of the district and its special requirements and, it may be added, even its peculiar prejudices.

Roscoe’s antecedents, his associations with Lancashire, and his knowledge of and sympathy with what is strongest and best in the Lancashire character, made him quick to realize the factors upon which the ultimate success of the institution depended. It was no use for it to set itself athwart the economical conditions of the community. Young as he was—he was then twenty-four—he was perhaps more alive to the practical necessities of the position than the majority of his colleagues.

He quickly revealed himself as the man of the hour. His accession to the College at this crisis was the turning-point in its career. He brought new vigour and a fresh spirit into its policy, and from that time forward its fortunes began steadily to mend.

As regards his own department, it was his ambition to establish at Owens College a school of chemistry which should worthily serve the interests of the great manufacturing district of South Lancashire—the largest and most important seat of chemical industry in the kingdom. Associated with him in this effort, he had as assistants Frederick Guthrie, who, on his appointment to the chair of Chemistry at the Royal College in Mauritius, was succeeded by Dittmar, and afterwards by Schorlemmer—all men of originality and admirable teachers. Schorlemmer spent the greater part of his life in Manchester, and died in the service of the College, latterly as Professor of Organic Chemistry—the first to be so designated in the kingdom. His connection with the institution is commemorated by the association of his name with one of the chemical laboratories of the Victoria University. His co-operation with Roscoe in the production of the well-known treatise which bears their joint names will be referred to later.

Roscoe from the outset threw himself heartily into the educational and scientific activities of the community in which he was to make his home for the next thirty years. He joined the Philosophical Society of Manchester—so honourably associated with the name and fame of Dalton. Founded in 1781, the Society has played a worthy part in the intellectual life of Manchester. In the second year of its existence one of its members—the Rev. Dr. 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.” These liberal sentiments commended themselves to the Society, who ordered that the paper should “be printed and offered to the consideration of the public.” The seed fell on stony ground at the time and made only a feeble attempt to germinate; two generations had to come and go before it definitely took root.