Roscoe quickly acquired an influential position in the Philosophical Society. He served for many years as its secretary, and ultimately became its president. He was the first recipient of its Dalton medal, awarded to him in recognition of his efforts to throw light upon the reasoning which led Dalton to the formulation of his great generalization, by the publication in association with his friend and former pupil, Dr. Harden, of “A New View of the Origin of Dalton’s Atomic Theory” (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.), based upon Dalton’s manuscripts and laboratory note-books in the possession of the Society. The book will be referred to at greater length when considering Roscoe’s contributions in general to the literature of chemistry.
In the Society at the time Roscoe joined it were several men of scientific eminence, or who played notable parts in the industrial life of the district—among them Joule, Schunck, Fairbairn, W. C. Williamson, Angus Smith, and Crace Calvert. Joule, a pupil of Dalton, a shy, retiring man, was several times President of the Society, and Roscoe, who greatly admired his character and powers as an original thinker, became one of his most intimate friends. In the later years of his life Joule, who was a member of a brewing firm at Stone in Staffordshire, suffered great reverses of fortune, and was only saved from actual poverty by the grant of a Civil List pension, which Roscoe, with the help of Tyndall, Huxley, and other friends of science, was instrumental in obtaining. A letter which Roscoe wrote to the Times resulted in the creation of the Joule Memorial Fund, administered by the Royal Society. It takes the form of an international studentship or grant to assist research in those branches of physical science more immediately connected with Joule’s work. With the assistance of Lord Kelvin, he secured the placing of a tablet to Joule’s memory in Westminster Abbey.
In the vestibule of the Manchester Town Hall a life-size marble statue by Gilbert of the discoverer of the Law of the Conservation of Energy stands opposite to a statue of the author of the Atomic Theory. It was unveiled in 1893 by Joule’s most intimate scientific friend, Lord Kelvin. Concerning this unveiling, Roscoe could occasionally be induced to tell a story. In proposing a vote of thanks to Lord Kelvin, he stated that one inducement that drew him to Manchester was that he might sit at the feet of Joule, whose name was as well known on the Continent as that of Newton, but he found that all that the Manchester of that day knew of Joule was his Stone Ales. One of his lady auditors, in complimenting him upon his little speech, observed: “Of course I quite understood your remark about sitting at Dr. Joule’s feet, but why make allusion to his toe-nails!”
The visit of the British Association to Manchester in 1861, when Roscoe served as one of the local secretaries, afforded him an excellent opportunity of showing his organizing powers and business aptitudes.
These were still further demonstrated in the winter of 1862, during the memorable cotton famine in Lancashire, when he acted as one of the secretaries to a committee created to provide some form of intellectual occupation for the thousands of operatives thrown out of employment by the stoppage of the staple industry of the district. He gave lectures, illustrated by experiments, on subjects likely to attract a working-class audience. These were highly popular, and undoubtedly awakened a general interest in scientific matters in quarters which knew nothing of science. Their success encouraged him to institute the series of Science Lectures for the People, which he began in 1866, and carried on for eleven consecutive winters. In this movement he secured the co-operation, amongst others, of Huxley, Carpenter, Tyndall, Huggins, Lord Avebury, Abel, Stanley Jevons, Clifford, and Spottiswoode. The lectures were given in some of the largest public halls in the city, and were attended by thousands. They were published week by week as delivered, and were sold for a penny all over the world.
In 1874 the writer, then recently appointed to the newly founded Yorkshire College at Leeds, had the privilege of taking part in these courses, when he undertook to give some account of the life and work of Joseph Priestley, the chemist, who, as already stated, was a colleague of Dr. Enfield at the Warrington Academy.
Mrs. Roscoe, the mother of the subject of this memoir, then an old lady of seventy-six, who had shown the writer many kindnesses during his student-days at Owens College, was pleased to interest herself in this lecture and, unsolicited, to write the following characteristic and charming little sketch of Priestley and his wife as a contribution to the subject.
10 York Place, Oxford Road,
November 12 [1874].
My Dear Professor,
I have a few particulars at your service for your lecture on Priestley if you intend to sketch his character, which was a fine example for working-men. I should be glad to send you the papers if you will return them. You of course have Huxley’s enlarged notice in the Contemporary, which is very good and full.