In 1904 the ageing George Holyoake, looking back on the nineteenth century, felt compelled to ask how ‘dreamy, stagnant, obfuscated Derby’, a town which had burned to death Joan Waste and ‘procured a charter to enable it to expel anyone having a new idea’, and which seemed so hostile to religious or political innovation, ‘gave birth to Herbert Spencer, the greatest master of innovatory thought England has produced’. This is the question Paul Elliott sets out to answer in his important and compelling account of the public culture of science in Georgian and Victorian Derby. In doing so, he offers both a rich urban history and a rewarding analysis of useful knowledge during the heroic years of the Industrial Revolution, complete with walk-on parts for Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Wright, John Claudius Loudon and Spencer himself. As such, Elliott's work forms part of a broader rewriting of the Industrial Revolution. As David Cannadine has outlined in an important recent essay, from the Webbs to Rostow to Ashton to Crafts every generation is instinctively drawn to reinterpreting the story of British industrialization on its own terms. Today, in our post-industrial, knowledge-based economy where competitiveness is based on science, innovation and human networks, we are drawn to the non-metal-bashing part of the story. As popularly pioneered by Jenny Uglow in her 2002 work on the Lunar Society, the vogue is for accounts of social capital and a culture of creativity as the spur for ‘take-off’.
Elliott fleshes out this approach in his account of east midlands innovation taking in the great intellectual dynasties of the Wedgwoods, Darwins and Strutts. All of which is important in challenging the still powerful view – originating with Arnold Thackray's work on Manchester – which posits science and technology as the vehicle for nonconformist, socially marginal men to enter mainstream civil society. Well, not in Derby. Here it was axial to civic pride and urban identity – and, what was more, ‘the Derby savants saw science not merely as an isolated activity but as part of progressive European enlightenment culture.’ Tracing the history of the Derby Philosophical Society, founded by Erasmus Darwin after complaining to fellow Lunatic Matthew Boulton about being ‘cut off’ in Derby, ‘from the milk of science, which flows in such redundant streams from your learned lunations’, Elliott reveals how scientific inquiry and a civic sensibility were interwoven. Through the ‘daring hand of experimental philosophy’, Darwin told the first meeting, ‘they could transcend their feeble human frame’ and help to ‘enrich the terraqueous globe’, contributing to the useful arts, necessities and ‘embellishments of life’ from magnetism to cookery, which did ‘honour to human nature’. There quickly followed the array of public lectures, experiments, and learned discussions which Joseph Wright's canvases captured so dramatically. However, the society was too esoteric for some and in the early 1800s the Derby Literary and Philosophical Society was established to provide a wider public platform for science and take advantage of the growing public enthusiasm for geology, mineralogy and natural philosophy. Later, it too was joined by the Derby Literary and Scientific Society.
These societies provide an entry into the history of Derby's public sphere. Elliott carefully chronicles the increasing importance of natural philosophy in the coffee-house, assembly-room and drawing-room culture with the purchase of scientific books, orreries and telescopes all contributing to the scientific milieu. Through civic elites and nonconformist circles, much of this scientific culture would segue into demands for urban improvement and social reform. The Derby natural philosophers saw themselves as part of a broader, intellectual project involved in ending ancien régime ignorance and prejudice – to the extent of supporting the early ideals of the French Revolution. But ‘useful knowledge’ also had an important economic outcome and the practical application of science could be seen most readily in the Derby silk mill where new technologies for throwing and winding revolutionized production. Others to realize the utility of experimentation were the cotton-spinning Strutts, as well as the Evanses and their iron-foundry and, of course, the relentlessly innovative Josiah Wedgwood. ‘Derby with seemingly the region's earliest manifest scientific culture had probably the most varied and growing industrial structure, which included – on a county level – lead mining, cotton manufacture, coal mining, engineering and iron working.’ The civic showcase for this public application of science was the Derbyshire Infirmary, which was designed with a state of the art iron and glass shell and used a range of new inventions from a revolving drum washing machine to an adjustable bed mechanism. When, in 1816, the future Tsar Nicholas I of Russia stayed with the duke of Devonshire, his first visit was to the Infirmary.
Some of this history is familiar ‘urban renaissance’ territory, but what makes the study more interesting is the tracing of the scientific culture into the nineteenth century. Elliott successfully explores the place of science in political debate as battles over reform, dissent and class division intensified. One outlet was the foundation of the Derby Mechanics’ Institute in 1825 which attempted to ameliorate social problems through working-class intellectual and moral improvement. The other was John Claudius Loudon's elegant Arboretum which sought to marry social harmony with a botanical education. Neither exercise in social control fully succeeded. But what the scientific culture of Derby did foster was the education of Herbert Spencer. Elliott makes a strong case for the importance of this provincial dimension – so closely connected to the intellectual legacy of Erasmus Darwin – to Spencer's scientific development. ‘Derby scientific institutions provided courses of lectures on scientific and artistic subjects and a forum for discussion, with access to libraries, museum collections and discussion groups encouraging Spencer to formulate his early philosophical theories’, Elliott writes. This, then, is the answer to Holyoake's conundrum: stagnant Derby was, in fact, fundamental to Spencer's intellectual evolution. But the book also provides an answer to questions about modern-day Derby. After decades of ignoring its place within Britain's industrial past, the east midlands is finally rediscovering its role as the intellectual crucible of the Industrial Revolution. Plans are afoot for reviving the Derby Silk Mill Museum, for properly interpreting the Derwent Valley, and for connecting the story of Cromford and Arkwright to its broader civic setting. As tourism chiefs and heritage honchos begin to re-brand Derby as the scientific centre of industrialization they should first get the history right. And this book does just that.
