Walking into the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution (as it was then called) in the 1890s could be a dispiriting experience. Charles Wesley Hume, a student at the time, deemed the place ‘depressing’. To the left of the entrance, he recalled, there was a reading-room, which was generally ‘occupied by very aged proletarians’ reading newspapers. On the right, there was a small office where the librarian ‘doled out… some old volumes of early-Victorian fiction’ from ‘an alleged library’. Hume rightly observed that Birkbeck at that time was ‘a cross between a mortuary and a maternity hospital’. The Birkbeck Institution ‘was dying by inches’, but Birkbeck College had not quite been born.
Part of the problem was that systematic instruction was lacking. In 1858, the University of London had introduced a new Charter allowing anyone to sit their examinations for degrees, but fewer than one-third of Birkbeck’s students took advantage of this opportunity. In the College’s annual reports, each course was listed individually, as opposed to being grouped under broad, academic disciplines. The majority of classes were technical in nature: they included hygiene, ‘Practical Electric Lighting’, the steam engine, machine construction, elocution, chess, painting, music, and singing. Students could even attend classes on ‘Blowpipe Analysis’.
This was to change with the appointment of George Armitage-Smith as Master. He arrived in 1896, and when he left twenty-two years later, the College was unrecognisable. Known as a ‘shrewd and practical North Countryman’, Armitage-Smith did more than any other administrator (except the original founders) to transform the fortunes of the College.
On the surface, Armitage-Smith was an unlikely revolutionary. He was a political economist whose books on taxation and free trade make for dry reading today. A 1901 lecture suggests a man of solid tastes: he warned students against ‘the vice of desultory reading’, which he believed was ‘one of the frailties in an age of cheap paper, when everyone can read and too many write’.
However, his legacy was shepherding the College into the University of London. It was not an easy task. Encouraged by a new generation of students who were clamouring for reform, Armitage-Smith initiated a massive programme of restructuring. In his first year, he grouped the dozens of individual classes into five Faculties: English and Commercial; Languages; Law; Mental and Moral Science; and Science and Technology. The College’s annual report for 1905-1906 included a list of all staff publications for the first time.
The ‘Royal Commission on University Education in London’, which sat between 1909 and 1912, was the perfect opportunity for Armitage-Smith to make his case to join the University of London. Before he was called to give evidence, though, he had to endure condescending arguments against Birkbeck made by The Rev. Arthur Cayley Headlam (Principal and Dean of King’s College London). Headham proposed that Birkbeck be restricted to educating those ‘who have not had a proper school education’. At King’s, he noted, there was ‘a very large amount of work not of a university standard, which we are anxious to get rid of’. It would be advantageous if Birkbeck was ‘a place to which the University could recommend anyone to go who is not yet fit for University work’.
These comments infuriated Armitage-Smith. He launched a counterattack. The idea that ‘King’s College should hand over its inferior students to Birkbeck College’ and periodically cream-off its best students was offensive, he argued. He was ‘indignant’ that Headlam had even suggested turning Birkbeck into ‘a preparatory school’ for King’s. After all, Armitage-Smith reminded the Commissioners, King’s College had been established later than Birkbeck College and was ‘chiefly known… as a theological institution, and as an evening coaching establishment for the lower Civil Service examinations’.
Armitage-Smith noted that here were two models for a metropolitan university. The first was a restrictive one: only a few Colleges would be members and the education would be made available to only a small proportion of people. These students would be admitted either because they could afford high fees or could compete for a number of bursaries. The second model was open, welcoming all educational establishments that met university standards.
This second model was the superior one. After all, London was the centre of government, administration, commerce, trade, and banking. The city could not afford to ignore the educational needs of people who were employed during daylight hours. Armitage-Smith further noted that there was now very little ‘elemental work’ being taught at Birkbeck. Indeed, he pointedly announced, the proportion of non-university level courses at Birkbeck was actually smaller than at King’s. He reminded the Commissioners that Birkbeck had been preparing students for the University’s examinations for degrees ever since the 1858 Charter. The College was already part of the University of London ‘in everything but name’.
Armitage-Smith’s chief message was the superiority of Birkbeck students. He bragged that ‘the evening student has more stamina and greater capability of work than the younger day student’, adding that such students are ‘earnest, eager, intellectually alert’. Birkbeck students were nothing less than ‘the élite of the day worker; they represent not the average nor the many, but are the chosen few’.
It was impressive rhetoric. And effective. When the ‘Royal Commission on University Education in London’ issued its final report in 1913, it recommended that Birkbeck College should become a ‘Constituent College in the Faculties of Arts and Science for evening students’ in the University of London. The declaration of war postponed Armitage-Smith’s prize, but the College triumphed in 1920.
If this blog interested you, take a look at my Birkbeck. 200 Years of Radical Learning for Working People.
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