CHAPTER X

PUBLIC SERVICES—POLITICAL AND PROFESSIONAL WORK

Roscoe’s position in the educational world, and in scientific circles, coupled with his well-known business capacity and sound judgment, frequently led to his being invited to place his knowledge and experience at the service of the State in connection with Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees. During his tenure of his professorship at Manchester he served on two important Royal Commissions; the first in 1876, when Mr. Cross, then Home Secretary, nominated him as a member of Lord Aberdare’s Commission on Noxious Vapours, which led to the amended Alkali Acts of 1891 and 1892; the second in 1881, when Mr. A. J. Mundella, then Vice-President of the Education Council, appointed him a member of Sir Bernhard Samuelson’s Commission on Technical Instruction—one of the most important Commissions ever issued by reason of its influence on the industrial history of this country. Roscoe threw himself heart and soul into its work. The task was thoroughly congenial to him, for he was profoundly convinced of its importance. It required long and frequent visits abroad in order to inquire into the methods of the continental trade-schools and polytechnics, and to judge by direct observation of their results. The preparation of the Report was a tedious and complicated business, but with the help of his colleagues, whom he invited to his holiday-home in the Lakes, it was gradually, as he says, “licked into shape,” the last touches to its recommendations being made at the Chairman’s country house in Devonshire.

During the ten years that followed the publication of the Report, Roscoe, in common with several of his colleagues, addressed innumerable public meetings throughout the country in order to make its lessons as widely known as possible. The work of the Commission bore fruit in the Technical Instruction Act of 1889, and still later and to a greater extent in the Education Act of 1902. This last measure was preceded by the Royal Commission on Secondary Education, of which Roscoe was a member under the chairmanship of the present Lord Bryce. In 1896 he introduced a strong and representative deputation to urge upon the Lord President of the Council the desirability of taking steps to enforce its recommendations. It was then intimated that it was the intention of the Government to introduce legislation dealing with the organization of our secondary schools—thus foreshadowing the Act of 1902.

Although more than thirty years have passed since the Report of the Technical Instruction Commission was issued, it may still be read with profit. Indeed, the lessons it teaches are singularly applicable to the present juncture. In spite of what has been accomplished, Roscoe was far from being satisfied with our national position. In 1906 he wrote:

Much remains for us in England to accomplish in the organization of our secondary and scientific training, in which our competitors are before us, and of which the importance and the effects are well summed up in the following opinion of an eminent German manufacturer: “We in Germany do not care whether you in England are Free-traders or Protectionists, but what we are afraid of is that some day your people will wake up to the necessity of having a complete system of technical and scientific education, and then with your energetic population, with your insular position, and with your stores of raw material it will be difficult, or it may be impossible, for us to compete.”

In 1884 a knighthood was conferred on him, as stated in Mr. Gladstone’s letter when intimating the Queen’s pleasure, “in acknowledgment of his distinguished service on the Technical Education Commission.”

* * * * *

Roscoe has recorded in his autobiography the circumstances, altogether unexpected by him, which led to his introduction to active political life. He was elected for South Manchester—a constituency largely composed of the upper and middle class—in 1885, the first Member of Parliament for the division in which the University is situated and the only Liberal then returned for the city. He held his seat during two succeeding elections (1886 and 1892), but lost it in 1895, by a narrow majority, to the Marquis of Lorne. Although frequently solicited to re-enter Parliament he felt, to use his own phrase, that he “had had enough.”

Roscoe was a strong and consistent Liberal, a member of the Manchester School of Economists, and a devoted adherent of Mr. Gladstone, whom he followed in the Home Rule split. During the greater part of his parliamentary career, that is from 1886 to 1892, he sat on the Opposition benches, and had therefore comparatively little opportunity of accomplishing much in the way of legislative achievement. On questions involving scientific matters he could always secure the ear of the House, especially when these related to the comfort and well-being of its members, as when he took in hand the ventilation, lighting, and drainage of the Palace of Westminster. In 1888, and again in 1889, he introduced a Technical Education Bill, but it failed to reach the statute-book. In the latter year, however, the Government passed the Technical Instruction Act already referred to; this, although not wholly in accord with the views he had put forward, he gladly accepted as a satisfactory instalment. His efforts to pass an amending Bill in the following year met with no success. In 1891 the National Association for the Promotion of Technical Education, which was founded as a result of the Report of the Royal Commission of 1881, entrusted him with a Bill to remove certain disabilities which had been found to attend the working of the Act of 1889, and this he succeeded in carrying. It was one of the few private Bills of the session of 1891 that became law.

He was frequently called upon to serve upon select committees, and in his last session he was Chairman of the Select Committee on Weights and Measures which led to Mr. Balfour’s Bill for legalizing the use of the metrical system in this country.

Roscoe was a Vice-President of the Decimal Association, and lost no opportunity of advocating the use of a system of weights and measures which practically every other civilized community has found it expedient to adopt. The reform of the method of holding parliamentary elections, continuation schools, opening museums on Sundays, the housing of the science collections at South Kensington, grants to University colleges, industrial employment in Ireland, limitation of moisture in weaving sheds, river pollution—were all questions upon which he was able to exercise his influence and knowledge, and most of which he lived to see satisfactorily settled. But, on the whole, he found little satisfaction in his parliamentary life. There was much in it that was irksome and distasteful to a man of his active and independent mind. It was unfortunate for him that the greater part of his political career should have to be spent in opposition, thus affording him only limited opportunities of initiating legislative action. Owing to the political circumstances of the time many questions with which he was specially qualified to deal never came up for consideration. Others were only discussed for the purpose of “marking time,” and he deplored the loss of opportunity and waste of effort thereby involved. His rejection in 1895, therefore, occasioned him no very great concern. Whatever feeling of disappointment he may have felt soon passed away, and he quickly went back to his old occupations, and to pursuits more congenial to him than haunting the precincts of the House of Commons. The following letter from Woodcote, under date July 20, 1895, affords some indication of the way in which he regarded the loss of his seat.

Many thanks for your kind note. As you surmise, I do not feel personally much regret at my own defeat. I could tell you something of the way the thing was worked.

Now I feel an “old freeman,” and able to do much more what I like. But this not always—for I do not see my way just now to accept your invitation. I have been worked up with the election, and have to be careful, so that with this, and with the present uncertainty of weather, I think I am safer on entire dry land.

We are thankful for rain which loveth the thirsty land and makes things green again.

Is it true that the “burning bush” manufactures C₂H₅OH [alcohol]? If so, that is really interesting.[27]

Harden and I have found some most interesting results as regards the genesis of the atomic theory, and I am going to work them up.

How about Davy?… The editor asks for more, and I should be pleased to satisfy his maw by giving him a lump of Davy. Kindest regards.

Shortly after his removal to London he became interested in the sewage problem of the Metropolis, and was called upon to advise the Metropolitan Board of Works with respect to methods for improving the condition of the river Thames. In connection with this work he established a laboratory, specially equipped for studying its problems, in the Earl’s Court Road, not far from his London residence. During the year 1887 he was engaged, with the assistance of his former pupil Mr. Harry Baker, in reporting to Lord Magheramorne, the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, on the chemical methods employed for the deodorization of sewage (_a_) in the metropolitan sewers, and (_b_) at the outfalls. Early in 1888 much larger problems were submitted to him: viz. the purification of the sewage, the disposal of the sludge, and the effect of the discharge of sewage sludge at sea on the foreshores of the estuary of the Thames. In connection with these subjects he became impressed with the importance of obtaining accurate scientific methods for determining the changes which polluted water experiences during its natural purification. Some of the results of his inquiries he published in conjunction with his pupil Mr. Joseph Lunt in two memoirs, one “On Schützenberger’s Process for the Estimation of Dissolved Oxygen in Water,” communicated to the Chemical Society in 1889, and published in the _Transactions_,[28] and the other entitled “Contributions to the Chemical Bacteriology of Sewage,” which appeared in the _Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society_.[29] The former paper contained the results of a careful investigation of the conditions under which this method is alone trustworthy, and served to explain the causes of the discrepancy between the statements of previous observers who had critically examined it. The latter paper gave the results of a protracted examination of the chemical and bacteriological phenomena of crude sewage with the object of ascertaining the species of organisms present, both pathogenic and saprophytic, and of determining their chemical characteristics.

These investigations were carried on for more than two years, concurrently with the technical and outside work required. During this time purification works had been established at Crossness and Barking outfalls, a sludge ship had been provided for the disposal of the sewage sludge at sea, and the effect of the discharge had been studied in the lower reaches and estuary of the Thames, and a chemical survey of the condition of the foreshores had been completed. But the formation of the London County Council, with Lord Rosebery as the first Chairman, involved new arrangements. This circumstance, combined with the death of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the Chief Engineer, and the opposition of the Labour Party, resulted in Roscoe resigning his post as Scientific Adviser.

Mr. Lunt transferred his services to the British Institute of Preventive Medicine, but Roscoe continued to carry on his laboratory with the assistance of Mr. Frank Scudder until 1898. During this period he acted as chemical adviser to sanitary authorities all over the country on questions of sewage purification and water-supply; and was frequently consulted by manufacturers on works-processes, and on legal, patent, and trade-mark cases, and in connection with parliamentary inquiries, e.g. humidity and purity of air in textile mills, flashpoint of paraffin oils, etc. He was further concerned in the promotion of Bills for the creation of rivers boards, as, for example, those of the Mersey and Irwell and West Riding. He gave considerable attention to the question of the manufacture and use of water gas (“carburetted” and “blue” gas), and inspected most of the water-gas plants then in operation in England and on the Continent, sending Mr. Scudder to visit and report on the installations in the principal cities of America. In 1898 they both gave evidence before a Parliamentary Committee on the question of restricting the amount of the poisonous carbonic oxide in town gas.

In 1891 Roscoe’s services were retained by the Mersey and Irwell Joint Committee to report on the influence of the various manufacturing works in the Mersey and Irwell basins in polluting the streams, and as to the best means of preventing it. In 1893 the Committee made the position of Scientific Adviser a permanent appointment, and established a properly equipped laboratory in Manchester in connection with its work. Roscoe retained the appointment until 1905, when the frequent journeys to attend the meetings of the Joint Committee began to tell upon his health, and at his suggestion Mr. Scudder was appointed to succeed him. The London laboratory was given up in 1908.