Saffron Walden Town Library

In important ways the library bears the lasting impress of Gibson's talents and generosity.

But the Saffron Walden Literary and Scientific Institution was a collective enterprise. Its founders were middle-class tradesmen and professionals and also their wives: surgeons, chemists, grocers, ministers of religion, private-school proprietors, and a 'professor of music' who was also the organist at the parish church. Related by birth or marriage or closely acquainted through involvement in the town's affairs and worship in its churches and chapels, they ran its societies and charitable ventures. Intersecting membership encouraged congruence of activity, so that, for example, the functions of the museum and the SWLSI overlapped intricately. Thus books on phrenology, an early Victorian enthusiasm in Britain generally, were bought for the library while the model heads which were an essential part of its study were added to the museum. Books and models are still in place in their respective institutions, which are still linked by practical co-operation. Fruitful linkages may also be discerned in the many other Victorian towns which nurtured agencies like the SWLSI, and profitable comparisons may be made between it and the Liverpool Athenaeum or the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Like these other societies, the SWLSI was middle-class in character, its membership ranging from wealthy professionals to their clerks on incomes of £100 or £200 a year. No occupational prerequisite was laid down for members, but the subscription (15s. for the library, 21s for use of the library and the Reading Room) are likely to have deterred working people, though it should be added that Gibson did pay the subscriptions of fifty members of the local Mechanics' Institution. In any case, the SWLSI was in part a club, whose rooms were open until 10:00 pm and where members might sit to chat, albeit in somewhat cramped surroundings. As in most clubs of the day, those wishing to join had to be proposed and approved; and it is likely that as so often in Victorian times fear of condescension, at least, prevented approaches from working people. Usually the SWLSI's attitude towards them was paternalist, rather than fraternal; it offered classes for their benefit, but not the hand-clasp of friendship. On the other hand ladies were members from the SWLSI's foundation, though not until this century did any woman rise to its committee.

The SWLSI tried those familiar Victorian instruments of self-improvement, the writing of essays and the giving of lectures; essay-circles seem everywhere to have had a