London Electrical Society

The London Electrical Society was established in 1837 to enable amateur electricians to meet and share their interests in “experimental investigation of Electrical Science in all its various branches”. Although it initially flourished the society soon showed weaknesses in its organisation and ways of working. After a period of considerable financial difficulty it closed in 1845.

The London Electrical Society was founded at a meeting held on 16 May 1837 at Edward M Clarke’s “Laboratory of Science” in Lowther Arcade, near the Strand. The idea for the Society had arisen from discussions during a course of lectures on electricity delivered by William Sturgeon at the same venue. He was assisted in establishing the Society by operative chemist William Leithead; John Peter Gassiot, an amateur scientist with a particular interest in electricity; and Charles Vincent Walker, an electrical engineer.

The London Electrical Society’s aim was to provide a forum for amateur scientists and to foster their interest in the practical applications of electricity. It served to strengthen the informal links which many of the experimenters had already made. In “The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences” Secord notes that:

The bulk of its membership were 'amateur experimentalists', as founder and first president Sturgeon admitted. Typical of the group were the instrument-maker Edward M. Clarke, the young Manchester electrician James Prescott Joule, and William Leithead, employed by the Gallery as a demonstrator. Others, like Walter Hawkins, William G Lettsom, John Peter Gassiot and [Andrew] Crosse were either successful men business or independently wealthy. Conspicuously absent were the real controlling interests in the London scientific world, men like John Herschel, William Grove and Faraday.

Membership was made up of resident (living within 20 miles of London) and non-resident participants, with annual fees set at two guineas and one guinea respectively. Non-resident members were elsewhere in Great Britain (e.g. Bath and Shrewsbury), or abroad (e.g. Amsterdam and Marseille). At first, members styled themselves Mem. Elec. Soc., but later they used the post-nominal MES.

In the early days the Society met in Clarke’s Laboratory of Science, but at the first annual general meeting, on 7 October 1837 (with John P Gassiot, Treasurer, in the chair), it was announced that future meetings would be held at the nearby Adelaide Gallery on the Strand, to accommodate the growing membership. The gallery’s proprietors generously made their electrical apparatus freely available for the use of the Society’s members.

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