Rowland Detrosier

Rowland Detrosier, also Rowley Barnes, (c. 1800 - 23 November 1834) was an English autodidact, radical politician, preacher and educator, particularly associated with Manchester.

Detrosier's parents were Manchester merchant Robert Norris and a French woman named Detrosier. He was born in London but was abandoned. He was then adopted by Charles Barnes, a Swedenborgian tailor who raised him in Hulme, Manchester. Barnes treated him as his own son and named him Rowley.

Before he started work aged nine, Detrosier had received only informal education, including that from the Manchester Benevolent Vegetarian Institute. He worked in a variety of menial jobs and married aged nineteen but managed to teach himself something of French, Latin, mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, and geology. His appetite for learning reduced Detrosier to dire financial straits by 1821 and he was only rescued by the patronage of John Shuttleworth, who found him a more secure and responsible job as a clerk and salesman. At this time, he also discovered his birth parentage.

Now, Detrosier had even more scope for education. He had lectured on science at Swedenborgian Sunday Schools since he was sixteen and he now travelled widely advocating adult education for working class people. Detrosier was a religious follower of Joseph Brotherton and Brotherton recruited him to preach at the Brinksway Chapel, where he gained a huge following. In 1827, he was inspired to publish A Form of Public Worship on the Principles of Pure Deism but his deism was too radical for Brotherton who expelled him from his sect.

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