Abstract
THE tangled tale of the foundation of the colleges of London and of their welding into one of the greatest universities that the Western world has seen is, in its revelation of a complete absence of planning, fascinatingly and characteristically British. None of these colleges has a history more stimulating to the student of social developments than that of Queen Mary College. The College, known until December 12, 1934, as East London College, when Her Majesty Queen Mary presented to the College, through the master of the Draper's Company, a Royal Charter incorporating the College under its new name, finds its origin in a bequest made by Mr. Barber Beaumont, who died in 1841. The eighties of the last century saw the beginning of the generous interest of the Drapers' Company in the movement which resulted in the People's Palace, and on May 14, 1877, Queen Victoria opened the Queen's Hall, and laid the foundation of the Technical School, a School which formed an integral part of the People's Palace. In 1892, Mr. J. L. S. Hatton, to-whose almost prophetic insight the metamorphosis of the Technical School is due, was appointed director of that School, and under his wise guidance the work of the School increased so greatly in volume and in importance that in 1907 East London College was recognized as a School of the University of London. The College has indeed been singularly fortunate in its principals. Sir Frederick Maurice, who accepted the office on the death of Principal Hatton in 1933, is steering the College through a difficult period of material expansion marked by a new building scheme, the opening of a high-voltage laboratory and the acquirement of an estate to be developed as a new sports ground.
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Queen Mary College Jubilee Celebration. Nature 140, 1003 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/1401003a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1401003a0