Moses Holden,
Autodidact of Preston
written by Anthony
Peter
Steve Halliwell with Gill Radford, Vice Chair of Todmorden U3a
Steve Halliwell, Todmorden U3A’s guest speaker on
Thursday 15th September, is a man who clearly knew a lot about a
Preston man, Moses Holden, who also knew a lot. Consequently, by the end of
Steve’s lecture we had been as well enlightened as those who attended Moses
Holden’s packed lectures on the science of ‘ouranology’ in the first half of
the nineteenth century would have been.
Steve’s first slide showed we were in for a less dull
ride than the phrase ‘methodist evangelist’ might have suggested to many of us:
‘Moses Holden: self-taught genius, the Mozart of the astronomical world, a
founder of UCLAN, constructor of telescopes, travelling lecturer (pre-railway)
– From hand-loom weaver to Freeman of Preston’.
And so it proved. Steve’s interest in local history had
led him to research Preston’s Learned Societies that grew out of the town’s
early Literary and Philosophical Society, and which, when it established its
Mechanics’ Institute in 1828, named it instead its Institution for the
Diffusion of Knowledge at the suggestion of one Moses Holden.
Indeed, The University of Central Lancashire regards
itself as the descendant of that Institute.
Moses Holden was undoubtedly a remarkable man. Born in
Bolton in 1777, his father, a hand-loom weaver, moved the family to Preston in
1782. Father Holden liked to read stories to his children, and Moses, after
hearing about Jeremiah Horrocks and his recording of the Transit of Venus in
1639, determined that he would be an astronomer when he grew up.
Moses followed his father into the cloth industry as a
weaver and married a woman from Whitehaven with whom he had three children with
the exciting names of William Archimedes, John Horatio and Annie Leonora.
The fact that the boys were born in Pontefract and
Banbury tells a story itself. Moses became a travelling preacher and lecturer. In 1810 he undertook an eighteen month
circuit tour of the north-west for the Methodist Church, based in
Poulton-le-Fylde. He ran Sunday Schools and Bible Groups and was known for a
good sermon. He probably travelled on
foot.
However, by 1815 his private studies of mathematics and
astronomy enabled him to offer triennial lectures at the Theatre Royal in
Preston. These would be lectures given over a period of three evenings, each
lecture packing the building. In time,
Moses toured these lectures, and Steve’s researches of where the lectures were
held led him to conclude that Moses was using the canals (much as Mikron
Theatre do today).
This presumed use of canals explains the circumstances of
the Holden sons’ births.
The lectures were quite something, featuring a magic
lantern and an orrery (mechanical model of the solar system), both of Moses’
own making. Doubtless, he would also
have made some profit from sales of his ‘Celestial Handbook and Almanac’,
copies of which he sent to both William IV and William Rogerson, the Astronomer
Royal with whom he became very friendly.
Nevertheless, after his death in 1864, Mrs Holden
advertised the almanac as available by post at the knock-down price of 2/-.
Perhaps by then they were cluttering up her house!
As a lecturer, Moses could turn a pretty penny. In 1844, in Liverpool he was in such demand
that he could packs halls for three sets of three lectures. And in 1852, his
account books show that his set of farewell lectures in Preston netted him
about £120 with only £21 expenses (which included a consideration for ‘oils’
with which to freshen the air of the theatre).
Click here to buy the book, £8.99 + P and P.
For this writer, Moses was most impressively a
self-taught man excited by knowledge and its capacity to enrich life. He was
also skilled in making and selling telescopes. His achievements have recently
been celebrated and commemorated by UCLAN who have named their ‘70 cm diameter
state-of-the-art robotic telescope’ the Moses Holden Telescope at a ceremony
Steve was delighted to have attended.
Steve’s biography of Moses Holden is subtitled ‘The
inspirational story of a man who was inspired by a story’. The U3A Todmorden
audience was clearly also inspired by Steve’s talk, and we would like to thank
him for his time and trouble in researching and presenting his findings.
