The founding of Norwich's public subscription library in 1784

Philip Meadows Martineau - by William Beechey. Image credit Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital

Philip Meadows Martineau (1752-1829), a wealthy Norwich surgeon and member of the non-conformist Huguenot Martineau family, conceived the plan of founding a subscription library in the summer of 1784.

Thirty-three people attended a meeting on the 23rd August 1784, in the Library room, which was in a building at the south porch of Blackfriar's Church, also known as New Hall. It was the home of the City Library, which had been founded in 1608.

The City Library had been established by the city administration for the benefit of the clergy to read and prepare their sermons, and also as somewhere for visiting preachers to stay. It seems to have fallen into neglect by the 1730s, and by the 1770s the original building was partly pulled down and rebuilt.

The City Library had been ecumenical in terms of both the books it held and the clergy who used it when it was first founded, but had become increasingly Anglican in its tendencies over its first century. Yet by the early eighteenth century, around 20% of Norwich's population were Protestant dissenters, many of them worshipping, as Martineau and later his niece Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) did, at the Presbyterian Octagon Chapel on Colegate.

Of the thirty-three people who attended the meeting for the new subscription library, only five were clergymen. Five were physicians and fourteen were businessmen. There were several aldermen and past mayors. Of the original 140 subscribers, nineteen were women. Many of them besides Martineau were worshippers at the Octagon Chapel, such as the Aldersons, the Barnards, the Colombines, Alderman John Basely, the Marshes, Alderman Elias Norgate and the Taylors, but some were also Tories and Anglican conformists, such as John Browne, John Patteson and the Harveys, or Catholic and radical, such as John Pitchford, or a Quaker, such as  John Gurney.

The members of the Subscription Library were given the keys to the City Library and the new library was named the Norwich Public Library, even though it was supported by private subscription. The admission fee was a guinea (around £200 in current purchasing power) and the annual subscription was 6 shillings (around £60).

Norfolk Chronicle, 11th December 1784 p 2

Sources:

Clive Lloyd - Colonel Unthank's Norwich - A Sideways Look at the City - 2021 pp101-105

Clive Wilkins-Jones (Ed) - Norwich City Library 1608-1737

C.B. Jewson - Jacobin City