Thomas Field Gibson

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Thomas Field Gibson
palaeontology

Thomas Field Gibson

industrial revolution – particularly in Spitalfields
where his business was centred. He also made important contributions to geology.

Life and family

He was born to Thomas Gibson Snr and Charlotte née Field (who was Sir Francis Ronalds' aunt) at 2 Canonbury Place Islington – his maternal grandparents and an aunt and uncle were living at No 6 and No 3 Canonbury Place respectively.[2][3] His paternal grandfather (another Thomas Gibson – a laceman and banker) was associated with Sir Richard Arkwright’s commercialisation of mechanised cotton spinning through his brother-in-law Samuel Need.[4]

Gibson's schooling was with Unitarian ministers John Potticary in

Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead. He married twice: to Mary Anne Pett and then to Eliza Cogan, daughter of Unitarian schoolmaster Eliezer Cogan,[7] and his only child, Mary Anne, was born the week before her mother and namesake died.[1]

Silk manufacture

Gibson became a freeman of the Weavers' Company and took over his father's silk manufacturing business in 1829. From his warehouse in Spital Square, work was put out to several hundred weaving families in the Spitalfields area. He also employed weavers in Halstead, Essex and was a partner in the Depot silk throwing mill in Derby.[4][1][8]

Free trade

Like other industrialists of the period, Gibson believed in

duties and promoting international trade.[5]

Community work

Education

Education, and in particular practical education of the artisans in his area, was of considerable interest to him. His father founded the Spitalfields Mechanics' Institution in early 1825, not long after the London

Birkbeck College) was opened, and Gibson served on its Committee.[9][10] Not being a success, it was reoriented into the Eastern Literary and Scientific Institution, and Gibson was still its patron in the mid-1840s. Father and son also helped open and support a mission in Spitalfields with day and evening schools, adult education, a library, savings bank and benevolent fund, as well as pastoral visits to those in need.[citation needed
]

Gibson was on the Council of the Government School of Design (now the

Annual International Exhibitions held in London in the 1870s. Gibson was in addition a long-serving Councillor and benefactor of University College London and University College Hospital.[1]

Public health

Gibson was a founding Director of the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes, an early housing association that built affordable and sanitary accommodation for rent. The second complex constructed by the Association was at Spitalfields and was open for viewing as part of the Great Exhibition.[10] Gibson Gardens, completed in 1880 in Stoke Newington, was named in honour of Gibson's extended contributions to the Association.[6][12] He also served on the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers that directed the early work of engineer Joseph Bazalgette towards developing an integrated sewerage and drainage system across London.[13]

Palaeontology

Gibson was in addition "a patron of geology",

type specimen of an important extinct plant species at Luccombe Chine in 1856–57. Studied by Joseph Dalton Hooker, Director of the Kew Gardens, John Morris, the geology professor at University College London, and Unitarian scholar James Yates, it was then characterised by William Carruthers of the Natural History Museum, and later named Cycadeoidea gibsoniana after the finder.[16] Gibson also presented a paper to the Geological Society on the Iguanodon femur he found on the island.[17]

Unitarian leadership

Like his extended family, Gibson held

Parliament in 1828 to repeal the Sacramental Test Act that prevented Nonconformists from holding public office,[19] and chaired the controversial meeting of the committee of the South Place Chapel in 1834 that accepted the resignation of their minister William Johnson Fox – Fox had formed a close relationship with his ward Eliza Flower and separated from his wife.[1][20] Gibson was on the South Place chapel committee as well.[citation needed
]

He and his father were joint

executors for the renowned Unitarian minister Thomas Belsham. Gibson helped his friend and third cousin Edwin Wilkins Field[2][3] as a trustee of the Hibbert Trust for the first 25 years of its existence; its purpose was to support Nonconformist scholarship.[21] He was also on Wilkin Field's committee that built University Hall as a memorial to the passing of the Dissenters' Chapels Act in 1844 and is now the home of Dr Williams's Library.[citation needed
]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Thomas Gibson & Thomas Field Gibson". Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography. Retrieved 20 November 2017.
  2. ^ a b "Thomas Field Gibson". Sir Francis Ronalds and his Family. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-1-78326-917-4
    .
  4. ^ a b Ronalds, B.F. (2020). "Depot Silk Mill in Derby and the Gibson and Ronalds Families". Derby Miscellany. 22: 55–63.
  5. ^ a b c Baines, F. E. (1890). Records of the Manor, Parish, and Borough of Hampstead. Whittaker. pp. 437–439.
  6. ^ a b "Obituary: Mr Thomas Field Gibson". The Inquirer: 822. 1889.
  7. ^ Gibson, Eliza (1885). Recollections of my Youth, Written at the Request of my Daughter. Tunbridge Wells.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ^ Reports from Assistant Hand-Loom Weavers Commissioners. Sessional Papers of The House of Lords, Volume 37. 1840.
  9. ^ A Course of Three Lectures on the Formation of a Spitalfields Mechanics' Institution. 1825.
  10. ^ a b Ronalds, B. F. (May 2017). "Thomas Gibson and Son: Spitalfields Silk Manufacturers". East London History Society Newsletter. 4 (7): 4–5.
  11. ^ Government School of Design, Minutes of the Council 1836–44. Clowes. 1849.
  12. ^ "Thomas Field Gibson". Christian Life and Unitarian Herald: 609. 1889.
  13. ^ Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, Minutes 1852–54.
  14. ^ Woodward, H. B. (1908). History of the Geological Society of London. Longmans.
  15. ^ "Thomas Field Gibson". Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London. 47: 58. 1891.
  16. ^ Stopes, M. C. (1915). Catalogue of the Mesozoic Plants in the British Museum (Natural History), The Cretaceous Flora. Vol. 6.
  17. ^ Gibson, T. F. (1858). "Notice of the Discovery of a Large Femur of the Iguanodon". Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London: 175–6.
  18. ^ Mellone, S. H. (1925). Liberty and Religion: The First Century of the British & Foreign Unitarian Association. Lindsey Press.
  19. ^ "Committees for Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts: Minutes, 1828". British History Online. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
  20. ^ "London, July 2nd, 1835". Unitarian Magazine and Chronicle. 2. 1835.
  21. ^ Ruston, A. R. (1984). The Hibbert Trust: A History.
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