Abraham Follett Osier. 333 



throughout the town were gradually adjusted to Greenwich mean 

 time, while the country generally was keeping only local time. 



In 1855 Mr. Osier was proposed and elected a Fellow of the Eoyal 

 Society. 



Many different subjects appealed forcibly to him and benefited by 

 his ingenuity. He was at one time interested in Craniometry, and 

 devised and constructed an instrument for this purpose which was 

 remarkable for its completeness and accuracy. It gave full-sized 

 diagrams of the exact form of the skull. 



In 1876 Mr. Osier finally retired from business, but his mental 

 activity continued, and he then devoted himself to the consideration 

 of purely scientific matters, and although, owing to his nervous con- 

 stitution, he published but little, he has left behind many papers of 

 interest, which show the great scope and originality of his mind. 



In 1832 he married Mary, daughter of Thomas Clark, a merchant 

 and manufacturer in Birmingham, and had a large family, of whom 

 only three have outlived him. Devoted' as he always was to his 

 family, his home life was a constant pleasure to him, but his sensitive 

 and nervous disposition did not allow of his taking part in the public 

 life even of his native town. He was, nevertheless, a generous bene- 

 factor to Birmingham. 



Canon Kingsley, when President of the Birmingham and Midland 

 Institute in 1872, urged strongly on the Council of the Institute the 

 great importance of founding classes for the teaching of systematic 

 hygiene, and, in response to this appeal, Mr. Osier anonymously pre- 

 sented to the Institute the sum of 2,500 to enable this to be done. 

 These classes have been from the first a great success, and are 

 continued to the present day. 



In 1883, on the completion of the new Municipal buildings in 

 Birmingham, of which a lofty clock tower formed an important 

 feature, Mr. Osier, prompted by his life-long interest in chronometry, 

 presented to the town a clock and bells suitable for the tower these 

 are the same in size and pattern as those at the Law Courts in 

 London. 



In 1886 the work of the Council of the Birmingham Midland 

 Institute being crippled by the want of funds, Mr. Osier met their 

 difficulties by a present of 5,000, insisting, at the same time, that the 

 name of the donor should not be made public. In the following year 

 he gave a like sum of 5,000 to the endowment fund of Mason College, 

 again under the same condition that the name of the giver be not 

 made known, and, although the Council of the College " earnestly 

 desired n that Mr. Osier would withdraw this restriction, he never 

 did so. 



