106 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



called for. This took place in Manchester with the 

 late Dr. Binney as President. I was requested to 

 inform the Court what had happened years before at 

 Owens College, so I appeared before the Reverend 

 Commissioners and stated the case. Of course none 

 there comprehended what I meant, and those who 

 believed Pearson to be an injured innocent, and they 

 were not a few, thought that I had treated the man 

 badly, some freely expressing that opinion. The trial 

 ended by a verdict of " non-proven." But there was 

 more to come. Pearson, after this inquiry, was 

 appointed minister at a Nonconformist chapel near 

 Manchester. In the neighbouring town he had, it 

 seems, struck up an intimacy with a servant girl, and 

 one night, appearing at the house where she was 

 employed, he gagged her and rifled the house of its 

 portable contents. Cleverly eluding the police, he 

 escaped to America, and there he ended his career 

 by being lynched for horse-stealing ! To Dr. Parker's 

 credit, I must add that on hearing of these events he 

 wrote to me apologising for his former conduct, and 

 adding that he had been deceived by Pearson's 

 " Satan-like character." I am also amused to re- 

 member that Pearson was clever enough to palm 

 off upon me a prize essay cribbed from the Bridge- 

 water Treatises and Dr. Chalmers' sermons, and 

 deceived the editors of a journal called The Chemist, 

 who printed it in full, and also published a concocted 

 research in Pearson's name, on a supposed new method 

 of analysis, the falsehood of which was, I believe, 

 exposed by Fresenius. 



Guthrie soon afterwards received the appointment 

 of Professor of Chemistry at the Royal College in 

 the Mauritius, and Dittmar succeeded him. The 



