William Sturgeon. 267 



Mr. Binney, who although not an electrician was doing the 

 work of others, and induced the Government to allow Mr. 

 Sturgeon fifty pounds per annum when he was old. Here 

 also we have to make complaints : to him who hath shall 

 be given. A sum so small would not have been offered to a 

 man who had been fairly prosperous, but to a man who had 

 suffered all his life this sum was to set a seal on his poverty 

 and to continue his depression. But it is not intended to 

 write his life. Dr. Leigh (now Medical Officer of Health 

 for Manchester) and Dr. Joule have written of him, and they 

 knew him better than the writer of this did. It is enough 

 then to add from their accounts the following, and finst 

 from John Leigh, F.R.C.S., &c., as it appeared in the 

 * Manchester Examiner and Times,' December 14, 1850. 



* It was during his connection with the artillery that, as 

 he once described to the writer of this brief notice, his 

 attention was awakened, and his curiosity quickened,' by 

 the phenomena of a terrific thunderstorm. The whole 

 phenomenon was a mystery to him, but he determined to 

 become better acquainted with the wonderful agent that 

 had so strongly excited his awe and admiration — a power 

 that, in an instant, could rend rocks and rive trees, and yet 

 whose visible existence was nowhere. The few books he 

 was able to obtain afforded him little information, and 

 even the perusal of those showed him that, in education, 

 he was deficient in the elements essential to a physical 

 investigator. With an energy and perseverance that 

 characterised him through life, he resolved to overcome 

 these difficulties ; and he set about it in a manner that 

 indicated the high order of his mind. He began at once 

 the study of mathematics, of which he obtained an ex- 

 cellent knowledge ; he then cultivated the Latin and 



