Sir Rubert Boyce. 



v 



significant of much in his further career. It revealed his boldness and shrewd- 

 ness of appeal for University aims to a non-University public, and his ideal of 

 a University life dovetailed by public utility into the life of a civic community. 



Looking back to that time, we know now that a wave of University 

 development was then, in fact, imminent in the country. And we know that 

 Liverpool proved one of the chief centres of its motive force ; in that centre 

 Boyce was eminent as a forceful and practical spirit. In Liverpool the 

 problem naturally presented itself particularly as that of enlarging and 

 freeing the University College to a fully-equipped and self-centred University. 

 The College at Liverpool, together with similar colleges in Manchester and 

 Leeds, was nominally centred outside Liverpool at Manchester. This con- 

 glomeration Boyce felt should be broken up. At Liverpool within the 

 academic body itself diffidence opposed such a departure. In the outside 

 community indifference and want of appreciation of the issue had to be 

 removed. Caution urged " let well alone." Many even among those best 

 disposed toward University projects feared that a large demand for further 

 funds would fail or would deplete schemes already working and requiring 

 steady upkeep. They thought that to undertake such wide new responsi- 

 bilities would bring inability to meet adequately either the new or the 

 old. To all such fears Boyce's courage was deaf. His answer came less 

 in words than in deeds. His energy and resource left no stone unturned 

 in search for ways and means. Allying himself with a few colleagues, 

 styled intimately " The New Testament," and chiefly of the Arts faculty,, 

 he with them started a University Club. Its housing and cuisine were 

 almost ostentatiously Spartan, contrasting against the luxurious clubs of 

 the commercial city. Its means at outset were of the most slender. 

 Boyce's contributions were not the less valuable because they extended even 

 to the house furnishing ; as a capable bricklayer he built with his own hands 

 a wall in the club yard. This club achieved its aim. Formed to consolidate 

 the local University movement by bringing into close social relation men 

 from inside and from outside the College circle itself, it became the rallying 

 point for those ventures which culminated in the formation of the present 

 University. Boyce was president of the club in one of its most eventful years. 



In 1898 the Department of Pathology entered into occupancy of a fine 

 building erected and equipped for it by the late Bev. S. A. Thompson- Yates. 

 Almost at the same time Boyce was appointed bacteriologist to the Liverpool 

 Corporation. The opportunities the new laboratory and the new post 

 together opened to him were just such as his heart desired. The work 

 particularly interested him ; moreover, he saw himself and his laboratory 

 serving as a substantial bond between the University College he so cherished 

 and his adopted city of which he was so proud. In daily touch with the 

 Municipality and the life of commerce and its leaders, he made friendships 

 of lifelong endurance, and became conversant with ways and views novel to 

 his experience. When in 1902 the movement for establishment of the 

 University took final shape, his influence contributed with unique effect. 



