ABSTRACT
The towns chosen to host one of the great annual parliaments of science were places which had come through often lengthy processes of scrutiny and selection in which their facilities and attractions were compared with those of rival venues. This chapter examines these processes, conducted with varying levels of procedural formality by the four knowledge associations, and investigates the strategies employed by applicant towns to attract one of their meetings. Aspiring meeting places had to offer not only the required practical facilities but also convince the hierarchy of the associations that they possessed a range of far more intangible qualities. Was there sufficient appetite for learning in the town and locality to sustain interest in a week-long meeting? Was there a local intelligentsia with the drive and enthusiasm to take on the burden of organisation? Would the most influential people in the town and neighbourhood throw their weight behind the meeting and lend their status to the event? Despite the rather impressionistic nature of these measures, for some towns they proved no obstacle to success. Places which had an established range of cultural institutions, a track record as a hub of social life and leisure, particularly for neighbouring gentry, and an ability to muster a deputation of influential supporters willing to petition for a meeting were likely to distinguish themselves above their rivals in the race for selection. It will be shown here that there emerged, during the half-century after 1831, a top tier of towns which were particularly successful in promoting themselves as meeting places.
