ABSTRACT
There is a need for all educational history to be directly related to its social context; but especially is this so for adult education. Unlike other forms of education, where attendance is, in varying degrees, compulsory, the motives of the voluntary adult student are varied. To answer adequately the question, Why do they (or did they) come? would require an essay which would take us beyond the bounds set for this history. Clearly in each individual case, whether student or teacher, the reasons which prompted a man to join and then to continue at the College were diverse, and closely related to his particular interests, personality, and background. But certain general trends, which affected men in the mass, can be traced; and for an appreciation of these we have to turn to contemporary social conditions. Although the bewhiskered, tight-trousered gentlemen teachers (who look down so confidently from the walls of the Common or Charles Wright Rooms), or the artisan-students in their fustian jackets and paper caps (not, alas, so painstakingly preserved for us), may seem remote in the extreme, they had to face problems which we today would find perfectly recognizable, if not actually familiar. They too were perplexed by doubts and difficulties, and were faced by fundamental problems in their work no less than we. Their world was that of the years between 1848 and 1854, and it is in the ideas and social turmoil of that period that the origins of the College are to be found.
