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Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
A: London, England, United Kingdom
Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative CommonsThe cylindrical devices behind the lecturer appear to be stoves to heat the space near the speaker. Above the speaker we see the Baconian motto, Knowledge is Power.
Because the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) issued so many publications typically in large editions, their publications tend to be readily available in institutional libraries and on the rare book market. However, the only illustration of one of their meetings that I had seen when I wrote this entry in January 2019 was a lithograph depicting the opening of their Lecture-Hall in Greenwich on February 15, 1843. In the lithograph one sees many seemingly well-dressed men and women attending a lecture. This tends to confirm the criticism of the SDUK that even though they originally intended to education the lower or working class as well as the growing middle class, their membership and clientele for publications tended to be middle class.
Behind the podium we see on the wall a bust of an unidentified individual with an Elizabethan collar, and the motto "Knowledge is Power." The expression, which embodied the goals of the SDUK, is usually attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, and it is likely that the bust that we can see only in profile is Bacon.
The Greenwich lecture hall and this print were created late in the duration of the SDUK, which was founded in 1826 and lasted until 1848.