Born and brought up in Yorkshire, Priestley was educated for the ministry,
and attended the Dissenting Academy at Daventry until 1755. After two
unsuccessful posts as preacher, he set up a school in Cheshire, where he
gained such a good reputation that he was invited to become a tutor at the
Dissenting Academy at Warrington. He took up this post in 1761, and taught
many things including languages, history, law and oratory, but not natural
philosophy! He became a prolific writer, with publications ranging from
The Rudiments of English Grammar to Essay on the First Principles
of Government, which was said to have influenced Jeremy Bentham. He also
began writing on scientific matters, though, and completed his History of
Electricity in 1767. Whilst researching this book, he had met up with
Benjamin Franklin and John Canton in London, and had been
elected FRS at their suggestion. Priestley and his family (he had married in
1762) moved to Leeds in 1767, where he took up a Presbyterian ministry, and
also began his researches into the nature and properties of gases for which
he is now famous; he discovered Oxygen. In 1773, he entered the service of the Earl of Shelburne,
as librarian and advisor to the household tutor, and continued to study
gases under his patronage, in the family homes in Wiltshire and London. In
1780, he moved his family to Birmingham, where he took up another preaching
post, and became involved with the famous Lunar Society (which counted
amongst its members at that time Erasmus Darwin and James Watt). The society
supported his researches into gases, and his opposition to the new chemistry
of Lavoisier.
In 1791, he spoke out in favour of the initial phases of the
French Revolution. This, together with his continued vocal opposition to
sectarian intolerance within England led to his property being burnt by a
"Church-and-King" mob, and his life being endangered. For a while he lived
in Hackney, teaching natural philosophy and preaching at the Dissenting
Academy there, but in 1794, he felt it necessary to emigrate to the United
States. When he arrived, he was well-received, and offered a position as
Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He turned this
down, however, in favour of settling in an area reserved for British people
fleeing persecution. This settlement never really took off, but the
Priestleys elected to remain there. Priestley became very unhappy after his
wife and one of his sons died in the mid-1790s, but his grief was tempered
slightly in his latter years when Thomas Jefferson was elected President in
1800. He had supported Jefferson's cause throughout, and Jefferson
personally befriended him, and at last he felt as if he were in a country
where the political authorities were not going to persecute him. He died in
1804, and was buried in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.
See our newsletter no 19 P 40 with a photo.
Click on the Website of the
Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and search for his name
to find another article.
London blue plaqes
For further information link to wikipedia and enter "Joseph Priestley".
Page last updated 24 January 2014