I am replying to Chris Bagg, because there is a more explicit statement
about the Manchester public library being formed to serve women than there
is for the library that might be called its counterpart, namely the Boston
Public Library.
The text below comes from a pamphlet whose title is not handy to me at the
moment, but it reprints a piece in the Manchester Guardian of Dec. 28,
1850. The crucial passage of the article reads:
"Some difficulties, and those not slight, it is believed, will attend the
establishment of a free public library which shall be either wholly
non-circulating . . . or wholly circulating. In the one case, the benefits
that should flow freely from a public library to all, can only be enjoyed
to any extent by one sex. Wives, and sisters, and daughters, will
practically be denied the privileges which their male relatives may largely
enjoy, if the books are not issued and circulated beyond the walls of the
library. In short, the books will only do half the good which they are so
admirably fitted to accomplish, in giving new charms, intellectual and
social, to the homes of the poorest, if their use be confined to the
reading rooms of any building, however spacious and central. Nay, we
believe, that in many instances they will create and adorn homes, where
none worthy of the name have heretofore existed, and will in time lead
thousands to prefer the social recreation of reading to the more degrading,
costly, and profitless enjoyments of the beer-house, the dram-shop, the
casino, the music saloon, and the penny theatre."
I am hoping to find something comparable for this side of the Atlantic.
There are, however, a couple of reports of women creating what we would now
call "mob scenes" in their eagerness to use early public libraries in New
Bedford, Mass., and Exeter, N.H.
Ken Carpenter
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