Biography

Robert Slater Bayley was born in Lichfield, probably in 1801, and baptised as an Anglican. After being trained for the Congregational ministry at Hoxton and Highbury Colleges he worked as a minister from June 1828 at Lane End, Longton, Staffordshire, moving in 1830 to the Independent Chapel at Louth, Lincolnshire, where he was also one of the founders of the Louth Mechanics' Institute. He married Susan Edwards during this time in Louth, and they had four children together.

In February 1836 he moved to Sheffield to assume charge of the Howard Street Chapel, and began teaching private pupils at his home in Pitsmoor, as well as lecturing at the Mechanics’ Institute in Sheffield. One of his private pupils was John Derby, who would go on to become the People’s College Secretary and also the teacher of the Logic class.

In 1842 Bayley founded the People's College Sheffield to provide young working men and women the opportunities for further education, with a wide range of subject classes running before and after the working day. Bayley did most of the teaching himself, as well as publishing textbooks for the use of the classes. He was soon running fifty classes a week, attended by over 300 students and the College moved to larger premises after a year, to Orchard Street in 1843.

Bayley’s poor financial management and strong political views led to him being involved in controversies during his time in Sheffield. These included a dispute with a private bank of Sheffield in 1843, and in 1846 the Howard Street Chapel congregation asked him to resign. Bayley and some of his followers seceded from the chapel and held services at the premises of the People’s College. The result of these public disputes was a decline in numbers at the People's College, and Bayley ultimately left Sheffield to take up a new position in a Congregational Chapel in Ratcliff, London in 1848.

The college was revived by former pupils, and Bayley went on to found a People’s College in Norwich during his time living in London. He moved to become minister of the Eignbrook Congregational Chapel, Hereford, in 1856, where he died in 1859.

Sources: ODNB Entry for Robert Slater Bayley, and The Story of the People's College Sheffield, by G. C. Moore Smith, 1912.

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