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 pastorate of the Independent Chapel at Louth, Lincolnshire, where he made his mark by his eloquence, interest in education, and decided views on political questions, amongst which was an abhorrence of war, and where he was one of the founders of the Louth Mechanics' Institute.

In 1836 he moved to Sheffield to assume charge of the Howard Street Chapel, in the same year becoming a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1842 he founded the People's College Sheffield to provide young working men and women the opportunities for further education. In 1846 there was a split within the Howard Street Chapel congregation, as a result of which Bayley and others seceded but continued to hold services in the People's College. This divisive episode led to a decline in the College's fortunes, and in 1848 Bayley left to take charge of a Congregational Chapel in Ratcliff in the East End of London. He died in Hereford in 1859.

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