In 1799, Rumford conferred with the Committee of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor as to the steps to be taken to found, “by private subscription, a public institution for diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the general and speedy introduction of new and useful mechanical inventions and improvements; and also for teaching, by regular courses of philosophical lectures and experiments, the applications of the new discoveries in science to the improvement of arts and manufactures, and in facilitating the means of procuring the comforts and conveniences of life.” The Institution was duly launched in March, 1799, with Sir Joseph Banks as Chairman of Managers, Count Rumford as Secretary, and Mr. Thomas Bernard, the promoter of the Institution for the Protection and Instruction of Climbing Boys, and of the Society for the Relief of Poor Neighbours in Distress, as Treasurer. The second volume of the “Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor” contains a long account of the Institution, “so far as it may be expected to affect the poor,” from the pen of Mr. Bernard, concerning which Dr. Bence Jones, a former Secretary of the Institution, drily remarks, “It is difficult to believe that the Royal Institution of the present day was ever intended to resemble the picture given of it in this Report.” Rumford, from the outset, threw himself with great zeal and ardour into the work of organising and starting the Institution, and it was mainly by his energy and administrative ability that so speedy a beginning was made. Mr. Mellish’s house in Albemarle Street was bought, and its apartments were quickly transformed into lecture rooms, model rooms, library, offices, etc. In May “a good cook was engaged for the improvement of culinary advancement--one object, and not the least important--for the Royal Institution.” Rumford was requested by the Managers to live in the house, to superintend the servants, to preserve order and decorum, and to control the expenses of housekeeping. Towards the end of 1799 Dr. Garnett was secured as Lecturer and Scientific Secretary. Thomas Garnett, a physician, who at one time practised at Harrogate, and who is known to chemists for his researches into the composition of the Harrogate mineral waters, was at the time Professor of Chemistry and Experimental Philosophy at Anderson’s Institution in Glasgow. He had a considerable reputation as a lecturer, on the strength of which he was invited by Rumford to come to London. Garnett’s lectures began in March, 1800, in what is now the upper Library of the Institution, and which had been fitted up to accommodate the greatest possible number of auditors “with a greater deference to their curiosity than to their convenience.”