These were still further demonstrated in the winter of 1862, during the memorable cotton famine in Lancashire, when he acted as one of the secretaries to a committee created to provide some form of intellectual occupation for the thousands of operatives thrown out of employment by the stoppage of the staple industry of the district. He gave lectures, illustrated by experiments, on subjects likely to attract a working-class audience. These were highly popular, and undoubtedly awakened a general interest in scientific matters in quarters which knew nothing of science. Their success encouraged him to institute the series of Science Lectures for the People, which he began in 1866, and carried on for eleven consecutive winters. In this movement he secured the co-operation, amongst others, of Huxley, Carpenter, Tyndall, Huggins, Lord Avebury, Abel, Stanley Jevons, Clifford, and Spottiswoode. The lectures were given in some of the largest public halls in the city, and were attended by thousands. They were published week by week as delivered, and were sold for a penny all over the world. In 1874 the writer, then recently appointed to the newly founded Yorkshire College at Leeds, had the privilege of taking part in these courses, when he undertook to give some account of the life and work of Joseph Priestley, the chemist, who, as already stated, was a colleague of Dr. Enfield at the Warrington Academy. Mrs. Roscoe, the mother of the subject of this memoir, then an old lady of seventy-six, who had shown the writer many kindnesses during his student-days at Owens College, was pleased to interest herself in this lecture and, unsolicited, to write the following characteristic and charming little sketch of Priestley and his wife as a contribution to the subject. 10 YORK PLACE, OXFORD ROAD, _November 12_ [1874]. MY DEAR PROFESSOR, I have a few particulars at your service for your lecture on Priestley if you intend to sketch his character, which was a fine example for working-men. I should be glad to send you the papers if you will return them. You of course have Huxley’s enlarged notice in the _Contemporary_, which is very good and full.