James kay shuttleworth biography of martin lewis

James Kay, the eldest of the six children of Robert Kay, cotton merchant, and his wife, Hannah Phillips, was born in Rochdale on 20th July, His parents were devout Congregationist and according to his biographer, Richard Selleck, Kay grew up "with fervent religious convictions, a consciousness of the temptations and vanities of the world, an obsession with worldly success, and a perilously uncertain belief in his ability and worth.

Despite objections from his father, who wanted him to work in the cotten trade, at the age of twenty-one he entered Edinburgh University to study medicine. While he student he worked with local doctors during a typhus epidemic.

After training at Edinburgh University, James Kay returned to practise as a doctor in Manchester in The following year, he co-founded the Ardwick and.

A fellow student remarked that Kay had "extraordinary mental power and stern unwearied industry". Kay also studied in Dublin before becoming a physician in Manchester. Kay was shocked by the physical conditions under which the people of Manchester lived. He eventually came to the conclusion that "poverty, disease, and misery were not caused by the failings of the poor, as many of his contemporaries insisted, but were social disasters which required explanations beyond the weakness of individuals.

In he wrote an anonymous pamphlet, A Letter to the People of Lancashire, which revealed his admiration of Lord John Russell and the campaign that resulted in the Reform Act. In Kay developed a reputation as a dedicated doctor during a serious outbreak of cholera in the city. Kay was mainly involved in treating people living in slum areas and as a result of his experiences wrote the influential book, The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester.

Largely as a result of this book, it was decided to adopt a series of measures to improve sanitation in Manchester.

Owner: Ughtred James Kay-Shuttleworth Bart.

Kay became a strong advocate of social science was in played a leading part in establishing the Manchester Statistical Society. According to the author of James Kay-Shuttleworth: Journey of an Outsider : "Using survey techniques, it gathered statistics on matters such as the education, religion, accommodation, amusements, and literacy of the poor.

Kay insisted that objectivity in social matters was possible, and that policy could be based on scientific information which avoided prejudice or partiality. He did not notice that his unprejudiced analysis of social problems focused on the powerless while the powerful were left unstudied.