Philanthropic artist always had an eye on the big picture
English drawing master, social reformer and inventor William Shipley gave us the Royal Society of Arts. But he also left his mark on his hometown of Maidstone...
Readers may have noticed our report (KM, July 11) that Knightrider House in Knightrider Street in Maidstone has new owners and is to be converted into a hub for small businesses.
The building has had many uses in recent decades - it has been the home of the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service and was once the headquarters of the Maidstone and District Bus Company.
But its most famous tenant was William Shipley, the founder of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, or RSA as it is frequently known today. Shipley had been born in Maidstone in 1715, but his father Jonathan Shipley died when he was just three, and the young William was sent to live with his grandfather in London.
At age 21, he received a £500 inheritance - around £110,000 today - and used the money to travel to Northampton to pursue a study of drawing. While there, he became involved with the Northampton Philosophical Society, where he first showed his philanthropic inclinations by raising funds to buy fuel for the poor.
Later, around 1750, Shipley moved back to London and set up his own drawing school near Fountain Court in The Strand, known first as Shipley’s Academy and, later, as Ackermann’s Repository of Arts.
Many of his students - Richard Cosway, William Pars, William Hodges and Francis Wheatley were among them - became highly successful artists, though posterity does not seem to have rated Shipley’s own pastoral scenes very highly.
By 1753, Shipley was floating the idea of a society to encourage the arts, manufactures and commerce among his influential friends and a year later, in 1754, he founded the Royal Society in a coffee shop in Henrietta Street in Covent Garden.
Although today the society is perhaps best known for its encouragement of the fine arts, it originally had very practical ambitions and established prizes for those who could improve the nation’s commerce by, for example, processing cobalt or curing madder - the basis of all red dyes at the time - or encouraging the growth of timber for use in the Navy’s ships.
The society was also keen to promote the education of women and established a number of Girls’ Public Day Schools. It was also hot on the environment and offered prizes for those who found a way to reduce smoke emissions.
Shipley married Elizabeth Miller in 1767, he was then 52, and the following year decided to retire from national life and return to his home town - Maidstone.
He commissioned the construction of Knightrider House and the couple’s two children were born there, although only the second, Elizabeth, survived beyond infancy. But it seems Shipley could not quite put his philanthropic instincts to one side.
Together with Lord Romney, a local aristocrat who had been one of his principal backers for the Royal Society, he founded the Maidstone Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, which was later known as the Kentish Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge.
Among the practical improvements the society made was a better sanitation system at Maidstone Prison, which was successful in combatting “gaol fever” which had previously claimed the lives of many inmates. Shipley died on December 28, 1803 and is buried in the churchyard of nearby All Saints Church. He was 89.
Sadly the Kentish Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge does not seem to have survived long after his death.
One wonders what the County Town might have looked like today if it had.