Owens College, Manchester, which has developed into the VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, owes its origin to John Owens, a Manchester cotton-spinner, who, dying in 1846, left his fortune (£96,654) for the foundation of a college on an absolutely unsectarian basis, free from all tests of creed or subscription. By 1851 the college was built and opened with two faculties—(1) arts, science, and law, and (2) medicine (now including a school of pharmacy and a dental-surgery department); in 1873 the new college buildings were constructed, and the number of students was 1004; in 1891 they numbered 811, besides 439 evening students, and there were about eighty lecturers.
In 1874 Charles Clifton of Jersey City, United States, bequeathed his residuary estate (£21,571) for the extension of the department of mechanical arts and engineering, and in 1876 Charles Beyer of Manchester left to it by will £100,243. Other benefactions and subscriptions produced over £260,000 for its development and endowment. The idea of a university at Manchester, which had been mooted so long ago as 1641, and revived in 1789 and 1836, was at length carried out. In 1880 the Victoria University was fairly launched, though at first without the power of granting degrees in medicine and surgery. This last restriction was removed in 1883. The senate consists of the principal and the professors for the time being. The characteristic features of the university, as compared with other British universities, are these: (1) It does not, like London, confer degrees on candidates who have passed certain examinations only, but it also requires attendance on prescribed courses of academic study in a college of the university; (2) the constitution of the university contemplates its ultimately becoming a federation of colleges; but these colleges will not be situated like those of Oxford and Cambridge in one town, but wherever a college of adequate efficiency and stability shall have arisen. Besides Owens College, the Yorkshire College at Leeds and University College, Liverpool, have been already admitted, and in 1883 the Manchester and Salford College for Women was incorporated with it. Women enjoy full rights of studying, except the right to use the laboratories. There are two permanent fellowships, two others not endowed, and from thirty to forty scholarships and prizes. Many of these last, together with one of the fellowships, are open to competition by women as well as men. See Owens College: its Foundation and Growth, by Joseph Thompson (Manchester, 1886).