The Club of the Royal College of Physicians, the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers and their relationship to the Royal Society Club

Abstract

FROM the Annals of the Royal Society Club by Sir Archibald Geikie, we learn that before the Royal Society was formed in 1660 ‘men of science were in the habit of assembling weekly for the purpose of discussing questions in physics and other parts of human learning, . . . in some tavern, particularly The Bull Head’. In the early years of the Society, Fellows frequently went to eat in nearby taverns after the meeting o f the Society, as Pepys records in 1665 and 1666, or dined together in groups before going to the Society as Evelyn records in the 1680’s, and one of these groups was referred to as ‘a Club of our Society’ (1). Forty years later Dr Martin Folkes, the Vice-President of the Royal Society, collected a group of men around him, nearly all Fellows, on a Tuesday evening for supper, and in John Byrom s diaries (1) there are records of these meetings of a Club ‘of the Royal Society men’ which over a period of twenty years name fifty-five Fellows as members. Even whilst this Club was meeting on Tuesday evenings there is evidence that around 1730, Fellows were dining with Halley, the Astronomer Royal, before going on to the Society’s meetings, and by 1736 there began the Club of the Royal Philosophers, later known as the Royal Society Club, which has an almost complete written record from 1743. Most of the members of this Club were Fellows even in the earliest days, and the names of all guests are known, sometimes with an indication of which member of the Club had invited them. The Club met almost every Thursday for a century and later on it met on days when the Royal Society met.