The Soul of Things; Or, Psychometric Researches and Discoveries by William Denton

He then became a clerk in the South Eastern Railroad Company. He later became an assistant at a school in London but lost the position after clashing with its Calvinist principal. He was then helped by his sister Annie Denton Cridge who ran a school. This led to dismissal from his school for heresy. He began to take an interest in mesmerism and an interest in radical unitarianism. He then joined the Normal School, while also lecturing on temperance and preaching in London. When Hackworth asked his apprentice to repair equipment at a brewery, Denton refused claiming that it was against his conscience resulting in his sacking.

Around the same time, he began to read Lyell's geology and went to examine fossils in the workings of the Prince of Wales Tunnel, then being dug to allow a railway to pass beneath the market town of Shildon. He was a member of the New Shildon Mechanics Institute. At the age of fourteen he received workshop skills as an apprentice to Timothy Hackworth the pioneering railway and marine engineer at his Soho Works in Shildon. A Baptist teacher named William Shotton made a special impression on him, with demonstration of a home-made galvanic cell. He began to read books from the age of four and at the age of eight he could recite chapters of the Bible from memory. He was educated by his mother's friend Nelly Sedgwick who ran a small school before going to the British Penny School in Darlington.

1870ĭenton was born at Darlington, Durham. Poster for Denton's travelling lectures made by his son Sherman Foote Denton, c.

The Soul of Things; Or, Psychometric Researches and Discoveries by William Denton