John Henry Reynolds was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

ist and administrator, particularly associated with the development of the Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 educational institution that was to go on to become UMIST

UMIST

The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research...

.

Life

Born in Salford, Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, the eldest of eleven children of a bootmaker

Shoemaking

Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand. Traditional handicraft shoemaking has now been largely superseded in volume of shoes produced by industrial mass production of footwear, but not necessarily in quality, attention to detail, or...

, he attended the day school of the Cross Street Unitarian Chapel before a year at the Manchester Grammar School

Manchester Grammar School

The Manchester Grammar School is the largest independent day school for boys in the UK . It is based in Manchester, England...

 prepared him for apprenticeship to his father at age twelve. He also assisted at the Sunday School

Sunday school

Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...

 at Cross Street where he met William Fairbairn

William Fairbairn

Sir William Fairbairn, 1st Baronet was a Scottish civil engineer, structural engineer and shipbuilder.-Early career:...

 and William Gaskell

William Gaskell

The Reverend William Gaskell was an English Unitarian minister, charity worker and pioneer in the education of the working class...

. In 1868, he married Ellen Ferguson at the chapel and they went on to have three children.

By the 1870s, the Manchester Mechanics' Institute was in decline. Despite its original ambitious mission to bring technical expertise to working men, its core activities had shrunk to the provision of elementary education where it faced increasing competition from the state-funded schools established by the Elementary Education Act 1870

Elementary Education Act 1870

The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between ages 5 and 12 in England and Wales...

. In 1879, Reynolds was appointed Secretary to the Institute and immediately set about its rejuvenation. An able and active administrator, and an enthusiastic and persuasive advocate, Reynolds grasped the city's appetite for more effective vocational education

Vocational education

Vocational education or vocational education and training is an education that prepares trainees for jobs that are based on manual or practical activities, traditionally non-academic, and totally related to a specific trade, occupation, or vocation...

 and planned and led the relaunch of the institution as the Manchester Technical School in 1882.

Reynolds still did not rest. He reorganised the school using the schemes and examinations of the City and Guilds of London Institute

City and Guilds of London Institute

The City and Guilds of London Institute is a leading United Kingdom vocational education organisation. City & Guilds offers more than 500 qualifications over the whole range of industry sectors through 8500 colleges and training providers in 81 countries worldwide...

 and, following legislation in 1889 and 1890, negotiated the school's transfer to Manchester City Council as the Municipal Technical School. Reynolds took a role in the city authority as director of technical instruction and set out to survey the superior establishments in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 and the thriving schools of the USA and Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

A grant from the Whitworth Institute

Joseph Whitworth

Sir Joseph Whitworth, 1st Baronet was an English engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist. In 1841, he devised the British Standard Whitworth system, which created an accepted standard for screw threads...

 enabled him to realise his ambitions for a state-of-the-art institution with the construction of the existing buildings on Sackville Street, opened in 1902 by Arthur Balfour

Arthur Balfour

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC, DL was a British Conservative politician and statesman...

. The institution was renamed as the Municipal School of Technology and Reynolds became its principal and director for higher education

Higher education

Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...

 of Manchester.

In 1904, the newly-autonomous Victoria University of Manchester

Victoria University of Manchester

The Victoria University of Manchester was a university in Manchester, England. On 1 October 2004 it merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to form a new entity, "The University of Manchester".-1851 - 1951:The University was founded in 1851 as Owens College,...

 recognised the status of many of the courses that Reynolds had developed by establishing a faculty of technology

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

 at the Institute. Reynolds became dean

Dean (education)

In academic administration, a dean is a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, or over a specific area of concern, or both...

 of the faculty, enjoying an ex officio seat on the university's senate. The Institute's newly appointed professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

s were recognised by the university. However, consistent with Reynolds' radical

Radicals (UK)

The Radicals were a parliamentary political grouping in the United Kingdom in the early to mid 19th century, who drew on earlier ideas of radicalism and helped to transform the Whigs into the Liberal Party.-Background:...

 sympathies, the bulk of the Institute's work was still devoted to vocational, rather than academic, education.

Reynolds lived most of his later life in Cheadle Hulme

Cheadle Hulme

Cheadle Hulme is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, in Greater Manchester, England. It is southwest of Stockport and southeast of the city of Manchester. It lies in the Ladybrook Valley on the Cheshire Plain, and the drift consists mostly of boulder clay, sands and gravels...

. He died while on holiday with his family in Anglesey

Anglesey

Anglesey , also known by its Welsh name Ynys Môn , is an island and, as Isle of Anglesey, a county off the north west coast of Wales...

.