After a long history of evolution, legislative changes mean the Prahran Mechanics Institute is poised for an even brighter future.

In 1799 the physician and philanthropist Dr George Birkbeck gave a series of free lectures for the working men of Glasgow. Extremely popular, the lectures led to more permanent facilities dedicated to workers’ education: the Edinburgh School of Arts (1821) and the London Mechanics’ Institute (1823). At the time, the word ‘mechanic’ had a broad definition that included sundry artisans and tradespeople, many of whom had little access to formal education.

From those beginnings in the early 1820s, mechanics’ institutes began to appear throughout Britain and its colonies. Governments and civic minded industrialists and philanthropists funded them as important forerunners of community libraries and institutions for adult education.

Australia’s first mechanics’ institute – the Van Diemen’s Land Mechanics’ Institute – was established in Hobart in 1827. The Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts came next, in 1833. Many towns and suburbs across Australia soon had a mechanics’ institute. In central Melbourne, the Melbourne Mechanics’ Institute (subsequently the Athenaeum) was founded in 1839; and on Chapel Street in suburban Prahan, the Prahran Mechanics Institute (now the PMI Victorian History Library) was established in 1854.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Prahran Mechanics Institute building was in a slump, and so were the institute’s committee and collection.

The committee was only meeting irregularly; George Cross, the elderly Secretary Librarian, was not accepting new members; and the building and collection had fallen into neglect. An 1899 audit by City Librarian Aneas Gunn found the collection ‘without exception to be in a shockingly neglected and filthy condition’. The remaining highlights from the collection were consigned to auction to raise money for the organisation; the other books were burnt.

Urgent action was needed to put the library back on track. Frederick. T Sargood (the son of one of the PMI’s original trustees, merchant and politician Frederick James Sargood) joined with Prahran Council and concerned residents to secure Victorian government intervention in the form of an Act of Parliament. The new Act would dissolve the former organization. A new committee would take possession of the property and immediately dismiss Cross.

Read on at: https://www.themandarin.com.au/285892-much-loved-library-is-a-legislative-curiosity/