Sent from Karl Pearson
8 Mar 1913
Description:

‘I do not think my letter [of resignation from the ‘Building Committee’ re: plans for new Galton building] was written under any misapprehension whatever [despite T. Gregory Foster’s protests]. In fact your letter strengthens my determination to retire from the Committee, for it shows that its members quite fail to appreciate the very strong feelings I have on the points at issue [primarily arrangement of Lecture Hall next to street, privacy of access routes to women’s WC]...

 

I have asked Hartog [UCL Academic Registrar] to summon a meeting of the Galton Committee. If that committee approves the scheme of the Building Committee then I shall leave the planning of the Building to that Committee and retire from my present post, as soon as I can find another job, which I hope will not be long.

My point has always been that a laboratory would be bad on this site, unless all the principal rooms were off the street side; that arrangement had been upset by the lecture room plan. I distinctly told the Committee that a lecture room containing only 140 would be better than one for 200, if the latter involved going on the street side. They spoke of “an experiment” and then changing the room. You cannot make an experiment until practically the lecture room is completed, because the effect depends upon an actual audience not being able to follow, and not a man talking to one or two units [sic] in a non-fitted building...

With regard of the question of separate access to the men’s and women’s cloak rooms,- call them that if you prefer the name to lavatory – I have said all along that I personally will not work in a laboratory where this is not provided...

Finally, as to the animals. You spoke in your last letter of my unwillingness to give way on any single point. Well, this is for me a very vital one. Any man who has done work of this sort knows the importance of having these animal rooms under his eye and at hand. I considered the objections raised were wholly idle, and made in ignorance of the work going on at other places; it is possible to keep such places from being objectionable to neighbours. But I gave way on this point against my own judgement. That giving way was itself conditional by either the Committee providing accommodation on the site suggested by Mr. Galton or in Gower Place. But I do not think the basement ought to have been passed without this as a proviso. It is quite possible that the College Committee will not see its way to either of these arrangements and then the suggested basement is still more unsatisfactory, and if the foundations are begun it cannot be amended.

If I remained on the Committee, I should in fact, by doing so, be accepting a scheme which I consider fundamentally wrong. Either the College Committee asked me to go on the Building Committee because they thought my advice of value in getting what was desirable for the Laboratory, or else it was merely formal. In every single point that I have pressed for with regard to the basement and theatre my views have been rejected. No man whose time is of value is likely to submit to that sort of thing, and therefore I leave the matter in the hands of those whose judgement is preferred. You are quite at liberty to show this letter to any member of the Committee.

Yours very faithfully

Karl Pearson.’