Leopold Hartley Grindon

Leopold Hartley Grindon (28 March 1818–20 November 1904) was an English educator and botanist, who was a pioneer in the field of adult education. His collection of plants, related botanical drawings and writings formed one of the main assets of the herbarium at Manchester Museum at the time of its foundation in 1860.
Early life.
Leopold Hartley Grindon was born in Bristol on 28 March 1818 and educated at Bristol College. He established the Bristol Philobotanical Society while still at school. He moved to Manchester at the age of 20, spending a year as an apprentice in a warehouse before becoming a cashier for John Whittaker & Company's cotton business until 1864.
Botany.
Grindon, whose father was a solicitor and a coroner, developed an early interest in botany and was self-taught in other areas of science, such as astronomy and geology. At the age of 13, he started a collection of dried plants and by 18 he envisaged the creation of a herbarium of all the cultivated and wild plants found in Britain. He grew many specimens from seed and collected writings and drawings, particularly of plants that were difficult to grow or obtain in specimen form. As he put it, "I desired also to introduce every bit of printed matter referring to the plant that might come in my way, with descriptions alike of the individual species and of the Natural Orders, the uses and other particulars also have a place and seeing that Botany is wreathed also with all kinds of poetical and other human associations, everything that would illustrate these was also to go into the Herbarium so-called, which thus to be a Herbarium and a Botanical library fused into one."
In 1860, Grindon and the calico printer Joseph Sidebotham founded the Manchester Field-Naturalists' Society. He attended the Mechanics' Institute and was appointed a lecturer in botany at the Manchester Royal School of Medicine, whilst offering private tuition in the subject.
Death.
When Grindon moved to Manchester, he lived in Portland Street, then moved to Romford Street, where he lived for 30 years. In 1883 he moved to Cecil Street in Greenheys, where he died aged 87 in 1904.
He married Rosa Elverson, a sympathiser of the feminist movement and lecturer at local institutions such as the Manchester Geographical Society and the Manchester Working Men's Clubs Association. She outlived him and donated a large stained-glass window to Manchester Central Library in his memory. The window, designed by Robert Anning Bell, is above the entrance to the library's Shakespeare Hall.
Publications.
Among Grindon's publications, many written while still employed as a cashier, are:
He also contributed to many journals and to the "Manchester City News", and wrote items unconnected to botany, such as "Manchester Banks and Bankers" (1877) and "A History of Lancashire" (1882).