DICTIONARY
OF
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
STOW, DAVID (1793–1864), educational writer and founder of the Glasgow Normal School, was born at Paisley on 17 May 1793, and was the son of William Stow, by his wife, Agnes Smith. His father was a substantial merchant and magistrate in the town. David was educated at the Paisley grammar school, and was in 1811 employed in business in Glasgow. Very early in life he developed a deep interest in the state of the poor in that great city, and especially in the children of the Saltmarket, a squalid region through which he passed daily. For these he established in 1816 a Sunday evening school, in which he gathered for conversation and biblical instruction the poorest and most neglected of the children. He became an elder of Dr. Chalmers's church, and was encouraged by him in his efforts. The experience gained in visiting the children's homes impressed him with the need of moral training as distinguished from simple instruction, and gradually shaped in his mind the principles which he afterwards elucidated in his principal book, ‘The Training System’ (1836). He was much influenced by what he learned of the work effected at the same time by Bell and Lancaster in England, and especially by Samuel Wilderspin [q. v.], the author of the ‘Infant System.’ At Stow's invitation Wilderspin gave some lectures on infant training in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and an association was formed under the name of the Glasgow Educational Society. In 1824 this society established at Stow's instance a week-day training school in Drygate. This school by 1827 developed into a seminary for the training of teachers, which was in effect the first normal college in the kingdom, although both the National Society and the Lancasterian societies in England had several years earlier admitted young persons who intended to become school-masters into their model schools in London to study for a few weeks the methods and organisation of those schools. By 1836 Stow was able to transfer the establishment to new premises on a larger scale in Dundas Vale, Glasgow.
In 1832, 20,000l. having been voted in parliament for the erection of schoolhouses, Stow's enterprise was aided by a grant, and he was invited in 1838 to become the first government inspector of Scottish schools. He declined this offer, preferring to develop his own system in the institution which he had founded. The success of the college attracted the special attention and sympathy of Dr.J.P. Kay (afterwards Sir James Phillips Kay-Shuttleworth [q. v.]), who visited it, and recommended in 1841 the further award of a government grant of 5,000l. on condition that the institution should be made over to the general assembly of the church of Scotland. This condition was fulfilled; but in 1845, when the disruption of the Scottish church took place, a change became inevitable. Stow and the directors and teachers of the institution were all in sympathy with Chalmers and the free-church leaders; with the whole body of students, as well as the pupils of the schools, they seceded, and were housed in temporary premises until the new seminary, known to this day as the Free Church Normal College, was erected. Of this institution Stow remained the guiding spirit until his death on 6 Nov. 1864. He married, in 1822, Marion Freebairn, by whom he had four children; she died in 1831. He married, secondly, in 1841, Elizabeth McArthur; she died in 1847.
The influence of Stow's normal college
