The Institutes provided education for the working man through lending libraries, lecture theatres, class rooms and laboratories and often included courses and technical materials, and wider opportunities for learning and betterment.

The institute was then moved to larger premises in the City Assembly Rooms above the Buttermarket, adjacent to the St Peter at Arches Church.

[3] The Lincoln Mechanics’ Institute was closely connected with several prominent men: George Boole, mathematician and creator of Boolean algebra; the Earl of Yarbourough; Charles Seely, the Liberal politician and industrialist; Edward Parker Charlesworth, known as an innovator in psychiatric treatment; and Thomas Cooper, the Chartist leader.

The proposal was that a “Mechanics' Institution be established in the City of Lincoln, having branches in the County, with accommodation for Lectures, Philosophical Apparatus, Library, and Museum, as the funds may admit.

The alterations must have proceeded quickly as by Tuesday 23 April 1834 the Institute held its first lecture by Dr Dionysius Lardner, FRS who demonstrated two working models of steam engines.

Lardner, a leading figure in adult education, was an Irish scientific writer who popularised science and technology, and edited the 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopaedia.

On the following Friday a Grand Ball was held in City Assembly Rooms on the High Street to raise money for the Mechanics' Institute and attended by the Earl of Yarborough, local MPs and leading citizens of Lincoln and the dancing was kept up with great spirit until a late hour in the morning.

The Earl of Yarborough and Sir Edward ffrench Bromhead were disparaging about "Trade Unions" believing that by educating the apprentices and workers, they would command a fair wage for their work.

[5] In 1845 the Rector of South Hykeham writes to the Lincolnshire Chronicle that the Lincoln Mechanics' Institute is degenerating into Radical club-house, and that free-trade and revolutionary doctrines are promulgated in defiance of the wholesome rule forbidding the introduction of politics and controversial divinity.

The Rector's accusation stemmed from the purchase of a copy of Wise Saws and Modern Instances by Thomas Cooper, a former committee member of the institute, who had now become a leading Chartist.

[6] Sir Francis Hill points out that the ultra-Tory Lincoln MP Charles Waldo Sibthorp and the cathedral and local clergy were conspicuous by not supporting the Mechanics' Institute.

While George Boole was largely self taught, he was also encouraged and lent books by Sir Edward Bromhead, chairman of the Mechanics' Institute and a notable mathematician.

Ffrench Bromhead, at the close of the lecture, said that Mr. G. Boole would go on in the course he had commenced, and one day be an honor to Lincoln, was we believe echoed by every breast We trust that many youths present would also feel the spring of laudable ambition touched within them, while listening to honourable testimonies and encomiums thus given to genius and industry.

He took part in the local campaign for early closing and reduction of shop workers hours in Lincoln and also the establishment of the Penitent Females Home.

In 1838, Boole worked in Waddington on his first paper for publication, On Certain Theorems in the Calculus of Variations, prompted by his reading of Lagrange's Mécanique Analytique.

Charlesworth won national recognition for his removal of restraint procedures for mentally ill patients and worked closely with Richard Gardiner Hill (Physician to the Lincoln Dispensary) who gave a public lecture outlining the new methods of treatment to the Mechanics' Institute in 1838.