Manchester Royal School of Medicine

Jordan had been combining practice work with lectures since around 1812; his new venture had moved to larger premises on Bridge Street in 1816[a] and in the following year his school became the first provincial institution to be recognised by the London Society of Apothecaries as a teaching establishment for those seeking its licentiate.

Jordan occasionally got into trouble both with the law and the general public due to his use of body-snatchers and even the direct involvement of himself and students in the surreptitious acquirement of suitable corpses for study.

Jordan's aim was to reduce the burden of costs that were placed on students who otherwise would have to go to London if they wanted to obtain a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons or a licence from the Society of Apothecaries.

As a side-effect of this, he thought that student morals would not be subjected to the licentiousness that he perceived to be present in London and that a provincial education would increase the number of doctors practising outside the capital.

[6] Although Jordan's School of Anatomy[7] may have broadened the scope of its courses since foundation, it was not as comprehensive in coverage as that opened by Thomas Turner on Pine Street in 1824.

It offered all of the courses demanded for the LSA and MRCS qualifications, rather than a subset of them, and it was based on his experiences in delivering occasional lectures at the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society (ML&PS) since 1822 as he sought to promote his theories of medical education.

[11] In 1826 Jordan responded to Turner's challenge, which was creating intense competition both for students and staff, by moving his medical school to purpose-built premises in Mount Street.

[10] However, the attempt to recover lost ground was unsuccessful, in part because Jordan was not an easy person to work with and perhaps also because of objections to the introduction of his young nephew, Edward Stephens, as an instructor.

[5][8][12] The Marsden Street school — which involved some notable names such as George Freckleton, Thomas Fawdington, J. Boutflower and John Roberton — had been innovative in providing the first medical jurisprudence courses in Manchester.

[8][18][9] Although there were concerns whether the new facilities could accommodate the medical schools also, these were alleviated by a timely donation from Hannah Brackenbury, a philanthropist who was also supporting causes such as the Ancoats Hospital.

Turner was no longer active as a teacher but his long-cherished idea that his school should be a part of a larger institution of general learning came to fruition when it was taken over in 1872 to become the College's faculty of medicine.