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Mines, Royal School of, Jermyn-street. — The School of Mines, which was established in 1851, was really a product of the geological survey of the United Kingdom, begun by Sir Henry de la Beche in 1834. The principal object of the institution has always been, and is, to discipline the students thoroughly in the principles of those sciences upon which the operations of the miner and metallurgist depend. The professors attached to the school lecture on the following subjects: Mining, mineralogy, chemistry, general natural history, physics, applied mechanics, metallurgy, geology, and mechanical drawing. The fee for a course of 40 or more lectures is £4; for 30, and under 40, £3. Students passing the examination of the third year in the first-class receive an official certificate as Associates of the Royal School of Mines. There are various exhibitions, scholarships, and free admissions attached to the school, as to which information can be obtained of the registrar. At suitable periods during the year lectures are given in the evening to working men. These courses are systematic, and are so arranged as to illustrate, within two years, the principal subjects taught at the institution.—(See GEOLOGICAL MUSEUM.) 

Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879

Sir,-Such of your readers as may have perused the report of the proceedings at the annual dinner of the Royal School of Mines in The Times of to-day will probably have arrived at the conclusion that the Institution, which began so humbly in Jermyn-Street 40 years ago, and is now important enough to ask a favour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was, from the beginning, intended for a school of mines alone, and that, as such, it has grown to its present dimensions and justifies its present claims. If I am right in this supposition, the report must be erroneous, because no one knows better than my friend Sir Lyon Playfair the remoteness from fact of any such supposition. No one had more to do with the original plan of the school, and no one deserves more credit than he for the first attempt to found a broad and liberally organized technical college in this country by the establishment of the Government School of Mines and of Science applied to the Arts; in Jermyn-street, in 1851, and its subsequent reorganization, two years later, as the Metropolitan School of Science applied to Mining and the Arts. From that time onwards the name of the institution has undergone several changes, but, in substance, it has never been narrowed to a simple school of mines. As a chemical school it has possessed at least an equal practical importance; as a school of geology and of biology it need not be ashamed to speak with its enemies in the gate. At the present moment the title of Associate of the Royal School of Mines is given to those who pass out in two of the eight divisions into which the instruction of the Royal College of Science at South Kensington is divided, and I am afraid that without the other six there would not have been the least necessity for the council to press for larger accommodation. My interest in the success of all divisions of the college is equally great; nothing can be more satisfactory to me than to observe the value attached by the public to the instruction given in mining and metallurgy; but I feel bound to protest when the other three-fourths of the work of my colleagues appear to be published ignored.

T.H. Huxley, letter to the Times Jan 13 1892