At first engaged in a Rochdale bank, he became in 1824 a medical student at the
University of Edinburgh. He settled in
Manchester about 1827 and was elected to membership of the
Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 23 January 1829. He was instrumental in setting up the
Manchester Statistical Society. He worked for the
Ardwick and Ancoats Dispensary. While still known simply as Dr James Kay, he wrote
The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Class Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester (1832), which
Friedrich Engels cited in
The Condition of the Working Class in England. The experience he gained of the conditions of the poor in Lancashire factory districts, along with his interest in economic science, led to an appointment in 1835 as poor law commissioner in
Norfolk and
Suffolk and later in the London districts. In 1839, he became first secretary of a committee formed by the
Privy Council to administer the Government grant for public education in Britain. In 1840, he founded with
E. Carleton Tufnell the Battersea Normal College for the training of teachers of pauper children. This became
St John's College, Battersea, which later merged to form the
College of St Mark and St John and moved to Plymouth. In 2012, it gained full university status as the
University of St Mark & St John. The original college was the first training college for schoolteachers; today's system of national school education, with public inspection, trained teachers and the support of state as well as local funds, is largely due to its founders' initiative. ==Later life==