Manson, David (1726–92), educator, was born in the parish of Cairncastle, Co. Antrim, son of John Manson and Agnes Manson (née Jameson); he had at least one older brother and a sister. After a bout of rheumatic fever, he was a delicate child, taught at home by his mother, and later by the Rev. Robert White, who noted that Manson, a servant boy in Larne, showed much quickness and promise. Another tradition states that Manson was a tutor in the Shaw family of Ballygally castle before going to Larne to White's school. He moved to Ballycastle, where he had a school, and met his future wife, a Miss Linn, but spent a short time teaching navigation in England before marrying and settling in Belfast (1752). His first enterprise was a brewery, but in 1755 he opened an evening school in Clugston's Entry. He took at the outset only children who had not been to school before, because he wanted to try out his revolutionary educational ideas on children who had not been subject to the then-ubiquitous discipline of the rod. His first pupil was Ellen, daughter of Henry Joy (qv), and he was later to teach Mary Ann McCracken (qv) and perhaps Elizabeth Hamilton (qv). At the end of eighteen months he had twenty pupils, and the school increased in popularity and moved several times to bigger premises; his last location was in Donegall St. in the town centre, where he had several assistants. Girls and boys were taught together in an environment in which learning and play were inseparable. He recognised the paramount importance of motivating children to want to learn, and also utilised peer pressure in establishing elaborate classroom routines, which rewarded effort by allocating status; children who voluntarily learned most lines of their lessons were called kings and queens. If they kept this dignity for a week, they were rewarded with a medal, and could call a parliament of the school on Saturday. Those who achieved less were still rewarded with titles, and tickets marking them out as FRS; less effort or ability characterised the ‘tenants’, and those who made no attempt were called ‘sluggards’ for the week. Reading aloud was a privilege, forfeited if mistakes were made; children were encouraged to help and even prompt each other, and could even choose to protect their friends from punishment. Manson did not use the rod in his school; loss of privileges and ridicule were the main punishments, but in extreme cases, it is said that he obliged the miscreant to box bare-knuckled with a wooden figure, ‘the Conqueror’, so that pain and disgrace would be self-inflicted.
To help children learn to read, Manson had special posters made of letters and monosyllables in large type; he also published a spelling book and a primer and a dictionary with pronunciations. These little books remained popular in Ulster for over a hundred years; they were still being printed by the hundredweight in 1862. He encouraged other schoolmasters to come to his school to learn gratis the principles on which it was run. He had imaginative techniques for encouraging children to learn; they used the school's own journal, the Lilliputian Magazine, for reading, and he had cards made on which letters, letter combinations, and numbers were printed, and devised and adapted games in which these could be used. The Belfast Newsletter mentions ‘literary cumfits’ associated with his name, which were possibly a form of conversation lozenges to teach reading. Manson recognised the importance of novelty and of exercise in education; he had a playground near the school and designed what he called a ‘flying chariot’, apparently a crank-driven form of velocipede. It was kept at his house, ‘Lilliput’, outside the town, where the children were allowed to ride on the machine. Other inventions included a machine to lift people higher than rooftop level, to enjoy the views, and a spinning contrivance to enable twenty girls to concentrate on thread quality while one man turned all the spindles simultaneously. He donated this machine for use in the Poor House, and in 1786 was formally thanked for his philanthropy. He was concerned to improve the lives of linen workers in the community also, and produced a treatise, now lost, on the possibility of combining handloom weaving and the more healthful pursuit of farming. He spent much of what he earned in providing medals and toys as incentives, and gave much to charity.
He was granted the freedom of the borough of Belfast 27 November 1779 and, when he died on 2 March 1792, was accorded the signal honour of a torchlit night-time funeral to the parish churchyard, where hundreds mourned him. Manson and his wife had no children, and there was no one to succeed him or continue to use his methods: his ideas, so novel and imaginative, were too far ahead of the time.