Walter Carroll; Elsa Mary Carroll; Ida Gertrude Carroll

Walter Carroll, the sixth child and only son of Richard (b. 1829) an upholsterer and Fanny W. (b.1832), was born in 1869. Working hard to escape his humble beginnings he was the first person to gain the DMus by examination at the Victoria University of Manchester, taking other degrees at Durham University. He held several posts at the University of Manchester and at the Royal Manchester College of Music, delivering the first lecture on the opening of the latter institution in 1893. He became the first Professor in the Art and Practice of Teaching at the RMCM, resigning in 1918 to become Manchester's first Music Adviser (part time from 1918, full time from 1920, retiring in 1934).

Carroll appointed six full-time peripatetic specialists over the period 1919 to 1928 to give music appreciation classes in the elementary schools, and also ran extremely popular out-of-hours Training Courses in Music for the 'all-subjects' teachers in the elementary schools (1918-1934). Virtually every practising teacher attended at least one year of the three year course. In 1925 he also produced a best-selling Handbook of Music that ran to 10,000 copies in three editions that were widely distributed at home and abroad.

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