 This was financed by subscription from the members although the Leicester engineer and councillor Josiah Gimson was the main benefactor.It was Gimson who chose the young and innovative architect, W Larner Sugden, and who engaged the sculptor Ambrose Louis Vago for the five busts on the front of the building which depict Robert Owen, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Socrates and, most controversially, Jesus.After Gimson's death in 1883, one of his sons, Sidney Gimson, became the mainstay of the society until shortly before his death in 1938.