Astronomical Labourers: Maskelyne's Assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1765-1811

Astronomical Labourers: Maskelyne's Assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1765-1811Author(s): Mary CroarkenSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 285-298Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3557719 .

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 57 (3), 285-298 (2003) doi 10.1098/rsnr.2003.0215

ASTRONOMICAL LABOURERS: MASKELYNE'S ASSISTANTS AT THE ROYAL OBSERVATORY, GREENWICH, 1765-1811

by

MARY CROARKEN

Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

SUMMARY

Nevil Maskelyne FRS held the post of British Astronomer Royal from 1765 to 1811. As Astronomer Royal, Maskelyne's main task was to ensure that the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars were regularly observed and that those observations were published in an accessible form. To do this, and simultaneously to maintain his role within London's scientific society, Maskelyne hired an assistant to undertake the routine work of the Observatory. This paper considers Maskelyne's assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, identifies who the assistants were, and describes their working conditions.

INTRODUCTION

Nothing can exceed the tediousness and ennui of the life the assistant leads in this place, excluded from all society, except, perhaps, that of a poor mouse which may occasionally sally forth from a hole in the wall, to seek after crumbs of bread dropt by his lonely companion at his last meal. This, of course, must tend very much to impede his acquiring astronomical information, and damp his ardour for those researches which conversation with scientific men never fails to inspire. Here forlorn, he spends days, weeks, and months, in the same long wearisome computations, without a friend to shorten the tedious hours, or a soul with whom he can converse. He is also frequently up three or four times in the night (an hour or two each time), and always one week in the month when the moon souths in the night time, with the owls perched on the fir-trees in the park below, screaming by way of answer to him when he opens the sliding shutters, in the roof of the building, to make his observations.

Thomas Evans, assistant at Royal Greenwich Observatory 1796-981

The description above paints a very gloomy picture of life as an assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (figure 1), at the end of the eighteenth century. The assistant's job was to make astronomical observations, reduce the collected data and perform astronomical computations under the supervision of Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal 1765-1811 (figure 2). Employing an assistant gave Maskelyne time away from the routine work of the Observatory to be an active member of The Royal Society and the scientific establishment of the day.

Maskelyne's assistant lived and worked at the Royal Observatory, situated on a hill in Greenwich Royal Park overlooking the Thames. London was more than 4 miles away.

285 ? 2003 The Royal Society



286 Mary Croarken

Figure 1. The Royal Greenwich Observatory. Photograph copyright C National Maritime Museum, negative number D5611.

From comments such as those above we are left in no doubt that the life of an assistant at the Royal Observatory was lonely and tedious. John Pond, Maskelyne's successor as Astronomer Royal from 1811 to 1835, confirmed the view that the assistant's role was that of an astronomical labourer. Speaking about the type of person he wanted to employ as an assistant, Pond wrote:

I want indefatigable hard working & above all obedient drudges ... men who will be contented to pass their day in using their hands & eye in the mechanical act of observing & the remainder of it in the dull process of calculation.2

During the regime of George Biddell Airy, Astronomer Royal 1835-81, computing assistants were typically young men taken on as teenagers. Although the best and brightest were kept on and given permanent positions, most were dismissed and replaced by the age of 23, before they had to be paid higher wages.

The notion that the Greenwich assistants were drudges is one that is firmly established by commentators,3 but who were these people? This paper examines the Royal Observatory assistants during the period 1765-1811 while Nevil Maskelyne was Astronomer Royal. Did they all feel as depressed by their situation as Evans obviously did, or were some happy with their lot? Did they use working at the Observatory as a



Maskelyne ' assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1765-1811 287

Figure 2. Nevil Maskelyne, from an engraving by E. Scriven from a painting by Vanderburgh. Photograph copyright C National Maritime Museum, negative number ROG 11498.

chance to gain experience before moving on to better things, or were some of them content to stay for many years?

LIFE AS AN ASSISTANT AT THE ROYAL OBSERVATORY, GREENWICH

Nevil Maskelyne (1732-1811), elected FRS in 1758, was appointed fifth Astronomer Royal in 1765 and held the post until his death in 1811. Maskelyne achieved a great deal while Astronomer Royal, including regular publication of the Greenwich observations, the creation of the annually published Nautical almanac for navigation at sea, and exper- imentation on the gravitational pull of mountains. He is remembered as an honest and popular member of the scientific community of eighteenth-century London.4 The principal work at Greenwich was to observe the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars and to publish these data. This was a considerable undertaking because not only did the observations need to made, frequently at night, but they also needed to be reduced, i.e. corrected for refraction, parallax, instrument error, and so on, and a fair copy had to be made. To perform most of these duties Maskelyne hired an assistant.



288 Mary Croarken

Figure 3. The Observatory building (now known as the meridian building), where the Greenwich assistants lived and worked. The assistant's computing and sitting room was on the ground floor and his bedroom was above. On each side were telescopes, for which the roof doors can be clearly seen. Photograph copyright ? National Maritime Museum, negative number D5599 (cropped).

Maskelyne expected his assistant to be available for regular observing duty between 7 o'clock in the morning and 10 o'clock in the evening every day of the week.5 The assistant was not required to work for 15 hours a day but to be available on stand-by for observing duties. In addition the assistant was expected to get up in the night to observe specific phenomena, but Maskelyne did try to organize the observing schedule so that night observation was kept to a minimum. The stars he chose for regular observations were bright and could often be seen during the day, at dawn or dusk. Sometimes night observing was unavoidable and the schedule at these times was undeniably arduous. For example, for a two-week period in November 1794, Maskelyne's assistant was averaging only two hours sleep a night, but this was exceptional. When not observing, the assistant performed computing work to 7 or 8 o'clock in the evening. Maskelyne did not expect his assistant to compute on a Sunday but he did expect him to observe. The assistant lived at the Observatory as part of the Astronomer Royal's household but his rooms were in the Observatory building (figure 3) and not in the Astronomer Royal's residence. He (for they were all male) had a sitting and computing room on the ground floor and above that a bedroom accessed by a spiral staircase. The bedroom was fitted with an alarm mechanism that woke the assistant during the night if necessary. The room to the east of the assistant's quarters held the transit telescope and the room to the west the



Maskelyne ' assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1765-1811 289

zenith quadrant. The assistant's meals were often taken alone; the footman had instruc- tions to clean his shoes and the assistant had access to Maskelyne's scientific library.6

The observing schedule for the Observatory was heavy and the regulations under which the Observatory operated prevented both the Astronomer Royal and his assistant from being absent at the same time. Maskelyne, like many of his scientific contempo- raries an ordained minister of the Church of England, annually visited his parish living in Wiltshire and regularly attended Royal Society and other meetings in London, where he was very much part of the scientific establishment. In practice this meant that his assistant was expected to carry most of the observing load, although in fairness the observing books show that Maskelyne also regularly observed when in residence. During any day on which the weather was favourable, the Sun, the Moon, the principal fixed stars and the planets were to be observed provided they were in suitable celestial positions. In addition, occultations of fixed stars by the Moon and eclipses of Jupiter's satel- lites were also to be observed.

Because of the intensity of the observing schedule it was very difficult for assistants to leave Greenwich for any length of time. One assistant, David Kinnebrook (assistant 1794-96), occasionally spent a day in London, often for the purpose of collecting his wages from the Tower of London, but other requests to make visits further a field were turned down by Maskelyne.7 Sundays were often his only opportunity to visit friends or to dine away from the Observatory. Other assistants also found that their ability to maintain a social life was hampered by their observing schedule. Thomas Firminger, assistant 1799-1807, made arrangements to visit his friends only on the proviso that the weather was poor and unsuitable for observing.8 It is also clear that both Kinnebrook and Firminger tried to arrange for their friends to visit the Observatory at times when they knew Maskelyne and his family would be away-a sign that Maskelyne did not encour- age his assistants to waste time socializing.9

Maskelyne also discouraged his assistant from taking an active part in the wider mathematical community. For example, Maskelyne explicitly disapproved of his assistant's publishing answers to the questions set in the Ladies Diary, an annual almanac that included mathematical problems to which readers sent in answers for publication in the following edition.'0 None of Maskelyne's assistants are recorded as having contributed to Ladies Diary while employed at Greenwich, although at least eight of them did so at other times." No doubt the reason behind this restriction was to concentrate his assistant's mind on his work rather than on more varied, and more interesting, mathematical puzzles, but it must also have added to the feeling of isolation that many of his assistants felt. David Kinnebrook's father was concerned that this isolation was contributing, along with night-time observations, to the decline of his son's health. Although Kinnebrook senior had been keen for Kinnebrook junior to better himself using the resources of Maskelyne's considerable library when he had first taken up residence at Greenwich, 18 months later he was advising his son to go to a public house, specifically the Greyhound, 'as often as you can in a week without neglect of business' and to get hold of 'books of voyages, travels would divert and improve, and even good novels' from a library. His father also encouraged him to try and widen his social circle by getting to know some 'decent well behaved person'.12



290 Mary Croarken

THE WORK OF AN ASSISTANT AT THE ROYAL GREENWICH OBSERVATORY

Lunar and stellar transit observations accounted for about 80% of the observations made at Greenwich during Maskelyne's time. The observations were taken by the ear and eye method of observing developed by James Bradley, the third Astronomer Royal. The eight-foot transit telescope used by Maskelyne was made by Bird and installed in 1750. Across the image plane of the telescope were five vertical wires. The observer had to watch while the celestial body approached each wire and at the same time note the time on the transit clock. While watching the transit, the observer had to listen for and count the one-second beats of the clock. As the celestial body passed the wire the observer had to judge the spatial distance of the star at the clock beat before the transit and the clock beat after the transit and then give an estimate of the time of the transit to the nearest one- tenth of a second. Each transit observation was taken as the mean of five separate observations on average about 40 seconds apart.'3 A good deal of skill was needed to take consistently accurate observations, and not all assistants acquired it. Not only did the assistants have to deal with the pressure of taking accurate observations sometimes very close together, but they suffered from interrupted sleep patterns and were expected to observe in very cold weather in the middle of winter. This regime took its toll on the health of a least one assistant.14 Other duties that had to be performed daily included taking barometer and temperature readings and conducting clock and watch trials.

The computing duties of the Greenwich assistant were equally arduous but in a different way. As outlined above, each transit observation consisted of five readings as the star crossed each of the five wires in the image plane of the telescope. The assistant was required then to calculate the mean time of the transit to one-tenth of a second. Observations were also corrected (or reduced) for instrumental error, aberration, preces- sion, refraction, parallax and nutation before being converted into celestial latitudes and longitudes. These calculations took considerable time and they took up the greatest part of an assistant's day.

Maskelyne had developed prescribed methods for performing each type of calculation that he required of his assistants and left very little scope for his assistants to explore different ways of doing things. To compare observations made several years apart it was important that the data had been treated in a consistent manner. The assistant's sitting room contained all the necessary books of tables needed for the work including sets of seven-figure logarithm tables. Some of the tables were printed but others were in manu- script, having been compiled either by Maskelyne or at his request.

Aside from reducing the observations, Maskelyne asked his assistants to perform other computations with the reduced data. These included calculating mean right ascensions of the Sun, Moon, stars and planets from observation data, calculating heliocentric and geo- centric longitudes and latitudes, calculating aberrations in right ascension and north polar distances, performing computations to determine instrumental errors and clock rates, and comparing actual data with predicted values published in the Nautical almanac. Apart from the averaging of transit wire observations, which involved only simple addition and division, most of the other calculations the assistants were asked to perform were more complex. Many computations required the assistant to use astronomical or mathematical



Maskelyne s assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1765-1811 291

Table 1. List of Nevil Maskelyne's assistants at Greenwich

name start date end date time stayed

Joseph Dymond 25 March 1765 14 November 1766 1 year 8 months William Bayly 14 November 1766 24 March 1771 4 years 4 months Reuben Burrow 23 March 1771 25 September 1773 2 years 6 months John Hellins 29 September 1773 25 March 1776 2 years 6 months George Gilpin 25 March 1776 30 July 1781 5 years 4 months Joseph Lindley 30 July 1781 29 September 1786 5 years 2 months Thomas Horrox 29 September 1786 9 December 1786 6 weeks Robert Gooch 9 December 1786 3 January 1787 25 days George Plowman 5 January 1787 26 January 1787 21 days William Malachy Hitchins 10 February 1787 23 June 1787 4 months 13 days John Brinkley 23 June 1787 9 November 1787 4 months 2 weeks John Bumstead 16 October 1787 3 December 1787 6 weeks 6 days Joshua Moore 11 December 1787 29 January 1788 7 weeks John Brinkley returned 27 January 1788 28 March 1788 2 months William Garrard 25 March 1788 1 July 1789 1 year, 3 months, 1 week William Smith 1 July 1789 16 July 1789 2 weeks John Crossley 16 July 1789 1 April 1792 2 years 8.5 months Benedict Chapman 1 April 1792 1 July 1793 1 year 3 months Joseph Garnett 1 July 1793 23 May 1794 10 months 22 days David Kinnebrook 23 May 1794 12 February 1796 1 year 8 months 22 days Thomas Evans 12 February 1796 1 July 1798 2 years 4 months 17 days William Garrard returns 1 July 1798 21 July 1798 20 days John Crosley returns 21 July 1798 22 September 1798 2 months 1 day Robert Wallace 22 September 1798 17 October 1798 25 days Francis Nisbit 19 October 1798 17 December 1799 1 year 2 months Thomas Firminger 17 December 1799 ca. 1 July 1807 7 years 6 months Thomas Taylor 1 July 1807 1835 28 years

tables and involved at least one, but sometimes as many as 10 or more, table look-ups. Up to 16 arithmetical operations in up to eight decimal or sexagesimal figures were performed for each calculation, but the arithmetical operations were principally restricted to addition and subtraction. If required, non-trivial multiplication or division was performed with logarithm tables.

Many of these computations are preserved in the Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives held at Cambridge University Library"5 and the level of detail that the assistant had to work to can be clearly seen. The work was repetitive in that each type of calculation had to be performed for each of many observations, but it was the number of figures being worked and the number of table look-ups that were the major source of potential error. Concentration and attention to detail were critical skills for the Greenwich assistants.

MASKELYNE'S ASSISTANTS

During his 46 years as Astronomer Royal Maskelyne had 24 assistants; they are listed in table 1. Some stayed for less than a month, others for five years or more.

Candidates for the job were recommended to Maskelyne by friends and colleagues, whose advice he actively sought. In his memorandum book for 1787 Maskelyne listed 47



292 Mary Croarken

people of whom he could enquire about suitable assistants.16 The list includes Oxford and Cambridge professors, instrument makers such as Troughton and Dollond, several Nautical almanac computers and four former assistants. Alongside this list Maskelyne also outlined the sort of person he was looking for. He wrote:

Qualities to be required for an Assistant May 19. 1787 To understand Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra, Plane & spherical trigonometry, & Logarithms; to have a good eye & good ears, be well grown, & have a good constitution to enable him to apply several hours in the day to calculation, & to get up to the observations that happen at late hours in the night. To write a good hand, and be a ready & steady arithmetical computer. If he know something of Astronomy & had a mechanical turn so much the better. To be sober & diligent, & able to bear confinement. Age from 20 to 40.17

From this description it is obvious that Maskelyne valued mathematical skill over observing experience, which could be taught. The lack of freedom that the assistants experienced is confirmed by Maskelyne's requirement that his assistant be 'able to bear confinement'. He also seems to have found that teenagers did not have sufficient maturity.

During the first 20 years of his tenure as Astronomer Royal, Maskelyne had little dif- ficulty in getting assistants. His first assistant, appointed a month after Maskelyne's own appointment, was Joseph Dymond (1746-96). Dymond came to Greenwich in 1765 as a youth of 18 and stayed just under a year and a half. After leaving Greenwich he was selected by The Royal Society (presumably at Maskelyne's suggestion) to accompany William Wales to Hudson Bay to observe the 1769 transit of Venus.'8 Maskelyne's second assistant, William Bayly (1737-1810), was also sent by the Royal Society to observe the 1769 transit of Venus, travelling to the North Cape of Norway with Jeremiah Dixon.19 Bayly later travelled on two of Captain Cook's voyages of discovery. Another assistant, George Gilpin (d. 1810), also travelled with Cook, and John Crosley (1762-1817) was sent as an astronomer to help survey the west coast of America.

John Hellins was one of only two of Maskelyne's assistants to be elected FRS. Hellins (ca. 1749-1827) was born in Ashreigney, Devon,20 and used his time at Greenwich to raise both his level of education and his social status. During the early 1770s Hellins had run a village school in Devon before being recommended to Maskelyne. Hellins began work at the Royal Observatory in September 1773 and found time to study Latin and Greek and to get married while he was Maskelyne's assistant. His studies qualified him for ordination and he spent the rest of his life as a vicar and mathematician. In Maskelyne's opinion Hellins was 'the least serviceable Assistant I ever had, especially in the calculation of observations, in which he made so little progress that I thought it necessary to part with him'.21 Given how much Hellins improved his education during his time at Greenwich, it was no wonder that Maskelyne found fault with his diligence in completing repetitive computations. Yet Hellins went on to have a successful mathematical career and was elected FRS in 1796, with Maskelyne as one of his sponsors. Although Maskelyne might not have found him a useful assistant he did respect Hellins for his mathematical and scientific work.

The other assistant elected FRS was John Brinkley. Brinkley (1763-1835) was an undergraduate at Cambridge and worked as a Greenwich assistant through the summer



Maskelyne's assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1765-1811 293

vacation of 1787 and for two months during the following winter to gain experience of working in an observatory and to earn a little money before returning to Cambridge to complete his studies. In 1792 Brinkley was appointed Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College, Dublin, where he also directed the Dunsink Observatory. He was soon afterwards named as first Astronomer Royal for Ireland and in 1826 was appointed Bishop of Cloyne.22 He was elected FRS in 1803.

From the mid-1780s to the late 1790s Maskelyne experienced difficulties in recruiting and retaining assistants. Many stayed for only a few weeks or months. Some, such as Crosley, went on to better appointments after they had proved their usefulness. One who stayed longer than most assistants during this period was David Kinnebrook. Kinnebrook (1772-1802) was Maskelyne's assistant from May 1794 to February 1796. He was born in Norwich, where his father taught in one of the charity schools.23 He is best known for having been dismissed from the Observatory because his observations consistently dif- fered from Maskelyne's by 800 milliseconds. This circumstance later led to the under- standing that every observer has different but predictable visual and aural reaction times that could be corrected for in the reduction of observations.24 Apart from Kinnebrook's (perceived) poor observing technique, Maskelyne valued the latter's work, reporting that 'he was a diligent and useful assistant to me in other respects'.25

Kinnebrook was followed by Thomas Simpson Evans (1777-1818). Evans was the son of the Reverend Lewis Evans (FRS 1823), mathematical master at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich,26 and was at the age of 18 years already an assistant schoolmaster.27 The quotation at the beginning of this paper describing the life of an Observatory assistant was written by Evans, and one has to deduce that he was unhappy with Maskelyne's regime. His way out was to marry Deborah Mascall, Maskelyne's daughter's governess, in June 1798; the couple left the Observatory at the end of that month.

In December 1799 Maskelyne appointed Thomas Firminger as his assistant. Firminger seems to have been suited to life at the Observatory and to have been happy there, because he stayed for seven and a half years-longer than any of the previous assistants. Letters from Firminger to a friend in Whitechapel, London, show that Firminger was able to fit in a social life around his observing duties but that the latter always came first.28 Firminger was even able to joke about Evans's description of life in the Observatory, for in 1806 he wrote to a friend who had come to visit him at the Observatory:

Hope you got home comfortably last night and if so I am convinced you had a most comfortable journey altogether as you certainly had a most comfortable time in [the] observatory not having anyone intrude on your solitude, not even Evan's poor friendly mouse who frequently makes his appearance in those mousing hours of quiet .29

When Firminger left Greenwich he became a successful schoolmaster.30

REMUNERATION

When Maskelyne was appointed as Astronomer Royal in 1765 his official salary remained fixed at the same level as Flamsteed's had been a century earlier, namely ?100 a year plus ?26 a year to pay his assistant. In addition, as Astronomer Royal, Maskelyne



294 Mary Croarken

was entitled to an annual pension.31 Maskelyne's income as Astronomer Royal after tax and after paying his assistant was ?307 a year, out of which he had to supply his assistant's board and lodging.32 While Maskelyne was able to supplement this from inherited wealth and income derived from the parishes whose livings he had been granted, his assistant could not. Maskelyne recognized that the salary of ?26 was too low to attract and retain competent staff and, as a short-term measure, he supplemented his assistant's salary by an extra ?34 annually, bringing it up to ?60 a year. In early 1765 Maskelyne applied unsuccessfully to the Treasury for an increase in the assistant's salary but he did get the job description changed from 'servant or labourer' to 'assistant astronomer'. As time went on Maskelyne found that ?60 was insufficient to keep good staff. In 1771 he wrote a memorial to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury in which he outlined his case and pointed out that he was about to lose his current assistant because of lack of sufficient financial reward.33 The Treasury looked favourably on the case and raised the assistant's salary to ?86, which it remained until 1810 when it was raised to ?100 a year.

But the situation was not simple. Only the original ?26 a year was paid through the Board of Ordnance and was collected by the assistants on a quarterly basis from the Tower of London.34 The rest of the money was given directly to Maskelyne, who paid his assistants on a quarterly basis and retained some of the money to cover the cost of the assistant's board and lodging. For example, in 1794 Maskelyne's assistant David Kinnebrook was receiving ?26 a year from the Ordnance Board and ?26 directly from Maskelyne,35 while Maskelyne retained ?24 to cover Kinnebrook's living expenses. Maskelyne's previous assistant, Joseph Garnett, was treated in exactly the same way, as was Thomas Firminger in 1801.36

As mentioned above, Maskelyne had difficulties in retaining staff. Only 5 of Maskel- yne's 24 assistants stayed for more than four years, and some for only a few weeks. Howse, Maskelyne's biographer, comments that the 'high turnover should not be attrib- uted to difficult master-apprentice relations-far from it-but rather to the very low rate of pay'.37 Yet I question that pay was the major factor. While the original basic salary of ?26 was undoubtedly too low, ?52 a year along with rent-free accommodation and free board was not a poor salary for the time. It was almost double what a skilled manual labourer of the time could expect to bring home and was more than most of Maskelyne's assistants could have earned in their native towns and villages, given that many of them had little formal education and were self-taught in mathematics. As government employ- ees the assistant's salary could be compared with those of junior clerks working in, for example, the offices of the Secretary of State for Home Affairs, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs or the Office of Ordnance, who received between ?40 and ?175 a year according to length of service38 but, it has to be admitted, for much less arduous work. Clerks also had some perks, such as the right to frank newspapers, which earned them additional income for very little extra effort. In contrast, socially unconnected country curates, who often took on the entire ecclesiastical duties of a parish, frequently earned only ?30-40 a year from an absentee vicar.

However, most of Maskelyne's assistants were neither clerks nor clergymen but provincial schoolmasters. Many had teaching experience before coming to Greenwich and others taught afterwards. The pay of eighteenth-century schoolmasters varied



Maskelyne 's assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1765-1811 295

considerably depending on the type of school and the number of pupils. During the period 1771-92 teachers at urban charity schools were paid between ?25 and ?35 a year.39 Many provincial teachers earned much less. For example, in the mid-1790s the master of Aylsham School in Norfolk received only ?10 a year,40 but this is unlikely to have been his only source of income. Both schoolmasters and clergymen were often able to take on other jobs in addition to their main employment, and ordained schoolmasters were common. In contrast, schoolmasters at larger schools that catered for children from the upper middle classes earned slightly higher wages. At the Great Hospital School in Norwich, masters had a salary of ?30 and the headmaster ?50,41 but in the 1790s incum- bents were also clergymen and would probably have had additional income.

Larger, more specialist mathematical schools and military academies paid larger sums and would have been more attractive to the mathematically inclined assistants, but jobs here seldom became available. The position of Mathematical Master at Christ's Hospital School carried with it a salary of ?100 in 1777, which rose to ?145 in 1795.42 In contrast, junior masters at the school earned between ?20 and ?85 a year, depending on the subject they taught. At the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, pay was even better. In 1793 Charles Hutton, Professor of Mathematics, received ?300, while lower masters were eligible for between ?100 and ?150 a year.

Therefore, after the increase in 1771, the pay of the Greenwich assistants was just about adequate given the social status of the assistants. It was significantly more than could be expected for a provincial school teacher or as an usher in a public school (the previous employment of several of Maskelyne's assistants), who could have earned about ?15 a year on top of his board and lodging,43 but less than a well-qualified master at one of the larger London mathematical schools. Although Maskelyne might not have paid his assistants in full in lieu of board and lodging, some at any rate were covering their expenses sufficiently to be able to send significant sums of money back home to their families.44 Indeed, there was little opportunity in the seclusion of the Observatory to spend much of their earnings.

More pressing reasons for the high turnover of staff are likely to have been the dull- ness of the work, the necessity of being virtually confined to the Observatory and the nat- ural inclination of young men wanting to better themselves and, perhaps, to marry. The accommodation offered to assistants at the Observatory was not suitable for raising a family. Over one-third of Maskelyne's assistants left after less than two months, so we can assume that they were not suited to the work and in most of these cases we do not know what they went on to do. Of the other two-thirds, most obtained significantly better employment using skills gained at Greenwich, often with Maskelyne's patronage. Although Maskelyne might not have wanted to part with some assistants, he never held them back; indeed, it can be said that Maskelyne provided the necessary training for Dymond, Bayly and Crosley, all of whom went on to become Board of Longitude astronomers and to travel the world, using their astronomical knowledge to determine lat- itude and longitude accurately, which allowed the newly discovered, or newly colonized, parts of the world to begin to be mapped.

Other assistants also went on to work for the Board of Longitude. Gilpin, who had taken on the role of Clerk at The Royal Society (a post that not only involved



296 Mary Croarken

responsibility for administrative matters but was also concerned with assisting with the experimental work of the Society), also took up the paid post of Secretary to the Board of Longitude. Moore became one of the main computers of the Nautical almanac after leaving Greenwich, and although Maskelyne occasionally employed other ex-assistants on the Nautical almanac, Moore was the only one for whom it was almost a full-time job. Two assistants (Garrard and Evans) went on to take responsibility for running privately funded observatories.

The mathematical training that Maskelyne provided also helped his assistants into better employment. Only Hellins and Brinkley went on to have significant mathematical careers, but the computing experience gained at Greenwich did leave most of the assistants better qualified to take up other posts. Six of Maskelyne's assistants left to take up posts as schoolmasters-usually better posts than they would have been qualified for previously. For example, Garrard went to the Royal Naval Asylum, Bayly became headmaster at the Royal Academy in Portsmouth some years after leaving Greenwich, and Evans eventually became mathematical master at Christ's Hospital. Hellins and Firminger both set up their own schools and flourished. Burrow initially had a school in the Greenwich area but also used the skills learnt at Greenwich to obtain a post as a surveyor in India.

Although most assistants benefited from their time at Greenwich, for some, especially Evans and Kinnebrook, the experience was a painful one. Evans's feelings have been described at the beginning of the paper but Kinnebrook's experience of being dismissed, coupled with poor health and an introspective disposition, meant that his post-Greenwich career never rose above an usher in a public school. But most ex-assistants used the pres- tige that being associated with the Royal Observatory brought them. Thomas Firminger's family, for example, were so proud of the fact that he had worked as Maskelyne's assistant that they had it carved on his tombstone even though he died 54 years after leaving Greenwich.

CONCLUSION

The job of assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory during the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century was lonely and repetitive. The hours were long in comparison with those of schoolmasters or clerks but were in keeping with the expected hours of work of working-class groups45 and not everyone found the life as intolerable as Thomas Evans portrayed it. Most of Maskelyne's assistants were self-taught in mathematics and for about one-third of the assistants the Ladies Diary was an important part of their mathematical education. Two of the assistants, David Kinnebrook and Thomas Evans, benefited from a certain degree of mathematical training from their schoolmaster fathers, but neither made successful Greenwich assistants. The only assistant to have had a university education was John Brinkley, the illegitimate son of a Suffolk butcher's daughter, who found sufficient patronage with the local gentry to gain a place at Caius College, Cambridge. For some assistants their time at Greenwich led to a higher social position and better employment than they could have otherwise expected, but for others it was a brief hiatus in a career as a schoolmaster.

Maskelyne used word of mouth to recruit his assistants. He asked his friends and acquaintances for suggestions and some turned out better than others. He frequently



Maskelyne's assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1765-1811 297

helped his assistants on to further employment, for example aboard Board of Longitude exploration expeditions, or employed them himself for Nautical almanac work. There is no doubt that Maskelyne worked his assistants hard. It was a lonely life with a social status somewhere between servant and colleague, part of the household but most defi- nitely not part of the family. The work they did enabled Maskelyne to fulfil his duty to the government in observing the Sun, Moon, planets and stars and publishing those observations on a regular basis. The Greenwich assistant allowed Maskelyne the freedom to become a prominent Fellow of The Royal Society and to perform a great deal of extra work for the Board of Longitude only indirectly associated with positional astronomy. Without his 'labourers' to undertake the routine observing and computing work this freedom would have been impossible.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this paper was performed while I held the Sackler Fellowship at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich during 2000-02. I am grateful for the assistance of the staff at the National Maritime Museum, Adam Perkins, the Royal Greenwich Observatory Archivist, and other Cambridge University Library staff as well as archivists, librarians and local historians from many other archives and libraries. My thanks also go to Gloria Clifton, Jonathon Betts and three anonymous reviewers who commented on earlier drafts of this paper. Quotations from papers held at Cambridge University Library are taken with permission from the Syndics of Cambridge University and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council.

NOTES

(CUL stands for Cambridge University Library Manuscripts Department.) 1 Quoted in John Evans, Juvenile tourist (James Cundee, London, 1810), pp. 333-335. 2 John Pond to William Hyde Wollaston, quoted in Eric G. Forbes, Greenwich Observatory, vol. 1

(Origins and early history (1675-1835)) (Taylor & Francis, London, 1975), p. 170. 3 See, for example, Forbes, op. cit. (note 2), and Derek Howse, Nevil Maskelyne: the seaman's

astronomer (Cambridge University Press, 1989). 4 Maskelyne's life and work is described in Howse, op. cit. (note 2). 5 David Kinnebrook Jr to David Kinnebrook Sr, 17 September 1794. CUL RGO 207/1 folio 20. 6 David Kinnebrook Jr to David Kinnebrook Sr, 20 August 1794. CUL RGO 207/1 folio 19. 7 David Kinnebrook Jr to David Kinnebrook Sr, 23 August 1795. CUL RGO 207/1 folio 46. 8 Thomas Firminger to Mr Epps, 2 November 1805. CUL MSS Add 8856/317. 9 Thomas Firminger to Mr Epps, 23 May 1806. CUL MSS Add 8856/318. David Kinnebrook Jr to

David Kinnebrook Sr, 21 July 1794. CUL RGO 207/1 folio 17. 10 David Kinnebrook Jr to David Kinnebrook Sr, 23 February 1795. CUL RGO 207/1 folio 58. 11 Thomas Leyboum, The mathematical questions proposed in the Ladies Diary 1704-1816

(London, 1817), four volumes. 12 David Kinnebrook Sr to David Kinnebrook Jr, 9 January 1796. CUL RGO 207/1 folio 53. 13 John D. Mollon and Adam J. Perkins, 'Errors of judgement at Greenwich in 1796', Nature 380,

101-102 (1996). 14 David Kinnebrook Jr to David Kinnebrook Sr, 24 December 1795. CUL RGO 207/1 folio 51. 15 See, for example, CUL RGO 4/4; RGO 4/6; RGO 4/53; RGO 4/65; RGO 4/92; RGO 4/190.



298 Mary Croarken

16 Nevil Maskelyne's Memorandum Book 2, 1782-1788. National Maritime Microfilm MRF/184. 17 Op. cit. (note 16). 18 Wayne Orchiston and Derek Howse, 'From transit of Venus to teaching navigation: the work of

William Wales', J. Navig. 53 (1), 156-166 (2000). 19 'Astronomical observations made at the North Cape for the Royal Society by Mr William Bayly',

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 59, 262-272 (1769). 20 Biographical details of Hellins are given in Dictionary of national biography and Jack D. Clamp,

'Potterspury's clerical mathematician', Northamptonshire Past and Present 7 (4), 275-285 (1992-93).

21 Nevil Maskelyne to Rev. Digby Marsh, 29 November 1790. Quoted in Anon. 'Some papers of Nevil Maskelyne', Observatory 34, 391-398 (1911), p. 398.

22 Dictionary of national biography, vol. 2, pp. 1255-1256 (1963-4). 23 Letters between father and son are held in the Royal Greenwich Observatory archives in CUL

RGO 207/1. 24 Friedrich Bessel, prompted by seeing Kinnebrook's observing record in the Greenwich Observa-

tions, studied the observation records of many observers and discovered that individual astronomers had visual and aural perception differences that were reflected in their observations. These differences in perception were usually constant and could be corrected for by using a formula known as the personal equation. See Mollon and Perkins, op. cit. (note 13); G.P. Brooks and R.C. Brooks, 'The improbable progenitor', J. R. Astron. Soc. Can. 73, 9-23 (1979); and Simon Schaffer, 'Astronomers mark time: disciple and the personal equation', Science in Context 2 (1), 115-145 (1988).

25 Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomical observations made at the Royal Observatory Greenwich for 1787-1798, vol. 2 (Royal Society, London, 1799), p. 339.

26 Dictionary of national biography, vol. 6, p. 939 (1963-4). 27 David Kinnebrook Jr to David Kinnebrook Sr, 16 February 1996. CUL RGO 207/1 folio 56. 28 CUL Mss Add 8856/317-320. 29 Thomas Firminger to Mr Epps, 15 December 1806. CUL Mss Add 8856/320. 30 CUL Mss Add 8856/4-5. British Library Add Mss 40,715, folio 221-222; 40,716, folio 1-2;

33,982 folio 87-89. 31 CUL RGO 6/21, f.71. 32 Howse, op. cit. (note 2), p. 61, and note 22 on p. 249. 33 The memorial is quoted in Henry P. Hollis, 'Greenwich assistants during 250 years', Observatory

25, 388-398 (1925), pp. 394-395. 34 Royal Kalendar 1791 (J. Almon, London), p. 160. 35 David Kinnebrook Jr to David Kinnebrook Sr, 21 July 1794. CUL RGO 207/1 folio 16. 36 Maskelyne's Account Book II, 1786-1799, p. 55, National Maritime Museum Library Microfilm

MRF/172/1; Maskelyne's Account Book III, 1799-1821, p. 73, National Maritime Museum Library Microfilm MRF/172/2.

37 Howse, op. cit. (note 2), p. 102. 38 Emmiline W. Cohen, The growth of the British Civil Service 1780-1939 (Frank Cass, London,

1965), p. 28. Ronald Roy Nelson, The Home Office, 1782-1801 (Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1969), p. 51. Royal Kalendar 1793 (J. Almon, London).

39 John Burnett, A history of the cost of living (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1969). p. 172. Victor E. Neuburg, Popular education in eighteenth century England (Woburn Press, London, 1971), p. 23.

40 Norwich Great Hospital Treasurer's Book, Norfolk County Records Office N/MC7/1 3 Septem- ber 1794.

41 Op. cit. (note 40). 42 Accounts of Christ's Hospital School, vol. 21-22. Guildhall Library Manuscripts Mss 12, 819. 43 Accounts of Gresham's School Holt, 1799-1802. Information supplied by M.J. Crossley-Evans. 44 Letter from David Kinnebrook Jr to David Kinnebrook Sr 13 February 1796. RGO 207/1 folio 57. 45 Elizabeth W. Gilboy, Wages in the eighteenth century (Russell & Russell, New York, 1934), p. 8.



Documents

Astronomical Labourers: Maskelyne's Assistants at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1765-1811