Pensions for ‘Cultivators of Science’

Summary

The occasional (and belated) concern of the British Government with science in the nineteenth century is a matter of potential interest to historians of science, yet many previous studies have tended to range over a variety of different aspects of the question. There have been too many vague allusions to financial support as ‘money for science’ in general. It is time that particular parts of the problem were unpacked. For example, the award of money (from the 1820s) to pay a few people of independent means for apparatus was quite distinct from the provision (from the 1830s) of an occasional pension. Even then, to speak of ‘pensions’ uncovers unfortunate ambiguities. For too long science in Britain was regarded as no more than a private hobby for the well-to-do. As late as 1856 an official government statement seemed to make this attitude official. The English attitude to pensions differed remarkably from the French, who established a precedent in the reward of savants, sometimes quoted enviously by British men of science. In 1837 Robert Peel virtually admitted that, in awarding pensions to ‘cultivators of science’, he was following the French practice. It may also be useful to emphasise the contrast between the English (often led by Cambridge professors) and the Scots, mostly from Edinburgh, mainly represented here by Whewell and Brewster, respectively. Babbage had a different role in this story from that usually told. A large part in supporting men of science of modest means could have been played by the British Association for the Advancement of Science but it consistently refused to do so, although it supported an elite among its own members.

Acknowledgements

I would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of my parents, from whom I gained my first interest in different national traditions, which have helped me, very many years later, towards a ‘three dimensional’ perspective in this paper. I wish to thank the Editor, Trevor Levere for his support as well as a number of other people, particularly my referees, who have offered advice towards the final construction of a long and improved article.

Notes

The term ‘scientist’ cannot, of course, be used before the 1830s but even then it was not generally accepted for several decades. As this article only covers the period up to the mid-nineteenth century and the term ‘cultivators of science’ was the one used in the 1850s by the British government (see note 42), it is used here. It was also the term used at meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. As late as 1851 Babbage complained that people had to borrow the foreign word savant to describe the occupation, The Exposition of 1851 (London, 1851), p. 189. Babbage himself sometimes used the circumlocution ‘men of science’, Ibid., e.g. 191, 244. For a fuller discussion of the problem of nomenclature see: Ruth Barton, ‘“Men of Science”: Language, Identity and Professionalisation in the mid-Victorian Scientific Community’, History of Science, 41 (2003), 73–119, especially 80–90.

²Michael Hunter, The Royal Society and its Fellows, 1660–1700 (Chalfont St. Giles, British Society for the History of Science, 1982), pp. 24–25.

³See, e.g. Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), chap. 7.

⁴ Record of the Royal Society, 4th edn (London: Royal Society, 1940), p. 251.

⁵Kathleen Ochs, ‘The Royal Society of London's History of Trades Programme’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 39 (1985), 129–158.

⁶Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach, Cavendish. The Experimental Life (Bucknell University Press, 1999).

⁷The 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary entry covering the term ‘grant’, used mainly as a verb, extends over three pages of small print. It gives 1815 as the very first use of ‘grant’, as a noun, to mean money.

⁸Letter of 17 May 1829 to William Whewell, quoted by Mary Louise Gleason, The Royal Society of London. Years of Reform, 1827–1847 (New York, 1991), 170. Herschel's subsequent contribution to this discussion in the 1830s was reduced by a long absence in South Africa for sustained astronomical observations. Nevertheless, once the system of pensions had been introduced, he was able to express his enthusiastic support for such support for ‘men of a very high order of attainment’. Charles Parker, Sir Robert Peel, 3 vols. (London, 1899), vol. 3, pp. 444–445.

⁹Royal Society, Herschel Correspondence, quoted by Gleason (note 8).

¹⁰Daubeny, An Introduction to the Atomic Theory (Oxford, 1831), p. 69.

¹¹Babbage has been characterised as a leading member of ‘the Cambridge network’, Susan Cannon, Science in Culture. The Early Victorian Period (New York, 1978), chap. 2. Babbage's loyalty to his alma mater continued in later years, when he was appointed to the Lucasian chair of mathematics, although he declined to give regular lectures.

¹²Charles Babbage, Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (London, 1830), pp. 4, 8.

¹³Strictly speaking, Babbage himself had been influenced by a foot note appended in February 1830 to an article by John Herschel on Sound, in which he spoke of Britain ‘fast dropping behind’ other continental countries in science. Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, 6 vols (London, 1830), vol.4, 810n.

¹⁴The Reform Bill of 1832 established a fundamental reform of Parliament.

¹⁵For Playfair's mathematics, see, e.g. Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, ‘Analysis and Synthesis in John Playfair's Elements of Geometry’, British Journal for the History of Science, 35 (2002), 43–72.

¹⁶Anand C. Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment. A Social History (London, Croom Helm, 1976), p. 177. Jack Morrell, ‘Professors Robison and Playfair and the Theophobia Gallica. Natural Philosophy, Religion and Politics in Edinburgh, 1789–1815’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 26 (1971), 43–63.

¹⁷While Playfair represents the dominant continuation of the ‘auld alliance’ with France, there was one ultra conservative Edinburgh professor John Robison, who took advantage of the fear in Britain generated by reports of the most violent period of the French Revolution to publish a book (1797), attacking everything French. See Morrell (note 16).

¹⁸Laplace, Traité de mécanique céleste, vol. 4, Paris, 1805. For the dedication of the previous volume see Maurice Crosland, The Society of Arcueil. A View of French Science at the time of Napoleon I (London, Heinemann,1967), pp. 64–65.

¹⁹Gavin de Beer, The Sciences were never at War (London, Nelson,1960), p. 197. The phrase is used in a letter from Edward Jenner to the French National Institute in 1803,

²⁰ Edinburgh Review, 11 (1807), 282, 283.

²¹ Edinburgh Review, 15 (1810), 396–99, 398.

²² Edinburgh Review, 31 (1819), 392.

²³ Edinburgh Review, 31 (1819), 394.

²⁴Robert Woodhouse, the son of a draper and First Wrangler in 1795 was criticised in the Gentleman's Magazine as unpatriotic for employing French notation in mathematics, Harvey W. Becher, ‘Radicals, Whigs and conservatives: the middle and lower classes in the analytical revolution at Cambridge in the age of aristocracy’, B.J.H.S., 28 (1995), 405–26, 410.

²⁵By ‘new calculus’ Playfair presumably meant the advances in mathematics on the Continent. His reference to ‘the student’ must have been to the part taken by Cambridge undergraduates in the foundation of the Analytical Society. By ‘the Master’ he meant the Cambridge professors of mathematics.

²⁶‘Dissertation Second: Exhibiting a general view of the progress of mathematical and physical science since the revival of letters in Europe’, Supplement to the 4th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1824), vol. 2, p. 104. It should be made clear that such a reference to poverty does not mean the abject poverty suffered by the lowest stratum of society. It refers more generally perhaps to a lower middle class with some education.

²⁷P.C. Enros, The Analytical Society. Mathematics in Cambridge University in the Early Nineteenth Century, Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1979.

²⁸Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (London, 1864), p. 29.

²⁹Harvey W. Becher, ‘Radicals, Whigs and conservatives: the middle and lower classes in the analytical revolution at Cambridge in the age of aristocracy’ British Journal for the History of Science, 28 (1995), 405–26, 425. It might be mentioned that Whewell was prepared to make one favourable reference to Laplace in his Treatise on Dynamics.

³⁰Otherwise early nineteenth-century Cambridge could have produced a greater number of future scientists from tiny number of boys from modest backgrounds (only 3% of entrants compared with 30% from the sons of the Anglican clergy—according to Searby, but other authorities estimate the proportion to be even smaller P. Searby, History of the University of Cambridge, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1988–1993), vol. 3, p. 75. Such bright boys, who had access to a local grammar school and won a scholarship, might have added to the three mathematicians represented by Woodhouse, Airy and Whewell. The dominant Church of England ethos produced a majority of Anglican clergy from the serious undergraduates. No fewer than 43 men who had taken the Mathematics Tripos in the first half of the century became bishops. Donald Cardwell, The Organisation of Science in England (London, 1972), p. 55.

³¹William J. Ashworth, ‘Memory, efficiency and symbolic analysis: Charles Babbage, John Herschel and the Industrial mind’, Isis, 87 (1996), 629–653.

³²Kevin C. Knox, ‘Dephlogisticating the Bible: Natural philosophy and religious controversy in late Georgean Cambridge’, History of Science, 34 (1996), 167–200.

³³Letter from Peacock to Herschel, 4 March 1817, cited by Knox, Kevin C. Knox, ‘Dephlogisticating the Bible: Natural philosophy and religious controversy in late Georgean Cambridge’, History of Science, 34 (1996), 193.

³⁴Ashworth (note 31), 646.

³⁵Marie Boas Hall, All Scientists Now, The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984).

³⁶William J. Ashworth, ‘The calculating eye: Baily, Herschel, Babbage and the business of astronomy’, British Journal for the History of Science., 27 (1994), 409–441.

³⁷Ashworth (note 36), 431.

³⁸J.B. Morrell, ‘London's institutions and Lyell's career, 1820–41’, British Journal for the History of Science, 9 (1976), 132–146, 139–142. For a further discussion of De la Beche, whose salary of £5OO as Director of the Geological Survey provided him with a livelihood, see Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Gentlemen of Science. Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981), 462.

³⁹Babbage (note 24), 68–69. See also Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1982), especially pp. 52–55 and 167–172.

⁴⁰Babbage (note 28), 87 (my italics).

⁴¹It may be noted that, when Davy had developed his miners’ safety lamp, he boasted that he had made no money from it. Having married a wealthy widow, he had no need for extra funds. See John Davy (ed.), Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, 9 vols (London., 1839–1840), vol. 1, p. 211.

⁴²Hall (note 35), 43. One might also mention the later close relations on the study of tides between the Admiralty and Lubbock and Whewell, who, as gentry, were rewarded with a Royal Medal rather than money (Hall, note 35), 174.

⁴³ The Record of the Royal Society of London, 4th edn (London, Royal Society, 1940), pp. 120–121.

⁴⁴F.R.S. 1847 in the Privilege class. Russell may have been influenced by his friendship with Sir John Herschel.

⁴⁵Hall (note 35), 147.

⁴⁶The judgement of Roy MacLeod, one of the better known authors who has worked in this area, whose main interest has been in the Victorian period, a slightly later focus than my own study (see his Public Science and Public Policy in Victorian England (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1996). He has also shown a detailed interest in the reform of the Royal Society and the award of Royal Medals (‘The Royal Society and the Government Grant: Notes on the administration of scientific research, 1849–1914’, Historical Journal, 14 (1971), 323–358. ‘Of medals and men. A reward system in Victorian science’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 26 (1971), 81–105. A discussion of the reform of the Royal Society would have taken me away from my main concern. Nor do I duplicate a study of honours, since, although they were appreciated by the gentry, they sidestep the basic question of subsistence for aspiring cultivators of science. Much more relevant to my research is his article on the Civil List, which includes numerous tables, extending over nearly a century, showing such data as the subject and age of the recipient. It usefully complements my own study, which ends in the mid-century. His political analysis is particularly good but he is mistaken in claiming that no pensions were awarded before 1830.

⁴⁷ British Parliamentary Papers. Education: Scientific and Technical (Irish University Press Reprint), vol. 4, 1875, 407.

⁴⁸‘Report of the Parliamentary Committee’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1855, xlviii–lxiii. Hereafter: Report … BAAS.

⁴⁹ Hansard, 3rd series, 1856, vol. 142, cc. 1263–1273.

⁵⁰Anniversary meeting, 1850.

⁵¹Letter to Murchison, I. Todhunter, William Whewell, D.D., An Account of his Writings, 2 vols (London, 1876), vol. 2, p. 357.

The standard comprehensive source is now Morrell and Thackray (note 37). See also A.D. Orange, ‘The origins of the British Association for the Advancement of Science’, British Journal for the History of Science, 6 (1972), 152–176. For Johnston's subsequent support of Brewster see Morrell and Thackray (note 38), 143.

⁵³ Edinburgh Journal of Science, 10 (1829), 225–234. Brewster's interest was reinforced by a subsequent report from Germany by his friend J.F.W. Johnston, a graduate of Glasgow University: ‘Meeting of the cultivators of natural science and medicine at Hamburg’, Edinburgh Journal of Science, new series, 4 (1830–1833), 244.

⁵⁴The Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte.

⁵⁵Brewster, Quarterly Review, 43 (1830), 305–342. For a defence of Babbage against the later attack of the Dutchman, G. Moll, see Edinburgh Journal of Science, 5 (1831), 334–358, 337.

⁵⁶Babbage (note 12), 125–135 had even devoted a whole chapter to alleged corruption in the award of the Copley Medal.

⁵⁷Brewster (note 55), 320.

⁵⁸Brewster (note 55), 327. Brewster's idea of research was more ambitious than Whewell's—a full-time occupation, extending the boundaries of knowledge, See Richard Yeo, Defining Science. William Whewell, Natural Knowledge and Public Debate in Early Victorian Britain (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 91.

⁵⁹The Archbishop of York was himself the son of Lord Vernon, who had married the daughter of the Marquis of Stafford. Vernon was a graduate of Christ Church Oxford and had come into a substantial inheritance in 1830—very different from Brewster who depended on his writing for a precarious living.

⁶⁰Whewell refused to attend the first meeting of the Association with Brewster, who, he claimed, had dared ‘to promulgate so bad an opinion of … Professors in Universities’. Letter from Whewell to Forbes, 14 July 1831 in Todhunter (note 51), vol.2, 122. Brewster, for his part, felt that Cambridge was ultra sensitive to ‘the gentlest admonition … [and] … bled where it was not wounded’. Brewster, Edinburgh Journal of Science, 5 (1831), 334–358, 344.

⁶¹ Report … BAAS (York, 1833), p. 33. A parallel is drawn with the shame of the Poor Law.

⁶² Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 1 ^st series1800–63 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1914), vol. 1, pp. 612–623.

⁶³A.D. Morrison-Low, Dictionary of National Biography, pp. 524–529.

⁶⁴Morrell and Thackray (note 38), 311.

⁶⁵ Morrell and Thackray (note 38), 273.

⁶⁶ Morrell and Thackray (note 38), 273.

⁶⁷For theological differences between Whewell and Brewster see Yeo (note 58)), 247–249 and John Brooke, ‘Natural theology and the plurality of worlds’, Annals of Science, 34 (1977), 221–286.

⁶⁸Morrell and Thackray (note 38), 25–26.

⁶⁹T.R. Malthus, Essay on Population, [1798], Book 4, Chap. 9, 2 vols. (London, J.M. Dent, 1973, vol. 2, p. 212.

⁷⁰S.J. Curtis, History of Education in Great Britain, 7th edn (London, J.M. Dent).

⁷¹H.C. Barnard, A History of English Education since 1760 (London, University Tutorial Press, 1966), p. 66.

⁷²A separate administrative area from Scotland.

⁷³ On Liberal Education (London, 1845).

⁷⁴T.C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830, (London, Fontana, 1969), p. 480.

⁷⁵Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776] (2 vols., Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976), e.g. vol. 2, 784, V.i.f., paras 52–55.

⁷⁶For example, the poet Robert Burns and the engineer Thomas Telford came from poor homes.

⁷⁷Quoted by Donald J. Withrington, ‘Education and society in the 18th century’, in Scotland in the Age of Improvement, edited by N.T. Phillipson and Rosalind Mitchison (Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 169–199, 172.

⁷⁸George Elder Davie, The Democratic Intellect. Scotland and her Universities in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1964), p. 75.

⁷⁹The following account draws heavily on N.T. Phillipson, ‘Culture and society in the 18th-century province: the case of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment’, in The University in Society, edited by L. Stone, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1975), vol. 2, pp. 407–448. See also Charles Withers and Paul Wood, Science and Medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment (East Linton, Tuckwell Press, 2002), Introduction.

⁸⁰The phrase ‘men of letters’ was sometimes applied to early men of science. Smith (note 70), vol. 1, 148, I.x.c., para. 37. Smith also remarked that ‘Science is the great antidote to the poison of [religious] enthusiasm and superstition’, vol. 2, 796, V.i.g., para. 14.

⁸¹Morrell and Thackray (note 38), 128.

⁸²Jack Morrell, ‘Brewster and the early British Association for the Advancement of Science’, in Martyr of Science: Sir David Brewster (1781–1868), edited by A.M. Morrison-Low and J.R.R. Christie (Edinburgh, Scottish National Museum, 1984), pp. 25–30.

⁸³Yet in mathematics Whewell was still reluctant to accept all the analysis of Lagrange, preferring some traditional geometrical methods.

⁸⁴ Report … BAAS, 1833 (Cambridge), pp. xv–xvi.

⁸⁵Yeo (note 58). See also Yeo, art. ‘Whewell’, Dictionary of National. Biography.

⁸⁶On the intellectual front Whewell was, of course, a scholar of great ability and tremendous energy as well as a polymath.

⁸⁷R. Robson, ‘William Whewell, F.R.S. Academic life’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 19 (1964), 168–176, 172.

⁸⁸Yeo (note 58), 16–17.

⁸⁹Yeo (note 58), Introduction. By mentioning some of his weaknesses (pp. 19–20) within a study of his contribution to History and Philosophy of Science, he gives a more rounded picture. There are recent studies of Whewell by Philip R Sloan in Annals of Science, 60 (2003), 39–61 (50ff.) and by Ben Marsden in British Journal for the History of Science, 37 (2004), 401–434.

⁹⁰Michael S. Reidy, Tides of History. Ocean Science and Her Majesty's Navy (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2008), pp. 253, 242, 238.

⁹¹The standard authoritative study of the British Association, Morrell and Thackray (note.38), 346), makes it clear that the only time the British Association came close to showing sympathy for pensions was in 1839 when William Smith, the holder of a pension, died on his way to an Association meeting and the geology section urged that the pension should be transferred to his widow.

⁹²Brewster was knighted in 1831. His daughter, however, testified that he had been ‘very indifferent’ to receiving the knighthood, partly because of a possible attached expense. M.M. Gordon, The Home Life of Sir David Brewster, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1870), p. 153.

⁹³By 1850 he might well have included some of the German states.

⁹⁴ Report … BAAS, 1850 (Edinburgh), pp. xli–xliii.

⁹⁵Babbage devoted the whole of Chapter 3 of his Decline (note 12) to criticising other scientific societies.

⁹⁶Brewster's tactful handling of these societies is in marked contrast to Babbage's savage attacks– (note 12), chap. 3, especially 43, 46, 48. This provides further evidence that he wished to separate himself from Babbage's handling of scientific societies as the main evidence for decline. This is further evidence that Brewster was not a Declinist.

⁹⁷Charles Babbage, The Exposition of 1851 (London, 1851), p. 189.

⁹⁸Elizabeth Bonner, ‘Scotland's ‘Auld Alliance’ with France, 1295–1560’, History, 84 (1999), 5–30.

⁹⁹John Clive, ‘The Scottish Background to the Scottish Renaissance’, in Phillipson and Mitchison (note 77), 225–244, 229.

¹⁰⁰Davie (note 78), 151.

¹⁰¹It is notable that London, given its huge population and as the national capital, was without a university until the nineteenth century, partly because of opposition from Oxford and Cambridge which prized their monopoly of English higher education.

¹⁰²A point emphasised by Davie (note 78), 5.

¹⁰⁵I.e. like a gratification.

¹⁰⁶Letter from Brewster to Harcourt, 5 December 1831, Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Gentlemen of Science. Early Correspondence of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Camden 4th series, 40 (London, 1984), p. 111.

¹⁰³Royal academies for music and architecture were also founded during the reign of Louis XIV.

¹⁰⁴David J. Sturdy, Science and Social Status. The Members of the Académie des Sciences, 1666–1750 (Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1995), p. 65.

¹⁰⁷The six subject areas recognised in the 1699 constitution were: geometry, astronomy, mechanics, chemistry, botany and anatomy.

¹⁰⁸E. Maindron, L'Académie des Sciences (Paris, 1888), p. 100. To give some idea of values, an authority on wages for working men in France estimates that a journeyman cooper in the 1760s might have had an annual income of only 150 livres, while a journeyman printer might have earned as much as 700 livres if he worked every week of the year. M. Sonnenscher, Work and Wages. Natural Law, Politics and 18th-century French Trade (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 203.

¹⁰⁹ Jetons were distributed as droits de présence.

¹¹⁰Maurice Crosland, ‘The financial support of men of science in France c. 1600–c.1800: A survey’, History of Science, 45 (2007), 327–355 (339–341).

¹¹¹There was a Protestant (Calvinist) minority, mainly in the south. and south west.

¹¹²North of the border the Presbyterian Church of Scotland was the established church. Fortunately for the Enlightenment movement it was the Moderates who dominated the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the second half of the eighteenth century. Ian D.L. Clark, ‘From protest to reaction. The moderate regime in the Church of Scotland, 1752–1805’, in Phillipson and Mitchison (note 77), 200–224, 200.

¹¹³Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1992), Chap. 1.

¹¹⁴For a detailed treatment of individualism, central to the subject of this paper, but omitting the religious aspect, see Jack Morrell, ‘Individualism and the structure of British science in 1830’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 3 (1971), 183–204. Even in the late twentieth century a British prime minister was reported as saying that ‘there is no such thing as Society’.

¹¹⁵Sir Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the accession of George III, 2nd edn (London, 1963), p. 213.

¹¹⁶It is ironic that Johnson was later given a pension because Lord Bute, the head of the Treasury, wished to be thought a patron of men of letters and Johnson was one of the most eminent and the most in need. Understandably, the hostile reference to pensions in the 1755 edition of the Dictionary was omitted in later editions.

¹¹⁷Michael Hoskin, art. Herschel, Dictionary of National Biography, A.B. Carter, Sir Joseph Banks (London, 1988), p. 179. See also Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder. How the Romantic Generation discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (London, Harper Press, 2008). Herschel's sister, Caroline, his assistant (but also an able observer) was given an annual sum of £50.

¹¹⁹ Autobiography of Joseph Priestley, Introduction by Jack Linsay, (Bath, Adams and Dart, 1970), p. 119 (my italics).

¹¹⁸Maurice Crosland, ‘A practical perspective on Joseph Priestley as a pneumatic chemist’, British Journal for the History of Science, 16 (1983), 223–238. For relations with Lord Shelburne, see Robert E. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania University Press, 2004), p. 151.

¹²⁰Since the beginning of the 21^st century we are finally fortunate to have ready access to the complete correspondence of Faraday: The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by Frank A.J.L. James, 4 vols (London, 1991–1999), vol. 1, Letter 419. See also Introduction, vol. 1, pp. xxx–xxxi and letters, vol. 1, 30, 119 and vol. 2, Letter 775.

¹²¹Geoffrey Cantor, Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and Scientist (Basingstoke, 1991), 108. It is difficult to estimate money values but in the early nineteenth century the worst paid Cambridge professors had to accept no more than £100 with the hope of an increase or a move to a better endowed chair. Searby (note 30), 233. Peel's fear that ‘the emoluments attached to [Airy's] appointment at the University of Cambridge [being] hardly sufficient’ was the principal motive for Peel to grant him a pension of £300 in February 1835. (Airy had, in fact, recently been appointed as Director of the Cambridge Observatory at £500 and the pension was transferred to his wife.). Charles Parker, Sir Robert Peel...From his Private Correspondence, 2 vols (London, 1916), vol. 2, 307. Edinburgh University, where the income of a professor depended on the number of students enrolled in his class, a popular lecturer would earn many hundreds of pounds. In 1840 Charles Darwin bought a large family house with 18 acres of land at Downe in Kent for £2,000.

¹²²Cantor (note 121), 108. However, Faraday only sought a sufficiency, not a fortune out of science.

¹²³Roy MacLeod, ‘Science and the Civil List, 1824–1914’, Technology and Society, 6 (1970), 47–55.

¹²⁴Pensions were still a delicate matter and a report of the House of Commons Select Committee mentions the unfavourable impression made on the public mind by the list of pensions of this date. House of Commons Journal, vol. 86, Part 1, 1830–1831, pp. cccxxx–cccxxxi. Pensions were to be a frequent subject of debate throughout the 1830s – see Hansard. It has even been claimed that stubborn adherence to a pension list was one of the main reasons for the collapse of the Wellington government in 1830.

¹²⁵Roy MacLeod, ‘Of medals and men. A reward system in Victorian science, 1826–1914’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 26 (1971), 81–105.

¹²⁶James (note 119), vol. 1, Letter 775. See also vol. 1, Letter 771.

¹²⁷ James (note 119), vol. 2, Letter 825, note 4, Letter 825.

¹²⁸ James (note 119), vol. 2, Letter 837, Letter 838. Such a modest pension for ‘one of the greatest philosophers of the age’ was deplored in Parliament, Hansard, 3^rd series, vol. 39 (1837), c. 889.

¹²⁹James (note 120), vol. 2, Letter 782.

¹³⁰ James (note 120), vol. 2, Letter 1051. This government letter about pensions also makes an incidental reference to sinecures, suggesting that there was still some ambiguity about pensions.

¹³¹A persistent speaker in the Parliamentary debates was on pensions was David W. Harvey, M.P. successively for Colchester and Southwark, an eloquent advocate of radical causes. He was concerned to stop the abuse of pensions but did not oppose their award for merit. For an extreme source, see [John Wade], The Extraordinary Black Book. An Exposition of Abuses in Church and State, New edition (London, 1832).

¹³²Lionel Madden, Robert Southey. The Critical Heritage (London, Routledge, 1972), pp. 25–26. For further information on pensions for literary figures, see: William Morris Coles, Literature and the Pensions List (London, 1889).

¹³³George McLean Harper, William Wordsworth, His Life, Work and Influence (London, Murray, 2 vols., 1916), vol. 2, 418–419.

¹³⁴Parker (note 121), vol. 3, 438.

¹³⁵Letter from Whewell to Vernon Harcourt, 22 September 1831, quoted by Orange (note 52), 166.

¹³⁶Todhunter (note 51), vol. 2, 209, Letter to Hamilton, 12 April, 1835 (my italics).

¹³⁷ Yorkshire Gazette, 1 October 1831, from Morrell and Thackray (note.37), 141n. Milton's words were tactfully omitted from the official publication of the meeting.

¹³⁸Edward Smith, The Life of Sir Joseph Banks, (London, 1911), p. 84. The Banks Letters, edited by Warren R. Dawson (London, Museum of Natural History, 1958), p. 878.

¹³⁹Young (a polymath but no astronomer) was criticised by some astronomers for weakness in that science, Young replied that his primary loyalty was to his nautical readership.

¹⁴⁰Brewster described the Board as ‘the only scientific board [i.e. employing men of science] in the kingdom’, Brewster (note 55), 305.

¹⁴¹E.W. Maunder, The Royal Observatory at Greenwich (London, Religious Tract Society, 1900), p. 98. Eric Forbes, The Greenwich Observatory (London, Taylor and Francis, 1975), p. 20.

¹⁴²Royal Society, Domestic MSS, i, no 7, 21 January 1823.

¹⁴³After marriage to a wealthy widow.

¹⁴⁴Davy (note 41), vol. 1, 290.

¹⁴⁵Letter from Admiralty Office to Royal Society, 14 March 1823, Royal Society Minutes of Council, x, 29.

¹⁴⁶Brewster (note 55), 16.

¹⁴⁷This was in the tradition of payment for apparatus. South, more extreme than Babbage, regarded British science as completely decadent and effectively blackmailed the government by threatening to leave the country and live in France. His recent knighthood and pension were intended to placate him and prevent a public scandal.

¹⁴⁸Brewster, ‘Observations on The Decline of Science in England’, Edinburgh Journal of Science, 5 (1831), 1–16, 6 (my italics).

¹⁴⁹Parker (note 121) vol. 1, 99 (my italics). Royal Society, John Herschel Letters, vol. 3, no. 10, 24 April 1832.

¹⁵⁰Presidential Address, Report … BAAS, 1850, xxxviii–xxxix.

¹⁵¹ Speeches of Sir Robert Peel, 4 vols (London, 1843), vol. 3, 460 (my italics).

¹⁵²Mary Somerville's mastery of French advanced mathematics enabled her to write her Mechanism of the Heavens (1831), based on the very technical Mécanique céleste of Laplace. She was supported by several influential friends. Elizabeth Patterson, Mary Somerville and the Cultivation of Science, 1815–1840 (The Hague, 1983). See also Claire Brock, ‘The public worth of Mary Somerville’, British Journal for the History of Science, 39 (2006), 255–272.

¹⁵³Parker (note 121), vol. 2, 307. For Airy's pension, see note 120.

¹⁵⁴Hamilton with his £300 salary as professor at Trinity College Dublin was not badly off but, when proposed for Fellowship of the Royal Society, said that he could not afford the annual subscription of £4. S. Sen, ‘Why W.R. Hamilton was not an F.R.S.’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 59 (2005), 305–308.

¹⁵⁵A Parliamentary committee in 1852 spoke of ‘the inadequacy of the present fund out of which pensions are provided in certain cases for scientific men’. In 1852 Lord Wrottesley reported that, since 1837 the total sum allocated to science had been £2150, approximately 13% of the Pension fund. Report … BAAS, 1852, xxxi.

¹⁵⁶Joining one of the specialist scientific societies could have been a great help but their substantial subscriptions would have constituted a formidable barrier for anyone of modest means.

¹⁵⁷Mill speaks of ‘the many scientific researches of good value to a nation’ and raises ‘the question of providing [assistance] by means of endowments and salaries’. J.S. Mill, ‘On the grounds and limits of the Laissez-faire Principle’. Principles of Political Economy, 6th edn (London, 1848), chap. 9, pp. 589–590.

¹⁵⁸Steven Shapin, ‘“A scholar and a gentleman”. The problematic identity of the scientific practitioner in early modern England’, History of Science, 29 (1991), 279–327 (294–315).

¹⁵⁹Thomas Thomson, History of Chemistry (London, 1831), vol. 2, 60–62.

¹⁶⁰Iwan Morus, art. ‘Grove’, Dictionary of National Biography.

¹⁶¹Iwan Morus, ‘Correlation and Control: William Robert Grove and the construction of a new philosophy of scientific reform’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 22 (1991), 599–621 (617). Grove referred to himself as ‘a poor aspirant!’.

¹⁶²Babbage at the age of 36 had inherited £100,000 from his father.

¹⁶³It is interesting that the Royal Society continued to support Babbage's applications even after the publication of his critical book.

¹⁶⁴Peter Alter, The Reluctant Patron. Science and the State in Britain 1850–1920 (Oxford, Berg, 1987).

¹⁶⁵ Report … BAAS (Plymouth, 1851), lii–liii.

¹⁶⁶Whewell's extensive and successful study of tides (‘tidology’ – see Reidy, note 85) would be a good example.

¹⁶⁷Not only did Whewell propose the term ‘scientist’ but Faraday asked his advice for technical names in electricity.

¹⁶⁸See Peel (note 151).

¹⁶⁹Charles Babbage, The Exposition of 1851 (London, 1851), p. 200.