Friday 16 February, 1894

RH says.....
The following day, the Times reported the Greenwich Park explosion of the 15 February. The reporter, focusing on the idea of an anarchist conspiracy, does not seem to have thought that the Observatory could have been a premeditated target, believing rather that Bourdin was trying to get rid of explosives before being found by the police. There are arguments against this account, not least the fact that the path Bourdin was on was by no means isolated and that it led only to the Observatory. If you were trying to dispose of a bomb there would be better places to try than this!

EXPLOSION IN GREENWICH PARK.
Last evening an explosion was heard by a keeper of Greenwich Park on the hill close to the Royal Observatory. Proceeding thither he found a respectably-dressed man, in a kneeling posture, terribly mutilated.
***One hand was blown off and the body was open. The injured man was only able to say, "Take me home," and was unable to reply to a question as to where his home was. He was taken to the Seamen's Hospital on an ambulance, and died in less than half an hour.
***A bottle, in many pieces, which had apparently contained an explosive substance, was found near the spot where the explosion took place, and it is conjectured that the deceased man fell and caused its contents to explode.
***The deceased, who was not known in Greenwich, is a young man of about 30, supposed to be a foreigner. The only evidence of identification was a card bearning the name "Bourbon." Several letters, which the police have taken possession of, were found upon him, and it is stated that his hands were covered with a black substance, which cannot be got off.

The Central News says: - The London police have discovered an Anarchist conspiracy. These facts, among others, are beyond dispute - that the inquiries of the detectives, although cautiously made, frightened the plotters, that the gang hurriedly scattered, and that its chief met with his death last evening when endeavouring to carry away to some place the explosives which were to have been used against society either in this country or in France.
[The report goes on to say that the police had been watching a particular house off Tottenham Court Road in London - a district that had "long been notorious as the favourite domicile of the most advanced section of the Socialist party and of the Anarchists, English and foreign" - especially following a bombing of the Cafe Terminus in Paris by one Emile Henry. On 15 February only two men entered...]
***.....One of them, a foreigner, who had all along been considered a leader among the conspirators, made his way to Charing-cross Station, South Eastern Railway, and there, it is now known, took a third-class ticket to Greenwich.
***For the moment, the subsequent movements of this man can only be conjectured, for he is now lying dead in a suburban mortuary. But there is practically no room for doubt that he was fleeing from the police, and that his immediate desire was to rid himself safely of the explosives which he had taken away with him..... it may be assumed that, it now being quite dusk, the man stumbled and fell, with the result that the infernal machine or machines which he was carrying exploded on his own person. It is possible that at the last moment, remembering that the Observatory was a Government building, he decided to expend his explosives against it. But this theory does not fit in with known facts. The sound of the explosion was heard as far away as the Chatham and Dover Railway station.....
***The park-keepers who heard it thought something had gone wrong at the Royal Observatory, and rushed thither without delay. ...

Thursday February 15, 1894

Went to Sandwich this afternoon, returning Sunday evening. Soon after I left an explosion of a bomb occurred on the zigzag path leading up to N.W. corner of the Observatory, the man who carried it (a French anarchist) being found mortally injured on the path - see detailed reports in D9.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

A dynamiter anarchist was blown up with his own bomb in Greenwich Park. See special Reports.

H.H. Turner, Chief Assistant

RH says.....
A French anarchist, Martial Bourdin, accidentally set of a bomb that he was carrying through Greenwich Park at 4.45pm on 15 February 1894. An account of events by one of my ROG colleagues can be found here and a flavour of the media storm that the event provoked (which provided inspiration for Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent) is given here. The image accompanying this post, and another fantastic image from the illustrated press here, show the public's fascination in the event. There has been much debate over what Bourdin's target actually was but, given that the "zigzag path" beneath the Observatory is not a main route, it would appear that the Observatory was the intended target. For nearly a decade Greenwich's local meridian had been designated the Prime Meridian for the world, and that the international day began at midnight in Greenwich - perhaps, then, what Greenwich stood for was indeed a tempting target for an anarchist.

The decision regarding the Prime Meridian was made at the International Meridian Conference held in Washington in 1884, the proceedings of which are available online. These show that the French delegates were far from happy about the idea of making Greenwich rather than Paris (or at least a 'neutral' position) home of the Prime Meridian.

Wednesday February 14, 1894

Distance between crown & flint lenses of 28ⁱⁿ O.G. reduced by 3/16in from 4 1/4in to 4 1/16in (relatively to visual position) and crown lens shifted upwards by 1/22in. Wrote to Grubb about proposed 26ⁱⁿ Photo-Telescope[.] Presided at Congratulatory dinner to Prof. Turner in evening.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

RH says.....

As Christie reported to the Board of Visitors in the summer, he and his staff spent a long time working on the adjustment of this new telescope's object glass because of its novel design (see here for more information). The OG could be reversed and the separation of the crown and flint lenses adjusted in order to alter the correction for chromatic aberration necessary for either visual or photographic use. The maker, Sir Howard Grubb declared them "the finest pair of discs of their size which have ever been made". Grubb and his Dublin firm were now in business with Greenwich again, as Christie sent off his order for the new 26-inch telescope paid for by Sir Henry Thompson.

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Turner's slow goodbye to Greenwich continued through this month as he worked out his period as Chief Assistant and trained his successor, before leaving finally and formally leaving for his Oxford professorship.

Tuesday February 13, 1894

Sir Henry Thompson came to see the Obs^y with reference to his offer of a new telescope (11.30 to 4p.m.). He definitely offered a sum of £5000 for a Photo-telescope of say 26 inches aperture & 22^ft. 6ⁱⁿ focal length similarly mounted to the Astrographic Equatorial but of double the size, to carry the Merz 12 ¾ in refractor as a visual telescope & also the Thompson 9in photoheliograph and authorized me to enter into negotiations with Sir H. Grubb about it.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

RH says.....

For more information about Thompson and the telescopes that he donated to the ROG, see the notes page here. The sum of money Thompson offered was very considerable, as Christie's slight tone of disbelief ("he definitely offered...") suggests. As a comparison, it cost about £2000 to build each wing of the New Physical Observatory, the Astronomer Royal received a salary of £1000 and the Chief Assistant £500-600. According to the Measuring Worth website, £5000 is the equivalent of either £408,104.17, using the 2007 retail price index or £2,322,817.37, using 2007 average earnings.

Monday February 12, 1894

Letter to Adm^y on reorganisation of Staff sent off.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

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RH says.....

It would appear from the journal that Christie spent 3 days writing this letter, although it was not to have any good effect this year, or next. He complained in his reports to the Board of Visitors for 1894 and 1895 that despite his best efforts Government had failed to come to a decision on the matter. He wrote in June 1894 that "it is only through the zealous co-operation of Assistants and Computers, and the excellent spirit with which the whole Staff has worked to meet the emergency, that it has been possible to cope with the exceptionally heavy work of the past year" and in June 1895 he spoke even more strongly, declaring that the "shelving of such a vital question must paralyze the development of the activity of the Observatory in the directions which the progress of astronomy demands". It was only in 1896 that the new scheme was finally sanctioned.

Regular work at Greenwich Observatory

RH says.....
When there is little or nothing recorded in the Astronomer Royal's or Chief Assistant's journals we can assume that the regular work of the Observatory went on as usual. The annual publication of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich - Greenwich Observations - demonstrates how large a task regular observing and calculating work was, especially at a time that they felt themselves under-staffed. Christie boasted that despite expanding work in what were new fields for Greenwich - especially astro-photography, spectroscopy, double-star observation and increasing equatorial observations - they also managed to increase the number of regular transit observations.

Between May 1893 and May 1894 the average number of transits observed each day was 31 or, if Sunday was discounted, 36. However, conditions meant that this load was spread unequally and Christie noted that the "very favourable conditions" during February 1894 meant that on three consecutive days 458 transits and 460 zenith distances were observed. This was hard and repetitious manual labour for the observers, especially if we remember all the additional observations that had to be made in order to calculate the various errors that had to be factored into the equally labourious calculations that each set of data prompted.

Saturday February 10, 1894 and Sunday February 11, 1894

Drafted letter to Admiralty on reorganisation of staff in reply to C114, Saturday evening & Sunday.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

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RH says.....

The outcome of Christie's meeting with Richard Awdry at the Admiralty on Wednesday 7th February seems to have been an exchange of official letters, and the expenditure of more of Christie's time on drafting long letters full of carefully-tempered outrage. A list of the staff in 1894 shows that there was a total of about 45 people employed at the Observatory. This was a long way from the century before, when the Astronomer Royal had employed a single assistant, but was yet to reach the figure of 60+ staff that Christie achieved by the end of his tenure.

Friday February 9, 1894

R.A.S Annual Meeting

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

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RH says.....

A report of this Annual Meeting from The Observatory can be downloaded here. Turner and Maunder, Chief Assistant and one of the First Assistants at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, were both secretaries. It was announced at this meeting that the Society's Gold Medal was awarded to the American astronomer Sherburn Wesley Burnham, "for his discoveries and observations of Double Stars". Much of the rest of the meeting seems to have been taken up with discussing the best time to hold meetings in the future. A proposal to meet at 4.30 was voted down, suggesting that a majority of Fellows of the RAS were not gentlemen of leisure, but were men of business, naval and army officers and - occasionally - professional astronomers.