Monday April 2, 1894

M^r C. Cass from the Admiralty (Account. Gen’s Depart^t) came to take over temporarily M^r Le Brun’s duties. M^r Dyson (to whom M^r Criswick had handed over the cash balance placed in his hands by M^r Le Brun on March 20) transferred the cash balance (which I counted over) to M^r Cass.

William Christie, Astronomer Royal

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M^r Cass took charge of the accounts.

Frank Dyson, Chief Assistant

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RH says..... Now we know why Criswick forgot to draw the cheques to pay the computers: this was not normally part of his job. Since Le Brun left, there had been no clerk at the Observatory - although before his arrival in 1893 there had been an even longer hiatus. Clerks and financial responsibility had been a bit of a sore point since 1892, when W.J. Wickison, a clerical assistant at the ROG since 1887, stole £188 and was dismissed. The Admiralty's correspondence at the National Archives records that "there is no doubt that Mr Christie’s superintendence was lax in the extreme", but also that, perhaps rightly, "his scientific duties required his more particular attention" and that he should therefore be provided with proper support in the form of an ex-Admiralty "Retired Assistant Paymaster". As a stop-gap, Le Brun and Cass were loaned out to the ROG while the Admiralty thrashed out "the broader question [of] whether the Observatory and its cost might not very fairly be transferred to the Treasury and to the Civil Service Estimates".