44 



Mr. R. H. Scott. 



Observatory is now at the Patent Museum, South Kensington (No. 

 1426), and is going well. It bears the following inscription : — 



" This clock was made by Benjamin Yulliamy, Clock-Maker to 

 the King, for his Majesty George III, by whom it was used in his 

 private observatory at Kew. It was successively the property of 

 their Majesties George IV and William IV, of H.R.H. The duke of 

 Sussex, and of their Majesties Ernest, King of Hanover, and George, 

 King of Hanover, by whom it was given to Frances Moulton, widow of 

 Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy, eldest son of the maker, April 18th, 1854." 



His Majesty King George III, with the assistance of Dr. Demain- 

 bray, and his son the Rev. Stephen Demainbray (who held and 

 superintended the Observatory, as the astronomer, for upwards of 

 fifty-eight years after his father's death) procured a large collection 

 of instruments, models, &c, besides a large apparatus for experiments 

 in all branches of natural philosophy, as also a very valuable natural 

 history collection. In addition to these, there was a collection of 

 minerals from the Hartz mines ; but these were afterwards given by 

 King George IV to the British Museum. 



The Observatory was for many years an object of great interest to 

 King George III, and the Rev. S. Demainbray was for a length of 

 time the teacher of the younger members of the King's family, who 

 attended at the Observatory for his lectures on astronomy, electricity, 

 &c. King William IV also took great interest in the Observatory, and 

 frequently visited it. 



At the time of the transfer of the Observatory to the British 

 Association, Mr. S. Demainbray retired on a pension, and he died in 

 July, 1854, at the age of ninety -five years. 



During the latter part of the fifty-eight years in which he super- 

 intended the Observatory he was assisted by his nephew, Stephen Peter 

 Rigaud, Esq., Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and Radcliffe 

 Observer. This gentleman took charge of the Observatory during 

 the Oxford vacations, and thus enabled his uncle to reside during 

 those periods on his living in Wiltshire. The King's Observatory 

 lasted, therefore, for seventy-one years, i.e., from 1769 to 1840. 



The Observatory itself was at one time in charge of a curator 

 named John Little, who was hanged in 1795 for the murder of two 

 old people in Richmond to whom he owed money, and who was 

 strongly suspected of having murdered a carpenter named Stroud, 

 who was discovered in the principal or octagon room of the Observa- 

 tory, the body lying under an iron vice. The St. James's" Chronicle, 

 in August, 1795, in giving an account of Little's execution, says, "from 

 his civil deportment he was in general the only attendant on His 

 Majesty when he walked in the gardens." The inquest on Stroud 

 at a previous date had resulted in a verdict of accidental death. 



We find in a French book, Simond's "Voyage en Angleterre," 8vo, 



