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People: John Henry Belville (aka John Henry)

Name	Belville, John Henry
Place of work	Greenwich
Employment dates	13 Apr? 1811 – 13 Jul 1856
Posts	1811, Apr? 13		Second Assistant (but until 1822, sometimes referred to as the Junior Assistant)
Born	1795, Jul 21
Died	1856, Jul 13
Family connections	Ward of John Pond, Astronomer Royal (1811–1835). Father in law of James Glaisher, Superintendent of Magnetical & Meteorological Department. Husband of Maria & father of Ruth, the Greenwich Time Ladies
Known addresses	1811–1822		Royal Observatory, Greenwich
	1822–1825		16 Park Row (RGO6/1/55)
	1825–1833		Park Terrace (now 1-12 Park Vista) (RGO6/1/56)
	1833–1840		Valentine Terrace, Blackheath Road (now 37-45 (odd) & 55-75 (odd) Blackheath Road)
	1840–1844		17 Prior Street (RGO6/72/246)
	1844–1856		9 Hyde Vale Cottages (now 19 Hyde Vale)

Life under Pond

When John Pond arrived at Greenwich as Astronomer Royal on 13 April 1811, he came with 15 year old John Henry Belville who is said to have been his ward (his mother was possibly a refugee who had fled the French Revolution). Belville at once began to help out, being paid at the rate of £100 a year (ADM/BP/40B/48 (held at NMM/RMG) and also referenced as ADM359/40B/48). His salary appears to have been paid by either by Pond himself or possibly by the Ordnance until 19 March 1814 when he was put on the establishment list as Second Assistant with his salary being paid by the Admiralty (ADM181/24).

Supposedly at Pond’s suggestion, he dropped the name Belville because of the anti French sentiment that existed as a reult of the ongoing Napoleonic War. As a result he is always referred to in the volumes of Greenwich Observations as Mr. Henry or John Henry. In March 1814, he appears to have been put on the Admiralty’s payroll (ADM181/24). This brought the number of established assistants to two, the two post holders being referred to respectively as the First and the Second Assistants.

In 1819 Belville married Sarah Dixon and started a family. In 1822, two additional assistants were appointed. As there was insufficient accomodation for everyone at the Observatory, Belville and his family moved out into 16 Park Row, a house around a third of a mile to the north. The accomodation was arranged by Pond and shared with William Richardson, one of the new assistants. An article in volume 14 of the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society states that Belville’s house was about 180 yards from the river, suggesting he lived to the north of Trafalgar Road in what is now a car park.

In 1822, Pond had anticipated that either additional rooms for the assistants would be built at the Observatory or a house would be built nearby in the Park. By 1825, plans had been developed further and in 1826 procedures were put in place to enclose an additional part of Greenwich Park to build three houses (Work16/126). By 1827, Admiralty approval had been given for the work to proceed (ADM359/47B/60). But while all this was going on, Belville had moved (in 1825) into a house in the newly built Park Terrace at the western end of what is now Park Vista, with arrangements being made to pay his rent, pay for coals and candles and pay some of the smaller expenses. The arrangement proved rather convenient and as a result, all plans for erecting new buildings to which there had in any case been some opposition, were abandoned. They were revived for a while in the 1830s after Pond’s long absence from the Observatory, but were again abandoned (RGO6/44/25). In January 1836, an independent valuation conducted for Airy put the unfurnished rent of Belville’s then house in Blackheath Road at £38 and the associated taxes etc at £9.3s (total £47.3s) + up to £5 if furnished (total £52.3s.) The amount actually paid to Belville in 1835 was £52 plus £20 for coal and candles, making a total of £72 (RGO6/72/19&223).

In a note written for Airy by Pond in 1835, Belville was described as being ‘steady tho’ not clever’ and as ‘a good computer; but when much exertion is required he requires exciting’. His responsibilities were described as: observing with the Troughton Circle, observing with the Zenith Tube with William Simms, computing the transit observations and correcting the proofs of the printed observations jointly with Simms. Like the other assistants, he also spent time rating the chronometers and operating the Time Ball, which at that time, was dropped by hand (RGO6/72/223&226).

From the time of his arrival at Greenwich, Belville began to keep his own meteorological records. Initially, they were made at the Observatory. When he moved out into Park Row, he stopped making records at the Observatory and made them from home instead. His series of observations were continued until at least 1850 and are a useful extension to the official Greenwich series which began in 1838. Useful too was the information in his journal relating to developments at the Observatory during Pond's time. Sections were copied by Airy (RGO6/1/53–56) and used when he wrote up the history of the buildings to accompany the site plans which he published in the 1845 and 1862 volumes of Greenwich Observations.

 

Life under Airy

By the time Airy came to replace Pond as Astronomer Royal in 1835, for various reasons, standards at the Observatory had declined. The First Assistant, Thomas Taylor, was removed from post and William Simms resigned soon after. Under Airy, both Belville and Richardson suffered financially. In 1836, Airy got permission to reform the allowance system to simplify its administration. Belville and Richardson however were left out of pocket, receiving a total allowance of just £60 each for rent, coal and candles. For Belville, the reduction amounted to £12 a year and may be why he moved to a much smaller house in 1840. Airy also blocked (probably on orders from the Admiralty), the triennial pay rises to which Belville and Richardson were entitled. This decision was eventually reversed, but not until 1843.

Under Airy, Belville’s responsibilities also changed. He was put in charge of the Transit observations and reductions, the rating of the clocks and the comparisons of chronometers. In this he was assisted by William Ellis. Although Belville retained charge of the chronometers (assisted by Rogerson, following the death of Ellis in 1852), his other responsibilities changed in 1849, when the work load of the Observatory was reorganised to accommodate preparations for the installation of the new Transit Circle. Belville was put in charge of the observations and reductions with the Mural Circle rather than the Transit Instrument. He was then put in charge of the Transit Circle and the reduction of the zenith distance observations made with it.

Entries in the Journal of the First Assistant show (RGO6/784) show that Belville was absent from the Observatory attending Court on at least two occasions. On the first, in July 1848, he was on Jury Service. On the second, in June 1854, he had been ‘subpoenaed for a trial’, presumably as a witness.

Following Belville’s death in 1856, William Lynn Lynn a former Greenwich Computer who had taken up the post of Junior Assistant at the Cambridge University Observatory in 1855, was appointed to replace him. He commenced work as Seventh Assistant in September 1856.

 

Family matters

Belville was thrice married. His first wife Sarah died in 1826 two weeks after giving birth to their fifth child. Ten months later, Belville married his second wife Apollonia Slaney who nine months later gave birth to a daughter Cecilia. James Glaisher, the Superintendent of the Magnetical and Meteorological Department, caused something of an upset at the end of 1843 when he married Cecilia who was then just 15 years old. The first Belville knew of the proposed marriage was supposedly when Glaisher asked him for the day off, and when asked what for, is said to have replied “to marry your daughter!” Belville disapproved of the marriage, but for it to have proceeded, he must have given his consent, however unwillingly. His relationship with his daughter broke down and working relationships at the Observatory must have been under severe strain. Apollonia died in January 1851. In December of the same year, Belville married Maria Last who gave birth to a daughter Ruth in March 1854.

 

The Belvilles and the Greenwich Time Service

Prior to Airy’s arrival at Greenwich, some of the London watch makers such as Arnold and Vulliamy would send a member of staff to the Observatory every week with a good quality watch to establish the difference between the time it showed and the true time as measured with the instruments at Greenwich. Once the error was known, the other clocks and watches at the watch maker’s premises could be set to the right time. Concerned at the amount of time that was being wasted servicing these requests, Airy restricted such visits to Mondays. By 1840, instead of the watch makers sending someone to Greenwich, Belville was visiting them instead, carrying the time on a pocket chronometer made by John Arnold and charging a small fee for his service. In 1852, when time signals began to be distributed from Greenwich via the electric telegraph, there was still a demand for Belville’s service, so it continued. When he died, in 1856, on discovering that she was not eligible for a widow’s pension, Maria asked Airy if she might continue the service in her late husband’s place. Her request was granted. When she became too old to carry on, her daughter Ruth was allowed to continue in her place. The service finally ended when Ruth retired in her 80s at around the time the time the Second World War started.

 

Burial at Lee

When Belville died, Airy was abroad, having left Greenwich for Sicily on 16 June 1856. He was informed of Belville's death on his return on 5 August (RGO6/25). During Airy’s absence, the Observatory was in the charge of the First Assistant Robert Main, who made the following notes about Belville in his journal (RGO6/784)

June 26:

Mr Henry is very ill again

July 14:

I received information this morning through Mr Glaisher that Mr Henry died yesterday July 13 at 5 o'clock

July 18:

I attended the funeral of Mr Henry who is burried in Lee churchyard, by the side of the tomb of Halley and Pond

 

Obituary

The following obituary is taken from the Thursday 17 July 1856 edition of the Morning Chronicle. Apart from one sentence towards the end of the second paragraph, it was copied and published more-or-less verbatim in numerous other papers and journals.

‘During the past week the Royal Observat[o]ry at Greenwich has sustained a severe loss in the decease of Mr. John Henry Belville, who for the long period of forty-five years was one of its most faithful and attached officers. Mr. Belville was born in the year 1796 at Bath, was educated at Braintree, in Essex, with the view of entering the Church, but in 1811 passed to the Observatory at the time of the late Astronomer Royal’s (Mr. Pond) appointment. Whilst in office Mr. Belville’s duties were of a most onerous and responsible nature; he was successively entrusted with the superintendence of the great mural circle erected by Troughton at Greenwich in the year 1812; with the 10 feet transit instrument, erected likewise by Troughton in 1816 and within the last few years with the great transit circle erected by the present Astronomer Royal. For many years also the rating of the Government chronometers formed not the least part of his official duties, which, for the long period above-mentioned, to the time of his last severe and most painful illness, he continued to discharge with the utmost faithfulness and ability, the duties of his office requiring assiduous attention during the hours both of the day and night.

Mr. Belville was favourably known as the author of a treatise on the “Barometer and Thermometer;” he was also distinguished as the most persevering meteorological observer of the time, his private weather journal extending from the time of his school days at Braintree to within a very short period of his decease, and is one of the finest on record. For the last three years he has regularly furnished a weekly report upon the metropolitan weather to this journal, and has been our meteorological correspondent for the same length of time. His third daughter was married in the year 1844 to Mr. Glaisher, the well-known meteorologist. It is understood to be the intention of his family to inter the deceased in the old churchyard at Lee, in Kent, beside the tomb of the late Astronomer Royal.’

 

Furher Reading

Extracts from Belville’s Journal relating to Meteorological Observations made by him from 1811 onwards. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Volume 14 (1888)

Belville’s Journal is held in the library and archives of the Met Office in Exeter.
Archive reference: MET/2/1/2/3/159

The Belville Family and the Royal Observatory, 1811–1939. Hunt J.L. A&G (1999) 40 (1): 1.23–1.27