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People: Charles George Talmage

Born in Greenwich in 1840, Charles Talmage was the eldest son of Charles Talmage a grocer and his wife Elizabeth. He was taken on at the Observatory in 1856 as a Boy Computer at the age of 15 to work on the 1831–1851 lunar reductions. Other computers taken on at about the same time were Edward Beresford Hanson, William Nash, John Richard Lucas, Mondeford Reginald Dolman, and Malcolm Jason Brown. Talmage was one of eleven computers recorded as being at the Observatory on 1 January 1860 (RGO6/75). He is recorded in the introductions to the annual volumes of Greenwich Observations as having had observing duties in 1859 and 1860. He resigned in early 1860 to take up the post of  Observer at Mr Bishop’s Observatory, Regent’s Park, under the superintendance of John R Hind. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomcial Society on 11 December 1863. In 1865, he was appointed Director of the private observatory of J Gurney Barclay at Leyton. He died unmarried in 1886.

Following his death, a memorial window was erected in the church of St Michael and All Angels, Walthamstow, which was under construction at the time.

The memorial window in the south aisle of St Michael and All Angels, Walthamstow

Obituary

Obituary. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 47 (1887), pp.142– 3