Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/478

 director of the East India Company's observatory at Madras, Taylor landed there on 15 Sept. 1830, and promptly unpacked an instrumental outfit by Dollond, consisting of a five-foot transit, a four-foot mural circle, and a small equatoreal. Early in 1831 he began work with four native assistants, whom he trained so effectively that his obligatory absences on the trigonometrical survey of India in no way impaired the activity of the institution. During 1831–9 he published five volumes of results, and in 1844 the ‘Madras General Catalogue’ of 11,015 stars for the epoch 1 Jan. 1835. This production was characterised by Sir George Airy in 1854 (Monthly Notices, xiv. 145) as ‘the greatest catalogue of modern times. In the number of observations,’ he remarked, ‘and in the number and distribution of the stars, and in the circumstance that the observations were made, reduced, combined, and printed at the same place, and under the same superintendence, it bears the palm from all others.’

Taylor visited England in 1840, and returned to Madras in 1841. On 10 Feb. 1842 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In the following year, while staying at the Trevandrum observatory, his shortness of sight occasioned him an accident from which he never altogether recovered. He died at Southampton on 4 May 1848, leaving a widow, Eliza, daughter of Colonel Eley, C. S. I. By her he had three sons.

Taylor accumulated extensive meteorological and magnetic data at Madras, and organised similar observations elsewhere in India. His determination of the longitude of Madras was of considerable importance to navigation (Memoirs Roy. Astronomical Society, xvi. 1). He observed Halley's comet 19 Feb. to 21 March 1836 (ib. x. 335), and Wilmot's 5 Jan. to 11 March 1845 (Monthly Notices, vii. 11). He was a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Mädler regarded Taylor's observations as comparable in value to those of Dr. James Bradley [q. v.] and as the first of satisfactory accuracy made within the tropics (Astr. Nach. No. 675). They have for half a century been indispensable to inquiries into the proper motions of southern stars.



TAYLOR, TOM (1817–1880), dramatist and editor of ‘Punch,’ was born at Bishop-Wearmouth, a suburb of Sunderland, on 19 Oct. 1817. His father, Thomas Taylor (1769–1843), was self-educated, having begun life in early boyhood as a labourer on a small farm in Cumberland. By thrift, industry, and intelligence he came in early manhood to be the head partner in a flourishing brewery firm at Durham, and, on that city being incorporated, was one in the first batch of aldermen in the new municipality. Tom Taylor's mother (1784–1858), though born in Durham, was of German origin, both her parents being natives of Frankfort-on-the-Maine. Her maiden name was Arnold. When Taylor betrothed himself to her she was companion at Belton to the daughters of Earl Brownlow.

Tom was educated first at Grange school in Sunderland, and afterwards at the university of Glasgow, where he carried off three gold medals. Finally, in 1837, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. There he graduated B.A. in 1840 as junior optime in mathematics and in the first class of the classical tripos. In 1842 he was elected a fellow of Trinity, and proceeded M.A. in 1843. For the next two years Taylor pursued the career of a ‘coach’ at Cambridge, and met with great success. In the interests of his younger brothers he declined the ample annual allowance hitherto placed at his command by his father, and resolved thenceforth to support himself on his fees as tutor and upon the income of his fellowship.

Taylor quitted Cambridge towards the close of 1844, and in 1845 was appointed professor of English literature and the English language in the London University. He held the post for two years. Meanwhile, having kept his terms as a law student at the Inner Temple, he was called to the bar on 20 Nov. 1846. For a while he went the northern circuit. But a new opening was offered him in 1850, when, consequent on the passing of the Public Health Act, the board of health was called into existence, and Taylor was appointed assistant secretary under the presidency of Sir Benjamin Hall, (afterwards Lord Llanover). In August 1854 he was promoted to the position of secretary, with an income of 1,000l. a year. When the board of health was absorbed in the local government board his post became that of secretary to the sanitary department. He eventually retired on a pension of 650l. in 1871, when his office was abolished.

But Taylor owed his fame and the greater part of his income to other occupations. From his first settling in London he had engaged in journalism, and he obtained in early life remunerative work on the ‘Morning Chronicle’ and the ‘Daily News’ as a leader-writer. At an early date, too,