The History of Wandsworth Common

Added 1.10.2019

IN PROGRESS — NOT FOR PUBLICATION

Common People



Northern Rockhopper Penguin, the national bird of Tristan da Cunha, is named after Wandsworth Common-born Henry Nottidge Moseley.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Father and son: Henry and Henry Nottidge Moseley

The polymath Henry Moseley (mathematician, astronomer, engineer, cleric, school inspector (1801-1872)) moved to Wandsworth in the 1830s. He married Harriet Nottidge ("daughter of William Nottidge of Wandsworth Common, Surrey") at St Ann's Wandsworth in 183?.

The Nottidges were major landowners in the area between what would become the railway line/Earlsfield Road and East Hill. In the 1880s? there was a "Nottidge Road" off Garratt Lane - it was later extended to form Earslfield Road - see maps. When did they come to Wandsworth? Are there any signs of their presence in the area?

Their son Henry Nottidge Moseley (1844-1891) grew up on the edge of the Common in St Ann's Rd/Hill/Lane [its name changed frequently in the C19]. As a young boy he was taught science by John Buckmaster, and later travelled as naturalist on a number of important global maritime explorations, including the Challenger expedition (1872-1876), that laid the foundations of oceanography. He became Linacre Professor of Human and Comparative Anatomy [sic?] at Oxford. He was also responsible for bringing Pitt-Rivers Museum to Oxford, where became in effect the first curator.

HNM grew up only a short walk from the Black Sea - a Mecca for amateur and professional naturalists as a source of aquatic plants and invertebrates such as hydrachnids (water spiders) and microscopic rotifers. Surely it is no accident that HNM's particular specialism was marine invertebrates (though he became expert in many other areas too, including botany and anthropology).

[Source: Link.]

Buckmaster:

"I devoted my vacation to science, and the making of models, which were approved. After one of my lessons I was asked to give lectures outside the college, and obtain the permission of the principal to do so. The Government Inspector, who resided not far off, made arrangements for me to attend his house twice a week and give lessons to his two boys with half a dozen others. I took this class for twelve months, when a piece of Church patronage removed him.

"More than 30 years after I met one of his sons at the Society of Arts. He was then Linacre professor at Oxford. When my name was mentioned he looked at me. I hesitated as to who ought to speak first, as our positions in life we are now very different; but I resolved on making myself known.

"He took me warmly by the hand, and said, 'I should never have been where I am but for your teaching, which gave me a love for science I have ever since cultivated. The other day I was one of the examiners for the Radcliffe, and there was a candidate of your name up that brought you forcibly home to my memory. I sent for him, but he had gone down. I have since learned he was your son, and I congratulate you on his success. You must promise to come to Oxford and spend a week with me, when we can talk over the past with a cigar in the garden.'"

HENRY MOSELEY BIOGRAPHY

Henry Moseley

Born 9 July 1801, Long Buckby, Northamptonshire, England

\n\n

Died 20 January 1872, Olveston, Gloucestershire, England

Summary

Henry Moseley was an English churchman, mathematician, and scientist. He served as Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Astronomy at King's College, London. He then became of of the first H.M. inspectors of schools.

View three larger pictures

Biography

Henry Moseley was the son of William Moseley and Margaret Robins. Let us make it clear before we proceed that the details at the beginning of the Dictionary of National Biography article [16], contain errors. The article begins:-

Moseley, Henry (1801-1872), mathematician and writer on mechanics, was born on 9 July 1801, the son of Dr William Willis Moseley, who kept a large private school at Newcastle under Lyme, and his wife, Margaret Jackson. He was educated at the grammar school in Newcastle under Lyme ...

William Moseley was a student at Hoxton Academy in London which was for dissenting divinity students. He was invited to become a pastor at Atherstone in Warwickshire in a church formed on 19 February 1794, he left Atherstone to become an independent pastor in Long Buckby, Northamptonshire in 1795. On 27 May 1796 he married Margaret Robins, the daughter of Robert and Margaret Robins. Their first child, William Michael Robert Moseley, was born in Long Buckby on 25 January 1798; he became an architect. Their second child was Henry Moseley, the subject of this biography.

etc etc

[

[https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Moseley/]

I have saved this (VG) article here: henry-moseley-biography-mathshistory.

The Bevington connection

Geoffrey Bevington's father James Bourne [?] Bevington lived with the Moseleys at Wandsworth Common until he married and set up home for himself at Ivy House, only a few hundred or so yards away. He's living with them in the 1841 Census. What exactly was their connection? Harriet Nottidge, like James, was born in Bermondsey, and were much the same age [both born c.1806].

1851 CENSUS

James B Bevington, Manufacturer of Leather, with wife Mary and son Samuel, Student at King's College. Where was Geoffrey (b.1838) at this time? Is he included on another page?

[NB Henry Moseley was a professor at King's 1831-1844 [it opened 1829]. What was Samuel studying at King's? Interesting that Geoffrey shows himself with a microscope and an astronomical telescope.]

[Source: Link.]

On 20 January 1831 he was appointed professor of natural and experimental philosophy and astronomy at the newly established King's College, London, where he was instrumental in establishing the department of practical science and engineering [PB: No wonder he was keen on promoting John Buckmaster!] . He held the post until 12 January 1844, when he was appointed one of the first of her majesty's inspectors of normal schools.

Buckmaster suggests HM was removed by "a piece of Church patronage": "The Government Inspector, who resided not far off, made arrangements for me to attend his house twice a week and give lessons to his two boys with half a dozen others. I took this class for twelve months, when a piece of Church patronage removed him." What can this be about?

William and Mary Nottidge (Harriet's parents), with grandchild Anna Moseley (12, born Wandsworth), in St Anne's Hill, 1851

[Source: Link.]

Surely the Moseleys must appear in Geoffrey Bevington's photographs? When it is possible to view the GB album again, CHECK.

John Buckmaster (Village Politician), at this time still training to be a teacher in Battersea, describes how he knew Moseley father and son:

I devoted my vacation to science, and the making of models, which were approved. After one of my lessons I was asked to give lectures outside the college, and obtained the permission of the principal to do so. The Government inspector [PB: this was Henry Moseley], who resided not far off, made arrangements for me to attend his house twice a week and give lessons to his two boys with half a dozen others. I taught this class for twelve months, when a piece of Church patronage removed him.

More than thirty years after I met one of his sons at the Society of Arts. He was then Linacre professor at Oxford. When my name was mentioned he looked at me. I hesitated as to who ought to speak first, as our positions in life were now very different but I resolved on making myself known.

He took me warmly by the hand, and said, "I should never have been where I am but for your teaching, which gave me a love for science I have ever since cultivated. The other day I was one of the examiners for the Radcliffe, and there was a candidate of your name up that brought you forcibly home to my memory. I sent for him, but he had gone down. I have since learned he was your son, and I congratulate you on his success. You must promise to come to Oxford and spend a week with me, when we can talk over the past with a cigar in the garden." [pp.247-8]

[PB: Of Buckmaster's 4 sons, 3 got first-class degrees at Oxford - so it could have been any of them. The most famous son, Stanley Owen, got a second.]



Northern-Rockhopper-Penguin-Eudyptes-moseleyi.jpg

Northern-Rockhopper-Penguin-Eudyptes-moseleyi.jpg

(Click on image to enlarge)

Henry Moseley I (1801 - 1872)

Moved to WC in the 1830s.

Henry Moseley

(1801 - 1872)

B. B. Woodward, revised by R. C. Cox

https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19388

Published: 24 May 2007

Moseley, Henry (1801 - 1872), mathematician and writer on mechanics, was born on 9 July 1801, the son of Dr William Willis Moseley, who kept a large private school at Newcastle under Lyme, and his wife, Margaret Jackson. He was educated at the grammar school in Newcastle under Lyme, and when about fifteen years old he attended a school at Abbeville, France. In 1818 he studied at a naval school in Portsmouth; while there he wrote his first paper, on measuring the depth of the cavities seen on the surface of the moon, which was published in the Philosophical Magazine of that year. In 1821 he was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge, graduating BA, as seventh wrangler, in 1826, and proceeding MA in 1836.

Moseley was ordained deacon in 1827 and priest in 1828, and became curate at West Monkton, near Taunton. There he devoted himself to mathematics and wrote his first book, A Treatise on Hydrostatics (1830). On 20 January 1831 he was appointed professor of natural and experimental philosophy and astronomy at the newly established King's College, London, where he was instrumental in establishing the department of practical science and engineering [PB: No wonder he was keen on promoting John Buckmaster!] . He held the post until 12 January 1844, when he was appointed one of the first of her majesty's inspectors of normal schools. He was also chaplain of King's College from 31 October 1831 to 8 November 1833.

On 23 April 1835 Moseley married Harriet, daughter of William Nottidge, of Wandsworth Common, Surrey; they had a son, Henry Nottidge Moseley. As one of the jurors of the Great Exhibition of 1851 he came under the notice of the prince consort, and in 1853 he was presented to a residential canonry in Bristol Cathedral; in 1854 he became vicar of Olveston, Gloucestershire, and he was appointed chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1855.

Moseley wrote a number of journal articles, chiefly on statics, as well as the article on definite integrals in the Encyclopaedia metropolitana (1837), and a book entitled The Mechanical Principles of Engineering and Architecture (1843), which was reprinted in America for the use of the military school at West Point, and was also translated into German. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in February 1839. He was also a corresponding member of the Institut de France, a member of the Council of Military Education, and vice-president of the Institution of Naval Architects. He received an honorary DCL from Oxford in 1870.

He was active in the promotion of working-class education, and an advocate of the development of commercial or middle schools, to be established on a scientific rather than a literary basis. He died at Olveston on 20 January 1872. He was survived by his wife. [PB: Buckmaster again!]

Sources

Crockford (1872)

Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects, 13 (1872), 328 - 30

Google PreviewWorldCat

Venn, Alum. Cant.

C. Knight, ed., The English cyclopaedia: biography, 6 vols. (1856 - 8) [suppl. (1872)]

Google PreviewWorldCat

CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1875)

Archives

Hove Central Library, Sussex, letters to William Pole

UCL, letters to Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

Likenesses

Maull & Polyblank, sepia photograph,

RS

Wealth at Death under £25,000: treble probate, 1876, CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1872)

Henry Moseley II (18 - 18)

Born WC.

He married Amabel Gwyn Jeffreys, the daughter of the Welsh biologist and conchologist John Gwyn Jeffreys. She was also the British women's champion of chess in 1913.

Their son, also called Henry Mosely, was a pioneering physicist.

[HNM's] Dictionary of National Biography entry says:

Moseley, Henry Nottidge (1844 - 1891)

B. B. Woodward, revised by Terrie M. Romano

https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19389

Published in print: 23 September 2004

Published online: 23 September 2004

Moseley, Henry Nottidge (1844 - 1891), naturalist, was born at St Ann's Hill, Wandsworth, Surrey, on 14 November 1844, the son of Henry Moseley (1801 - 1872), the mathematician, and Harriet, daughter of William Nottidge of Wandsworth Common. He was educated at Harrow School, where he was an undistinguished student except for his 'experiments on plants, preservation of insects, etc.' (Bourne, vi).

In 1864 he entered Exeter College, Oxford. His family hoped that he would take a degree in either mathematics or classics, but these subjects proved so uncongenial to him that he was finally allowed to work with George Rolleston, Linacre professor of human anatomy, physiology, and comparative anatomy.

In 1868 Moseley came out with a first class in the natural science schools. Elected to the Radcliffe travelling fellowship in 1869, Moseley, with his close friend, Edwin Ray Lankester, went to Vienna and studied in Rokitanski's laboratory. On returning to England Moseley entered as a medical student at University College, London.

In 1871, again with Lankester, who was later to succeed him as Linacre professor, he went to the continent and studied at Leipzig under Professor Carl Ludwig. In 1869 Ludwig had set up his physiological institute at Leipzig, where he was to train an entire generation of physiologists. There Lankester and Moseley, along with the many Britons who followed them, were introduced to the latest experimental techniques which they applied to the study of comparative anatomy.

From Leipzig Moseley published his first scientific memoir, 'Ein Verfahren um die Blutgefässe der Coleopteren auszuspritzen' (Berichte über Die Verhandlungen der Königlich. Sächsische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften: Mathematische-physische Classe 1, 1821, 3.276 - 8).

Moseley had said 'that his favourite reading was Robinson Crusoe, and that he first acquired from Defoe's story the desire to see foreign countries and study their inhabitants and productions' (Bourne, vi).

Another childhood influence was Darwin's account of his voyage on the Beagle, and, like Darwin, after being invited to join an expedition - that of the Eclipse to Ceylon in the autumn of 1871 - Moseley never returned to the practice of medicine. During the voyage he made valuable spectroscopic observations in the neighbourhood of Trincomalee and he also formed a miscellaneous collection of natural history objects, including a quantity of land planarians, which he carefully studied on his return to Oxford. The results of this investigation, On the Anatomy and Histology of the Land Planarians of Ceylon (1874), were read before the Royal Society.

In 1872 Moseley was appointed one of the naturalists on the scientific staff of the Challenger, and accompanied that expedition in its four-year voyage round the world. There being no botanist attached to the expedition, Moseley undertook the collection of plants, and wherever the expedition landed his zeal as a collector led him always to remain on shore until the last moment, trusting his shipmates to retrieve him, and on one occasion the ship had to turn back - he had been left behind at Kerguelen's Land.

Back in England in 1876 Moseley was elected to a fellowship at his old college (Exeter), and spent several years at Oxford working out the results of the expedition and preparing his reports, as well as writing important memoirs on the corals and their allies.

In the summer of 1877 Moseley was commissioned by an English company to report on certain lands in California and Oregon. He took the opportunity to visit Washington Territory, Puget Sound, and Vancouver Island, and to study some of the Indian nations of America. On his return he published a book on Oregon (1878), for which he received a formal vote of thanks from the legislative assembly of that state.

In 1879 Moseley was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and was also appointed assistant registrar to the University of London, a post he held until 1881, when he succeeded his friend and teacher, Rolleston, in the Linacre professorship of human and comparative anatomy at Oxford. (At the same time a new chair of physiology was created.) He became, ex officio, a fellow of Merton College.

On 24 February 1881 Moseley married Amabel Nevile Gwyn Jeffreys (d. 1927), the daughter of the conchologist John Gwyn Jeffreys. She travelled with Moseley, assisted him with his work, and shared his enthusiasm for the natural world. She tended Moseley during his long, final illness, and after his early death she was left to raise a son Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887 - 1915), and two daughters.

Moseley was a tireless worker. He put enormous effort into his research and teaching. In addition his administrative duties were daunting. Within Oxford he worked tirelessly at the Sisyphian task of reviving the natural science schools, and he secured the Pitt-Rivers anthropological collection for the university, which he then took on the task of housing and organizing.

Outside Oxford, Moseley served twice on the council of the Royal Society, and was on that of the Zoological Society, of which he had become a fellow in 1879, as well as on the council of the Anthropological Institute, which he joined in 1885. He was, besides, a fellow of the Linnean Society from 1880, and of the Royal Geographical Society from 1881. In 1884 he was president of section D of the British Association at Montreal, and received the honorary degree of LLD from McGill University. He was also a founder and member of council of the Marine Biological Association.

Moseley's principal characteristic was an inborn aversion to accept any statement or recorded observation which he had not been able to verify for himself. He was an effective lecturer, very genial outside the classroom, and a staunch friend. Scientifically Moseley, like Lankester and T. H. Huxley, was among the group in Britain who created the new field of biology.

Among Moseley's scientific achievements may be named his discovery of a system of tracheal vessels in Peripatus that furnished a new clue to the origin of tracheae, and the memoir on Peripatus itself constituted an important contribution towards a knowledge of the phylogeny of arthropods. His investigations on living corals cleared up many doubtful points concerning the relationships between the members of that group, and led to the establishment of the group of hydrocorallin. Moseley also was the discoverer of the eyes on the shells of several species of chiton and his last publication, On the Presence of Eyes in the Shells of Certain Chitonjdae (1855 [1888?]), was devoted to its minute structures. It was in recognition of such services to biological science that the Royal Society in 1887 awarded him its royal medal.

Moseley's Notes by a Naturalist on the Challenger (1879, 2nd edn 1892) appealed to the widest circle of readers, and approached Darwin's Journal of the Cruise of the Beagle in interest and importance. To the official reports of the results of the cruise he contributed a portion of the 'Narrative' and two independent zoological reports: one On Certain . . . Corals, and the other On the Structure of the Peculiar Organs on the Head of Ipnops. During his career he also contributed upwards of thirty papers to scientific journals, besides writing the section on zoology for the Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry (1886).

Unfortunately the pace of Moseley's life damaged his health. For years before his final illness he suffered from headaches, and depression. In 1887 his health gave way, as a result, it was believed, of overwork. After that date he never again carried out his duties as Linacre chair - he was succeeded by his lifelong friend Lankester - and on 10 November 1891 he succumbed to an attack of bronchitis and died at Firwood, Clevedon, Somerset.

Sources

G. C. Bourne, 'Memoir', in H. N. Moseley, Notes by a naturalist (1892)

Google PreviewWorldCat

The Times (13 Nov 1891)

Google PreviewWorldCat

W. J. O'Connor, Founders of British physiology: a biographical dictionary, 1820 - 1885 (1988)

Google PreviewWorldCat

Foster, Alum. Oxon.

Nature, 45 (1891 - 2), 79 - 80

Google PreviewWorldCat

private information, 1894

b. cert.

m. cert.

Archives

NHM, journal of HMS Challenger

Oxf. U. Mus. NH, corresp. and MSS

U. Oxf., department of zoology, drawings and photographs

ICL, T. H. Huxley MSS

NL Scot., letters to John Burdon Sanderson

Oxf. U. Mus. NH, letters to Sir E. B. Poulton

UCL, letters to John Burdon Sanderson

Likenesses

photograph, repro. in Bourne, 'Memoir', in Moseley, Notes by a naturalist, frontispiece

photographs,

U. Oxf., department of zoology

photogravure,

NPG

wood-engraving,

NPG; repro. in ILN (28 Nov 1891)

Wealth at Death

£14,586 12s. 4d.: probate, 13 Jan 1892, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

View the article for this person in the Dictionary of National Biography archive edition.

See also

Moseley, Henry (1801 - 1872), mathematician and writer on mechanics

Jeffreys, John Gwyn (1809 - 1885), lawyer and conchologist

Moseley, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys (1887 - 1915), physicist

External resources

National Archives

[DNB: Henry Nottidge Moseley.]

[Pitt-Rivers Museum: Pitt-Rivers and Moseley.]

Henry Moseley III (1887 - 1915)

Leading English physicist, son of HNM and Amabel Gwyn Jeffreys. Born Weymouth, Dorset, England. Died Gallipoli during WWI aged 27.

[Source: Moseley's Law relates the frequency of the x-rays emitted by atoms to its atomic number - a principle on which the modern Periodic Table is based.]