1 Woodcroft, Bennet, Subject Matter Index of Patents and Inventions from 2 March 1617 to 1 October 1852, London, 1854, pp. 529–533Google Scholar.

2 For a quadrant: Patent No. 550. Woodcroft, op. cit. (1), 530. Hadley had presented his findings to the Royal Society: Hadley, John, ‘The description of a new instrument for taking angles. By John Hadley, Esq; Vice-Pr. R. S. Communicated to the Society on May 13. 1731’, Philosophical Transactions (1731) 37, pp. 147–356CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An example is held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, which explains that it was ‘the first instrument to measure the height of a star or the sun by using mirrors to bring a reflected image of the object alongside the horizon when viewed through the sight’. See http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/search/lightbox.cfm/category/90211, accessed 23 July 2009.

3 For a method of framing for nautical instruments: Patent No. 1644. Woodcroft, op. cit. (1), p. 530.

4 For a ship's compass: No. 10,277. Woodcroft, op. cit. (1), p. 532. Dent patented another compass in 1850: No. 13,176.

5 As she described herself as ‘Mrs Janet Taylor’ throughout her married life, this is how she will be referred to in this article.

6 Scientific Instrument Society Bulletin (1999) 61, p. 29. The museum wanted to acquire it, but at the reported hammer price of £15,000 it was beyond their budget. Personal communications with Dr Gloria Clifton, curator of navigational instruments at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, and Ron Robinson, of Ron Robinson, Compass Adjusters, Hamble, England.

7 Morrison-Low, Alison D., Making Scientific Instruments in the Industrial Revolution, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, p. 3Google Scholar.

8 Sobel, Dava, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, New York: Walker, 1995Google Scholar; Hewson, Joseph Bushby, A History of the Practice of Navigation, 2nd edn, Glasgow: Brown, Son and Ferguson, 1983, pp. 243–254Google Scholar.

9 Hadley, op. cit. (2).

10 The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, holds a number of examples of Harrison's ‘H4’ timepiece; see http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/explore/object.cfm?ID=ZAA0037&picture=1#content, accessed 23 July 2009.

11 Woodcroft, op. cit. (1), p. 532. A detailed description is found in Janet Taylor, Lunar and Horary Tables, London, 1834, 16–20; and idem, The Principles of Navigation Simplified, with Luni-Solar and Horary Tables, London, 1837, pp. 104–108.

12 Repertory of Arts, Manufactures and Agriculture, vol. 5, London: T. and G. Underwood, 1834.

13 Taylor, Janet, Lunar Tables, London, 1834Google Scholar, flyleaf. Although this was a follow-up work to her first book, Luni-Solar and Horary Tables, London, 1833, it was described as a first edition, rather than a second edition of the previous work.

14 Taylor, Lunar Tables, op. cit. (13), pp. 16–20, 16.

15 Atlas Magazine, 24 August 1834, p. 540.

16 On 1 October 1846 Beaufort was made a rear-admiral. J.K. Laughton, rev. N.A.M. Rodger, ‘Sir Francis Beaufort’, Oxford DNB Online, accessed 14 July 2009.

17 Taylor, Janet, Lunar Tables, 3rd edn, London, 1835Google Scholar, dedication page.

18 For example, Anderson, William, Model Women, 2nd edn, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1871, pp. 228–240Google Scholar; Boase, Frederic, Modern English Biography, 6 vols., Truro: Netherton and Worth, 1892–1921, vol. 3, p. 894Google Scholar; J.H. Lambert, ‘Wolsingham from Early Times to 1938’, unpublished typed manuscript, 1960, held in the Durham County Records Office, Alger, Durham; K., Mrs Janet Taylor – ‘Authoress and Instructress in Navigation and Nautical Astronomy’ (1804–1870), Fawcett Library Papers No. 6, London: L.L.R.S. Publications, 1982Google Scholar; Taylor, Eva G.R., The Mathematical Practitioners of Hanoverian England 1714–1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966, pp. 101–102Google Scholar, 461–462. Janet Taylor is also included in Clifton, Gloria C., Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers 1550–1851, London: Zwemmer, 1995, p. 275Google Scholar. See also Croucher, John, ‘An exceptional woman of science’, Scientific Instrument Society Bulletin (2005) 84, pp. 22–27Google Scholar.

19 She was baptized ‘Jane Ann Ionn’ but was known in her adult life as ‘Janet’. In this article she will be called Janet, to avoid confusion.

20 It is recorded that through the intervention of Michael Angelo Taylor, the member of Parliament for Durham City, Peter Ionn's family was nominated for a scholarship to the Royal School of Embroidering Females at Ampthill, an institution for girls founded by Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III. She was the patroness of several charitable institutions, including the sponsorship of daughters of clergymen and of naval or military officers, ‘orphans of gentlefolk’, to improve their chances of good marriages through better education and accomplishments. Where family records in France noted that Janet's forte was figures, Lambert reported (somewhat quaintly and most likely an erroneous transcription from his source) that the queen supposedly said, ‘Let her come, not to work at tapestry, as at her age it would spoil her figure. But let her be educated with the four until she is of age to take the place of one of them’. Lambert, op. cit. (18), p. 170. As the girls were supposed to be fourteen years of age, that Janet was allowed to attend at nine is remarkable.

21 He was the curate of the church of St Mary and St Stephen and schoolmaster of the Free Grammar School at Wolsingham. His appointment as schoolmaster on 13 May 1783 and curate after his ordination on 25 September 1785 is recorded in the Durham Diocesan Records, Durham University Library, DJR/EA/CLO/3/1785/21. An account of Peter Ionn as a schoolmaster is given by one of his former pupils: W. Nicholson, ‘Recollections of my youth’, in Devey, Thomas Valentine, Records of Wolsingham, Newcastle upon Tyne: Northumberland Press, 1926, p. 295Google Scholar. That her father taught navigation to his pupils is referred to in Edward Maltby to Lord Melbourne, 5 February 1838, Royal Archives Windsor Castle, Melbourne Papers, Reference No. RA MP 9/15.

22 Including, after the publication of her first book in 1833, many editions of Luni-Solar and Horary Tables, Lunar Tables, The Principles of Navigation Simplified, An Epitome of Navigation and Nautical Astronomy, Planisphere of the Fixed Stars with Book of Directions, Diurnal Register for Barometer, Sympiesometer, Thermometer and Hygrometer, A Guide Book to Lt Maury's Wind and Current Charts, Hand-book to the Local Marine Board Examination, for the Officers of the British Mercantile Marine.

23 She was appointed a sub-agent in 1835. In the 1841 Census, at which time Janet was living in Minories, she was listed as ‘chart-seller’. The principal chartseller was Robert Brettel Bate. See Robert Bate to Captain W. Parry, 31 January 1829, UK Hydrographic Office Taunton, MLP 62, I.VII; and McConnell, Anita, R.B. Bate of the Poultry, 1782–1847: The Life and Times of a Scientific Instrument Maker, London: Scientific Instrument Society, 1993Google Scholar.

24 For example, an advertisement in 1854 listed, as part of her business, ‘Manufacturer of every description of nautical and mathematical instruments … Barometers, Air & Water Thermometers, Areometers, Hygrometers, & all kinds of Meteorological Instruments, Especially made and adapted for Sea use, with the particular Scales as required conformable to the Regulations adopted by LIEUT. MAURY, and the Members of the “Maritime Conference,” for the purpose of carrying out an uniform system of Meteorological Observations at Sea’. Mercantile Marine Magazine, October 1854, p. 45.

25 The advertisement also noted, ‘The Deviations in the Compasses of Iron Ships found and corrected’. Janet engaged in correspondence with the Astronomer Royal, Professor George Airy, on the subject. The best examples of this correspondence include Janet Taylor to George Airy, Astronomer Royal, 30 November 1854, Airy Papers, RGO 6/687, Section 22, 173–175, Cambridge University Library (subsequently Airy Papers); George Airy to Janet Taylor, 11 December 1854, Airy Papers, Section 24, 194; Janet Taylor to George Airy, 16 December 1854, Airy Papers, Section 24, 196–203.

26 Compare, for example, the records that are available to document the life and contribution of Mrs Mary Somerville: the Somerville Collection, at Somerville College and the Bodleian Library and other sources referred to in Patterson, Elizabeth C., ‘Mary Somerville’, BJHS (1969) 4, pp. 311–339CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Patterson's later biography, idem, Mary Somerville and the Cultivation of Science, 1815–1840, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983. The authors have located a scant few family papers in Australia, England and France. Some glimpses are also recorded in correspondence with her daughter-in-law, Rachel Henning, published in David Adams (ed.), The Letters of Rachel Henning, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1966.

27 UK Hydrographic Department Archives, Taunton.

28 RGO Archives/RGO 6, held at the Cambridge University Library.

29 The gold medal from King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. See Janet Taylor to Edward Maltby, Lord Bishop of Durham, 15 January 1838, Royal Archives Windsor Library, Reference Box RA MP 9/16.

30 The gold medal received from the king of the Netherlands. See C.G. Wolterbeck, director-general of the Marine, the Netherlands, to Mrs Janet Taylor, 21 September 1836, Department of the Marine Archives, the Netherlands, Letter D, No. 150, 1836.

31 The award from the Pope is referred to in Janet Taylor to Sir Robert Peel, prime minister, 2 March 1844, Peel Papers, British Library, vol. ccclxi, Add 40541, f. 33, March 1844.

32 ‘Return of all Pensions granted and charged upon the Civil List, in accordance with the Act 1 Vict. c. 2, with the Grounds upon which such Pensions have been granted’, Accounts and Papers (1861) 34. See also Public Record Office, Civil List Pensions, 16 January 1860, Ref T29/57722846, awarded on 10 January 1860, ‘in consideration of her benevolent labours among the seafaring population of London and of the circumstances of difficulty in which she is placed by the death of her husband’.

33 E.G.R. Taylor, op. cit. (18). Professor Taylor is no relation of Mrs Taylor.

34 They were married at the British Legation in The Hague by the Chaplain of the English Church, Rotterdam: Gemeente Achief ’s-Gravenhage, Holland.

35 To be published by Pan Macmillan. A significant beginning of this project was anticipated by John Croucher's PhD thesis, ‘The Life and Times of Janet Taylor and her Role in the Development of Sea Navigation’, 2004, Macquarie University (Q143.T292 C76), followed by a presentation on 21 May 2004 at the National Maritime Museum, London, entitled ‘The remarkable Janet Taylor: first lady of navigation’ and the article, op. cit. (18).

36 We know this because it was Captain Beaufort who delivered a report on it in May: Minute Book, 21 May 1834. Biographical details on Beaufort are drawn from Friendly, Alfred, Beaufort of the Admiralty: The Life of Sir Francis Beaufort, London: Hutchinson, 1977Google Scholar; Huler, Scott, Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry, New York: Crown, 2004Google Scholar; Oxford DNB Online, accessed 14 July 2009.

37 On 29 April 1848 he was made Knight Commander of the Bath for his civil services as Hydrographer.

38 As told in Friendly, op. cit. (36), pp. 268–269.

39 Friendly, op. cit. (36), p. 269.

40 Hydrographic Office, Taunton. Beaufort's report is recorded in Minute Book No. 2, Extracts 1831 to 1837, 114, 21 May 1834.

41 Ron Robinson estimated it could have taken as long as two years to develop.

42 The Reverend Peter Ionn died on 2 May 1821, aged fifty-nine. His will, dated 14 April 1818, is held at the University of Durham Library, Durham Probate Records, 1822. The standing of his in-laws and the modest inheritance through his wife is recorded in family records held in private hands in France.

43 This is based on deductions from two sources: first, the London Gazette of 11 May 1864 published a notice of adjudications and first meetings of creditors, amongst them listing, for 11 a.m. on 31 May, ‘Janet Taylor, The Grove, Camberwell’. Under the Bankruptcy Act 1571, commissioners of bankrupts could be appointed to allow a bankrupt to legally discharge their debts to creditors by an equitable and independent distribution of assets and then begin trading again with outstanding debts wiped out. The notices in the London Gazette were published by the commissioners to inform creditors. Second, in a letter from Janet to her children, Janet referred to having to ‘sacrifice’ her beautiful things. Janet Taylor to Deighton and Rachel Henning, 17 August 1869, in the possession of the authors.

44 Cotter, Charles H., A History of the Navigator's Sextant, Glasgow: Brown, Son and Ferguson, 1983, p. 152Google Scholar.

45 Interview transcript, August 2005, in possession of authors. The details which are reported here are drawn from the transcript.

46 Alger, op. cit. (18), p. 9.

47 Royal Commission on London Great Exhibition, Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, 3 vols., vol. 1, section X, Class VIII, 252, entry no. 350: ‘by Taylor, Janet, 104 Minories, manufacturer – sextant for measuring angular distances between heavenly bodies’. National Maritime Museum, NAV1135/F6415-001.

48 ‘Return of all Pensions granted and charged upon the Civil List, in accordance with the Act 1 Vict. c. 2, with the Grounds upon which such Pensions have been granted’, Accounts and Papers (1861) 34Google Scholar. See also John S. Croucher and Rosalind F. Croucher, ‘Mrs Janet Taylor and the Civil List pension: a claim to recognition by her country’, Women's History Review, forthcoming.