and I was quickly signalled to go on to RAE Boscombe Down in February. However, this move was suspended for a month due to the travel ban imposed during the fuel shortage of that winter.

In April I was again on the move, this time from Boscombe Down to the radar research airfield at Defford. These quick changes hardly enabled me to settle down and Defford really became just a slow wind-down, helping on odd jobs about the office daily. I did, however, have a pleasant reunion there with the two radar mechanics I had worked with on the Delhi radar.

In July I got notice of demobilisation and instructions to move to Kirkham - but not before I had had an offer from the Met. Office to stay on as a ‘civvy’. This gaire me much heart-searching. Having experienced four years of living out of a kitbag, and because the Met. Office admitted that they could not offer a much better existence in the foreseeable future, I decided that it was not for me. So, whilst hap- pily shedding my service life, I also, very sadly, shed my met. one.

I had thoroughly enjoyed the work and meet- ing the people I had worked with. Under Cham- pion, 706 Forecast Centre eventually became a model of efficiency with a dedicated and happy staff that worked faultlessly together.

I still communicate each Christmas with two ex-colleagues. One an ex-London course WAAF who, by a remarkable coincidence, became the wife of a 706 colleague - before he came out to India! For me, I have been particularly lucky. The worst enemy I had to face was the anoph- eles mosquito, but I had been able to extend my hobby into my service work and receive professional training into the bargain.

But all was not lost on the ‘met.’. Back home I upgraded my ‘station’ to take on British Rainfall work and for 37 years supplied the ‘Old Firm’ with data. Unfortunately, deteriorating exposure compelled ‘retirement’ in 1990 and a much-lamented break with my old friends. However, the station still continues with a radio-teleprinter to keep in touch with the ‘real stuff, and much emphasis on special thun- derstorm observations - I just cannot give them up!

Pen portraits of Presidents of the Meteorological Societies of London - Dr George Birkbeck, MD

J. M. Walker University of Wales College of Cardiff

Born at Settle (North Yorkshire) on 10 January 1776, George Birkbeck was the third child (second son) of William Birkbeck, a Quaker woollen merchant. He attended a local school for a short while and was then, at the age of eight, sent to a boarding school for Quaker children at Newton-in-Slaidburn, about 20 miles from Settle. Six years later, and partly as a consequence of his mother’s death (which occurred in June 1790), he was sent to live with

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a relative, Robert Foster of Hebblethwaite Hall, near Sedbergh. Here, under John Dawson of Sedbergh, he studied mathematics and, under Foster’s guidance, Latin and Greek. After a year or two at Hebblethwaite Hall, he became a pupil of Dr Thomas Garnett, who practised medicine at Knaresborough in the wintertime and Harrogate during the summer. Then, a year or so later, he moved to Leeds, to study pharmacy under Mr Logan, a surgeon at the Leeds Infirmary. When he was eighteen, he enrolled as a student of medicine at the Uni- versity of Edinburgh but after only one year moved to London, where he studied at a num- ber of private medical schools. He returned to the University of Edinburgh in 1796 and graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1799.

His MD dissertation (Tentamen Chemico- Physiologicurn de Sanguine) was dedicated to a former teacher, Dr Garnett, who was then, to quote the dedication, “professor of natural philosophy in the college founded by Anderson in Glasgow”. Established in 1796 under the will of John Anderson, professor of natural philosophy in the University of Glasgow from 1757 until his death in 1796, Anderson’s Insti- tution* provided liberal and scientific education for both men and women. To this Institution, on 18 November 1799, Birkbeck was appointed professor of natural philosophy in succession to Dr Garnett. Straight away, he turned his attention to the educational needs of artisans by providing lecture courses for working men, who were admitted on payment of a small fee. From these ‘mechanics’ classes’ grew the Glas- gow Mechanics’ Institution, formed in 1823. By then, however, Birkbeck had long since left Glasgow. He moved to London in 1804 and there practised as a physician, first in Finsbury Square, then in Cateaton Street and later (from 1822 or 1823) in Old Broad Street.

Though his medical practice and professional engagements left him little spare time, he retained his interest in the educational needs of the working class and helped found and pro- mote the London Institution, which was estab- lished in 1806 “for the advancement of literature and the diffusion of useful knowl-

* Later (1828) Anderson’s University and now the University of Strathclyde.

edge”. In 1823, he delivered at this Institution seven lectures on the atmosphere and its modi- fications. How long he had possessed an interest in meteorology is not known, but it is possible that he met John Dalton, an enthusiastic meteorologist, during his stay at Hebblethwaite Hall. It may also be significant that his successor at Anderson’s Institution was Dr Andrew Ure, who published a paper on hygrometry in the 1818 volume of the Philosophical Transactions ofthe Royal Society. Be this as it may, Birkbeck was sufficiently interested in meteorology to be among those who gathered at the London Coffee House on 15 October 1823 to form the London Meteorological Society. At the Society’s second meeting, on 12 November 1823, he was appointed President.

When, in The Mechanics’ Magazine (No. 7, 1823), an editor, Joseph Robertson, proposed that a mechanics’ institution should be formed in London, Birkbeck immediately responded. He lent the sum of f3700 for the building of a lecture room and, as president of the insti- tution, delivered the opening address (on 20 February 1824). Many years later (1866), in honour of its first president, the institution was renamed the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, and from it developed the Uni- versity of London’s Birkbeck College, which still caters specifically for mature students, par- ticularly those who wish to obtain academic qualifications by part-time study. Birkbeck was also a founder of the original University of London (1826), later University College London, and a member of its council.

Birkbeck belonged to many learned societies, among them the Royal Medical Society, which he joined in 1794, the Medical Society of Lon- don (1807), the Geological Society (1808) and the Astronomical Society (1820). He was elected an honorary member of the prestigious Guy’s Hospital Physical Society soon after his arrival in London and served as its president for about 20 years. His presidency of the London Meteorological Society continued until March 1839, when he was elected a vice-president, an office he retained until his death, on 1 Decem- ber 1841.

Though on occasion he presented the papers of others, there is no record of Birkbeck ever reading a scientific paper of his own at a meeting

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of the Meteorological Society. This is not really surprising, given that he devoted so much of his spare time to the cause of popular education and appeared to be concerned more with imparting knowledge than with advancing it. His interest in meteorology was nevertheless strong. He regularly attended meetings of the

Meteorological Society and, as Thomas Kelly has noted in his biography (George Birkbeck: pioneer of adult education, 1957), he lectured on meteorological topics at the London Mechanics’ Institution. His place in history is assured as the first person to preside over a meteorological society in the United Kingdom.

Further papers of Professor Gordon Manley

Audrey Fairfax Manley (nee Robinson), Dame of Grace of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, died on 18 May 1993. She was the widow of Professor Gordon Manley, after whose death in 1980 she deposited a collection of his manu- scripts catalogued by Gillian Sheail (1985) in the library of the University of Cambridge.

Audrey Manley bequeathed the balance of Gordon Manley’s publications, journals and manuscripts to the Department of Geography in the University of Durham, where her father had been Vice-Chancellor and Warden, and Master of Hatfield College. In addition, she endowed further the Gordon Manley Prize, administered by the Chairman of the Board of Studies in Geography at the University of Durham. The prize is awarded to a post- graduate student for research into aspects of climatic change (Tooley and Sheail 1985).

The deposit in the Department of Geography, which has not yet been catalogued, comprises ten boxes of manuscripts, 732 glass slides and hundreds of photographic negatives and prints, many of which have not been pub- lished. In addition, there are runs of journals of Weather and the Quarterly J o u t ~ a l of the Royal Meteorologzcal Soczety containing articles annotated by Gordon Manley, and copies of newspaper articles in the Manchester Guardian, the Guardian and the Scotsman.

An attempt was made to catalogue Manley’s newspaper articles (McNiven and Tooley 1985) covering the period 1954-61, which under- estimated their range and scope. Manley contri- buted regularly between 1945 and 1972, and popularised the science of meteorology with

erudite and witty articles. The 15 extant manu- scripts give insights into the research that was necessary for each article. The headlines to the articles were the invention of Gordon Manley , and many will recall such arresting headlines as “A summer of ill repute”, “This grey-green island”, “What the clouds foretell for polling day”, “Swinging weather”, “Oh, to be in Wigan, now that summer’s there”, and “This Lorna Doone winter”.

The most substantial manuscripts in this collection are the 16 notebooks on London Weather 1723-181 1 , the records of the Associ- ation for the Study of Snow and Ice, notes on the Tugtilik meteorological record taken during the expedition to East Greenland (Manley 1937), and the collection of glass slides and negatives. The London weather research was supported by a grant from the Meteorological Office and Manley was assisted by Dr Elizabeth Shaw. Book 1 contains coded monthly weather data from 1723 to 18 1 1, and Book 2 is a London Weather Diary from 1806 to 1811. Tipped in to Book 2 is an envelope with the title “Notes made by me for the 180&1811 observations book” and a characteristic command “DO NOT LOSE”. Book 3 contains the reductions of daily observations of temperature, pressure, wind and weather 1723-1805. The following 13 books contain weather data for 5- or 6-year periods from 1728 until 1805.

The Association for the Study of Snow and Ice was established in 1937, whilst Manley was at Durham. Snow survey cards were designed and sent out to observers in Scotland (Avie- more, Derry Lodge, Braemar, Glendessary, Glen Feshire, Eskdalemuir, Ben Lawers, West Linton, Craigdarrock, Elgin, Soutra and Ach- tubhmore), Wales (Wrexham, Crickhowell and Beaufort) and England (Doddington, Garrigill,

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