Miss Whitehead’s Moon – An Edwardian lady’s lunar sketchbook

2025 February 7

Nigel Longshaw

The brief astronomical career of a lesser-known astronomer and member of the British Astronomical Association is examined with reference to her exchanges with other astronomers, published in the English Mechanic over a short period in the early 20th century, and contributions to an international exhibition of selenography in Barcelona in 1912.

Introduction

On the evening of 1912 Mar 6, the Lough Swilly steam train laid a trail of grey smoke across the Irish countryside. At precisely 7.36 pm, the face of a middle-aged woman was briefly illuminated in a carriage window by a brilliant meteor streaking across the sky. Journeying to a new life in Ireland, she marvelled at this brief celestial visitor, although she was not the only astronomer to report its sighting that evening. However, it was her practiced observational eye which led to the enchanting account published in the English Mechanic.¹ Evelyn Mary Whitehead’s eloquent description of the scene which unfolded before her clearly showed she was no stranger to observing the night sky. However, in 1912 she was leaving behind not only a former life in the beautiful surroundings of North Yorkshire and latterly South Wales, but also the legacy of a brief dalliance with astronomy which, during a short period, brought her international fame.

A large family

Evelyn Mary Whitehead (1868–1948) was born at Riccall, Yorkshire to Mary Whitehead (née Baines) and her husband, George Whitehead. Mary was born in Colne, Lancashire in 1842, and George was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1833. It was a busy household, which included brother James, and sisters Maude and Anne. By 1871, the family had grown to include another sister, Ethel, and a brother, George. Also in residence was Mary’s mother and the family’s needs were attended to by seven servants. Around 1880, the family moved into a large property known as Deighton Grove, Crockey Hill, south of York (Figure 1). Here, four more brothers were born: Earnest, Frederic, Lionel and Arthur. In 1881, the youngest child, Charles, arrived. It was perhaps inevitable that the domestic help also increased and in the 1881 census 13 other names were registered at Deighton Grove, including a housekeeper, butler, footman and governess. In 1892, Deighton Grove was described as ‘…the seat and property of George Whitehead, Esq., J. P., late captain in the Yorkshire Hussars, … pleasantly situated within its own grounds and has been considerably enlarged and improved by its present owner’. In 1945, the property was purchased, with its estate, by York County Hospital for use as an annex for post-operative and semi-convalescent adult and child cases.²

Given their father served in the Yorkshire Hussars it was perhaps inevitable several of Evelyn’s brothers would enter military service, and we can therefore imagine a male-dominated household.³ Although Charles forged a distinguished military career, he also developed a keen interest in the natural world.⁴ Whilst stationed in India, he wrote on the birds of Kohat and Kurram and collected samples of local plants, which he sent back to England for identification. As a result of his ornithological work, a subspecies of the Plain-backed Thrush (Zoothera mollissima whiteheadii), found from Pakistan to west-central Nepal, is named after him.

It would be nice to think that Charles’ interest in the natural world developed through a shared interest with Evelyn, and when Charles was killed in active service in 1915 it must have brought great sadness to the family. However, by this time Evelyn had started a new life in Ireland, and to all intents and purposes her astronomical interest had already waned.⁵

Evidence suggests that Evelyn had an interest in botany, but how did she develop the keen interest in astronomy which led to her featuring briefly on the international stage?

Kindling the flame

Census records suggest that, in 1891, both Evelyn and her sister Maude were either living with or visiting relatives at The Larches, a property located in Newton Abbot, Devon. However, by 1901, Evelyn was back at Deighton Grove with her younger brother Alan and another sister. The 1901 census records Alan’s occupation as a student mechanical engineer. At the beginning of the 20th century, Lionel Whitehead established L. D. Whitehead and Co. and in 1903, with a small loan from his father, purchased an old mill at Tredegar, South Wales, for scrap value.⁵

By 1911, Evelyn had moved to South Wales and was living at Linda Vista (Figure 2), a house in Abergavenny, with her siblings Alan and Arthur. Both brothers were recorded as working in ‘steel rolling mills’ in the 1911 census. The Abergavenny Street Directory, published in 1906, records the property as being unoccupied, however the previous resident was James Straker who lived in the property in 1901. We can only therefore suppose that Arthur, Alan and Evelyn moved into the property sometime after 1906, perhaps to be closer to their brother and assist with his business interests in South Wales.

Linda Vista, Spanish for ‘beautiful view’, is an imposing property overlooking extensive south-facing gardens (Figure 3), with views towards the Blorenge Mountain. The property is believed to have been constructed around 1875 and has a large terrace at first-floor level which overlooks the gardens. The house still stands and has probably changed little in the last 100 years, other than its more recent conversion into self-contained flats. The property is accessed via Byfield Lane, off Tudor Street. Much of the poor-quality housing in the area was demolished in the 1960s as part of a slum clearance programme. Additional land surrounding Linda Vista was purchased by the Whitehead family around 1925, resulting in one of the area’s most notable private gardens. More land was purchased when the original gardens came into the ownership of Abergavenny Borough Council in 1957, passing into the hands of Monmouth District Council in 1974. The gardens remain open to the public.

It was during her time at Linda Vista that Evelyn became friendly with a local evangelist named Owen John Owen (Figure 4). There were many amateur astronomers working in Wales during this period; several were recorded by J. Silas Evans (1864–1953) in his Welsh-language book, Seryddiaeth a Seryddwyr (Astronomy and Astronomers), published in 1923. Bryn Jones has translated into English the chapter of the book which contains several short biographies of astronomers. Owen is described as being ‘…Born in Dolgellau, 1867. He stands highly as a choral conductor, a man of literature, an evangelist and as an astronomer. Much of his work as an observer of comets, the planets and the Moon have appeared in ‘English Mechanic’’.⁶

It is through a letter from Evelyn, published in the English Mechanic, that we can establish her first introduction to astronomical observation and the impression Owen made on her. ‘I much value ‘O. J. O.’s’ [Owen John Owen’s] words of praise in letter 109’, wrote Evelyn in 1910 Sep, ‘for he was my teacher – and still is my master – in astronomy’. A year earlier, discussing the appearance of Tycho in a small telescope, Evelyn had recounted, ‘I remember well my first view of the full moon through a telescope – a year ago – and how this magnificent luminous centre attracted me’. This suggests that Evelyn’s introduction to astronomical observation occurred sometime in late 1908.

Over a relatively short period, many of Evelyn’s lunar drawings were published in the English Mechanic. In the main, these were made with a three-inch refractor and even today are delightful vignettes of the lunar surface. Viewed in context, they display an element of personal discovery on the part of the observer. However, Evelyn’s observations are not just the record of a beginner’s first attempts to depict what the eyepiece revealed; they also demonstrate a purpose in her work. She often returned to the same features to capture the scene under different conditions of illumination and libration, a method of observation often championed to obtain a thorough understanding of a particular area of lunar topography. Her drawings were accompanied by brief, sometimes charming, descriptions of the subject matter and often engendered a dialogue with noted selenographers of the period in the pages of the English Mechanic.

The English Mechanic – an astronomical platform for all

Technical developments in the late 19th and early 20th centuries featured regularly in magazines and periodicals aimed at the enthusiast and hobbyist. The English Mechanic and World of Science, to give it its full title, was the foremost magazine of its type during this period. Founded in 1865, it survived until 1942. The magazine was often advertised as a way to keep up to date with developments in astronomy and many of its contributors were dedicated amateur observers who could write with some authority on the Moon, planets and stars.⁷

In one of her first letters to the English Mechanic, published in the 1909 Sep 10 issue, Evelyn enquired, ‘…through the medium of the E. M. [English Mechanic] allow me to ask Mr. Hawks a few questions’. She continued, ‘What was the focal length and aperture of his instrument and what power did he use? For it strikes me very forcibly that, from the size of the sketch, far more detail ought to have been seen’.

This line of questioning is typical of the letters pages in the English Mechanic. Correspondents often engaged in lengthy exchanges over many issues of the magazine, which sometimes became a little heated.

In this instance, Evelyn was referring to a drawing of the Gassendi crater by Ellison Hawks (1889–1971) published in the 1909 Aug 27 issue. Before the First World War, Hawks was secretary of the Leeds Astronomical Society and had begun writing popular astronomy books, largely aimed at the juvenile reader.⁸ He would later become the advertising manager for the toy maker Meccano and edit the Meccano Magazine.

Along with her letter, Evelyn had submitted her own sketch of Gassendi made with a 75-mm aperture telescope (Figure 5), so there was no doubt she was familiar with the telescopic appearance of the crater. She noted, however, that even though Hawks’s sketch was made under somewhat earlier illumination, could the eastern wall at sunrise really be seen as ‘…an unbroken white line’ as he had drawn it? Evelyn queried several other topographical features depicted by Hawks and closed suggesting she would be grateful ‘…if Mr Hawks would answer my many queries, which I fear, are very numerous’.

Hawks did respond, curtly, in the 1909 Sep 24 issue. Firstly, out of courtesy, he confirmed the type and aperture of the instrument used and wrote, ‘Miss Whitehead seems disappointed that I did not show more intricate detail in my sketch’.⁹ However, he counterargued that ‘…her drawing is singularly bare of the detail one would expect from her criticism’. Hawks closes his letter by stating it was his intention to simply show the outline of Gassendi and not to fill the drawing ‘…with a mass of fine detail which almost every observer sees and delineates differently’ (a statement often reiterated when discussing Gassendi). As we shall see later, despite this apparent criticism, Hawks used several of Evelyn’s drawings to illustrate his book The Boys Book of Astronomy, in 1914.

Despite what might initially appear to be a somewhat fractious exchange, Evelyn’s drawing of Gassendi attracted the attention of at least two other contemporary eminent astronomers. Walter Goodacre (1856–1938) penned a lengthy response mainly dealing with the topographical features of Gassendi referred to in Evelyn’s letter.¹⁰  Arthur Mee’s (1860–1926) letter in the same issue mainly dealt with Mars, but he closed his correspondence by saying, ‘Miss Whitehead’s drawings in your columns suggest a lunar artist of great promise’. Mee, a journalist living in Wales, was instrumental in the formation of the British Astronomical Association (BAA) and the Astronomical Society of Wales in 1895.

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