Board of Trade | 18 Feby 1856
My dear Tyndall
Eddy,1 since Scott Russell’s difficulties,2 is thinking of trying for the practical class at Woolwich,3 I do not think he has much chance but as working for it will be all gain to him I am willing that he should try his luck, it will be necessary for him to read hard and I have thought that you might perhaps be able to direct me to a good mathematical master not merely to a good mathematician but to one who is likewise able to impart his knowledge.
Mrs Wynne from headaches and bad sleeping is but poorly I hope your sanitary condition4 is better than when we last met, but I should fear, –
Ever most truly yrs | Geo Wynne
RI MS JT/1/W/107
Eddy: Edward Wynne, who was 18.
Scott Russell’s difficulties: Edward Wynne had been apprenticed to his maternal uncle, the naval architect John Scott Russell (1808–82). (Russell had married Mrs Anne Wynne’s sister Harriet Osborne in 1836.) Russell had contracted to build the iron hull of Brunel’s Great Eastern at his Millwall dockyard in May 1853. He was subsequently placed in financial difficulties by a fire in September 1853, the death of his backer, the railway engineer Daniel Gooch in 1854, and the fact that he had under-estimated his costs. He was declared bankrupt in February 1856 and presumably had to release Wynne from his apprenticeship. (George S. Emmerson, John Scott Russell. A Great Victorian Engineer and Naval Architect (London: John Murray, 1977), pp. 105–8.)
Woolwich: the Royal Engineering College at Woolwich. It is unclear whether Wynne knew that Tyndall was involved in the entry examinations.
sanitary condition: (euphemism). As Tyndall’s former employer, Wynne was undoubtedly aware of Tyndall’s proneness to bouts of constipation.
Please cite as “Tyndall1193,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on