My dear Tom
It is Good Friday and the post is starting. I have just time to say that I should hardly like writing directly to any member of the Council of Military Education2 and chiefly for this reason: when I resigned my examinership3 I wrote strongly recommending you,4 but they took no notice of my recommendation. One does not like to have such things repeated.
Of course all my pen can do in the way of testimony shall be done with all my heart. Just think what I can do and let me know.
Yours ever | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/523
LT Typescript Only
[3 April 1863]: the date is given by relation to letter 1994, and by reference to Good Friday, which in 1863 fell on 3 April.
Council of Military Education: from 1856–7, Tyndall wrote and graded examinations in scientific topics for commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He stopped being an examiner when the War Office decreased the pay in April 1857 (see letters 1375 and 1376, Tyndall Correspondence, vol. 6). In January 1858, he again became an examiner for commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers at the Royal Military Academies at both Woolwich and Sandhurst for the newly-established Council of Military Education, which advised the British military on matters of efficiency and civic profession, but resigned again in 1861 (see n. 3). For more on Tyndall’s and others’ roles as examiners for military education, see J. Elwick, ‘Economies of Scales: Evolutionary Naturalists and the Victorian Examination System’, in G. Dawson and B. Lightman (eds), Victorian Scientific Naturalism: Community, Identity, Continuity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), pp. 131–56.
when I resigned my examinership: Tyndall resigned his examinership in 1861 over the issue of his delegating the grading of papers from an exam on 22 January 1861 to his friend Edward Frankland which led to a delay in his turning them in (Journal, RI MS JT/2/13c/1198).
recommending you: Tyndall recommended Hirst for the position of assistant Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich (see letter 1994).
Please cite as “Tyndall1993,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on