RT Journal Article T1 Science and the City: Spaces and geographies of Metropolitan Science A1 Rebekah Higgitt A1 Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin A1 Noah Moxham YR 2022 VO IS Spring 2021 K1 commerce K1 craft K1 early modern K1 institutions K1 knowledge K1 London K1 practice K1 spaces K1 trade AB The Metropolitan Science research project, based at the University of Kent from 2017–2020 and designed to run alongside the Science City gallery project, explores the significant place of craft, trade and commercial institutions in the development of London’s technical and experimental knowledge cultures. Drawing on this research, this paper presents three case studies to show what can be revealed by considering the spaces in and around such institutions – the Royal Mint in the Tower of London, the Trinity House on Water Lane and East India House on Leadenhall Street. These sites combined ceremonial and administrative functions with important roles in the processes of making, codifying, storing, disseminating and assessing knowledge of various kinds. We examine how, both as physical and imaginative spaces, they enabled, structured and limited these processes. Showing the various ways in which the spaces we discuss were defined, policed, used and networked, we consider how their multifunctional character, which often blurred distinctions between public and private, impacted on their communities of knowledge and practice and on broader metropolitan scientific cultures. This is a matter of how they related to other spaces, other authorities, and other resources, but also of how the communities that occupied them sought to balance commercial or craft secrecy with public accountability. NO ‘In discharge of the great trust of which place hath imployed his best Industry to do his Majesty’s faithful service’, The National Archives (TNA), MINT 1/1, fo. 98; ‘in satisfaction of his labour and industry’, TNA, MINT 1/1, fo. 145. NO OED: ‘Characterized by or showing intelligent or skilful work; skilful, clever, ingenious, artful.’ NO For a contemporary account of the Trial of the Pyx, see Goldsmiths’ Hall Archive, MS C II.2.1, fos. 28r, 30r. NO TNA, MINT 1/1, fo. 145 NO TNA, MINT 1/1, fos. 150–5 NO TNA, MINT 1/1, fo. 150 NO TNA, MINT 1/1, fo. 148 NO TNA, MINT 1/1, fo. 141 NO TNA, MINT 1/1, fo. 151 NO TNA, MINT 1/4, fo. 23 (Order repeated: fo. 35) NO TNA, MINT 1/4, fo. 39 NO TNA, MINT 1/1, fo. 182 NO TNA, MINT 1/1, fo. 183 NO Typescript account of paintings at Trinity House by Captain William Chaplin: MS 30068, Papers of the Corporation of Trinity House, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA). The Drake portrait was destroyed in 1940 but photographs were given to the National Portrait Gallery and British Museum in 1904 (NPG D35385 and BM 1950,0927.2). NO See also the list of questions for a masters’ examination kept by Lieutenant James Bradley, 1780, DRY/10, National Maritime Museum (NMM). NO There were series of records referred to as Books of Select Entries and Surveys in the minutes, indexes or abstracts among the Corporation’s archive but these no longer survive. NO 27 September 1721, Board Minutes, LMA MS 30010/4, n.p. NO 22 June 1715, Board Minutes, LMA MS 30010/003, n.p. NO 17 May 1721, Court Minutes, LMA MS 30004/009, p 7 NO E.g. 10 April 1682, Court Minutes, LMA MS 30004/006, p 44; 6 July 1782, Court Minutes, LMA MS 30004/013, p 153 NO 19 December 1682, Court Minutes, LMA MS 30004/006, p 71 NO Agreement to appoint a beadle, as they had ‘formerly’: 12 May 1730, Court Minutes, LMA MS 30004/009, p 85; 4 November 1738 and 6 May 1745, Court Minutes, LMA MS 30004/010, pp 31, 208–09 NO Record of doorkeepers receiving their ‘accustomed’ 40-shilling gratuity: 17 Jan 1705/6, Court Minutes, LMA MS 30004/008, p 25. NO Mountaine loaned Prince A System of the Mathematics (1723) by James Hodgson, who was Master of the Royal Mathematical School, for which he produced this work, and the engineer Archibald Patoun’s Complete Treatise of Practical Navigation Demonstrated (1734), produced for ‘the young gentlemen of Mr WATTS’S Academy’ in Tower Street where he subsequently taught. NO 20 February 1716, Court Minutes, LMA MS30004/008 p 185 NO 7 November 1705, ibid, pp 18–19 NO Sailing directions were sometimes printed on the receipts for dues paid, for example for Eddystone Lighthouse, 1786, NMM AML/A/8, https://www.rmg.co.uk/sites/default/files/longitude/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/06/AML_A_8_0.gif (accessed 28 April 2020). NO In fact James I had issued an interloping charter allowing Sir Edward Michelborne to trade to the East Indies, in spite of the Company’s monopoly. Michelborne took with him as pilot John Davis of Sandridge, who had previously served as pilot major to the first East India Company voyage of 1601–3. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, East Indies, China and Japan, Volume 2, 1513–1616, ed W Noel Sainsbury (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1864), p 141 NO The earliest extant set of rules from the Company’s Committee of Shipping dates from 4 February 1756, rules which were suspended from 2 July 1760 and reinstated on 4 September 1765. For a summary of the evolution of qualifications for officers in the Company’s maritime service, see British Library India Office Records (IOR) L/MAR/C/644. NO See IOR L/MAR/C/652 for the results of examinations of prospective commanders and officers by the Committee of Shipping. NO IOR L/MAR/C21 NO The authors gratefully acknowledge Stephen Johnston for this information. NO Attestation on the title-page of The Ship-Master’s Assistant and Owner’s Manual (London: David Steel, 1788), which is stipulated as being printed for Steel ‘at the Navigation-warehouse on Little Tower-Hill’. NO In Kent’s Directory for the year 1794 (London: R and H Causton). NO British Museum, Banks Collection, D,2.522 NO See IOR L/MAR/C/644 for the detailed printed instructions to commanders (dated 1825, the earliest extant copy I have seen), clause XLVII in particular. PB The Science Museum Group SN 2054-5770 LA eng DO 10.15180/211506 UL https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/science-and-the-city-spaces-and-geographies-of-metropolitan-science/ WT Science Museum Group Journal OL 30