William Rutter Dawes

Did You Know?

• Dawes married twice; his first wife was Mary Scott née Egerton, widow of his tutor Thomas Scott.
• His second wife was Ann Welsby née Coupland, widow of Ormskirk solicitor John Welsby.
• Dawes married his first wife on 13 January 1824 at Haddenham, Buckinghamshire.

Biography

William Rutter Dawes, whose father was also an astronomer, was born at Christ's Hospital in the City of London. After qualifying as a doctor in 1825, he became a pastor at an Independent chapel in Ormskirk, Lancashire, on 29 October 1828. The chapel, originally a silk factory, was replaced by a new building on Chapel Street in 1834. Dawes stepped down from his pastoral role in December 1837 because of poor health. When the congregation faced financial trouble from construction debt in 1843, he stepped in to help.

Astronomy

Dawes made extensive measurements of double stars and planetary observations. He was a friend of William Lassell. He set up his private observatory at Hopefield House in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, built 1856–7. One of his telescopes, an eight-inch refractor by Cooke, survives at Cambridge Observatory as the Thorrowgood Telescope. He made detailed drawings of Mars during its 1864 opposition. In 1867 Richard Anthony Proctor produced a Mars map based on these drawings, naming two features after Dawes. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1830 and Fellow of the Royal Society in 1865, proposed by G B Airy and J F W Herschel.