Professional and personal correspondence of John Riddle

These papers shed light on the support John Riddle gave his son Edward in embarking on a career in the Royal Navy and his interactions with colleagues at the Royal Hospital Schools at Greenwich. There is a receipt for a sextant supplied by George Whitbread, a mathematical instrument maker in London, assumed to be for the use of his son. There are two letters sent by his son as a naval cadet on HMS CENTURION in the Channel Squadron in 1861. From the same year there are letters demonstrating how Riddle felt deeply insulted by the wording of a Royal Astronomical Society paper announcing Commander Arthur L. Mansell’s comet observations. George B. Airy, Astronomer Royal, apologises to Riddle for the wording which inclined credit for the mathematical reduction work undertaken at Greenwich towards Reverend George Fisher, principal of the Royal Hospital schools.