past and present
People
Captain Henry Kater (1777-1835)
Family
Henry Kater (1748-1795), a sugar baker of German descent , one of the firm of John & Henry Kater, Tucker Street, Bristol, married an Englishwoman, Anne Collins; they had one child, Captain Henry Kater who was born in 1777
In 1810 Captain Kater married Mary Frances Reeve and they had three children: Mary Agnes (1811-1827); Henry Herman (1813-1881); and Edward (1816-1866).
The Yorkshire manors of Mexborough and Wickersley and buildings and lands in Richmond and Swinton, were all in the Reeve family at least since the beginnng of the 18th century; Mary's mother was known for holding court as the Lady of Mexborough Manor.
Army
His father found him a position in a lawyer's office, where he remained two years. On his father's death, in 1794, he resumed his mathematical studies. and joined the army, engaged under Col. William Lambton (1756–1823) in the trigonometric survey of Madras, India: he pubished extensively in scientific journals.
In April 1799 he became ensign in the 12th foot. He joined his regiment in Madras, and became lieutenant in November, 1803, and assistant to William Lambton (1756–1823); while in Madras, he devised an improved form of pendulum. When he returned home due to ill-health, he entered the senior department of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and subsequently joined the 2nd battalion of his regiment in Jersey.
The Royal Society of London
He served as Treasurer for several years, and in 1815 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Kater had already published three papers in the Society’s Philosophical Transactions, and published a dozen or so more there up to 1831.
Awards
Following Kater’s original work, pendulum experiments were carried out to determine gravity in many parts of the world, leading to a better understanding of the figure of the earth. He was awarded the Copley Medal in 1817, for his work on the pendulum. He gave the Society’s Bakerian Lecture in 1821 on his researches into the best shape and kind of steel for compass needles. Widely recognised for his contribution to precision measurement, he was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Medal in 1831.
The Emperor of Russia also conferred on him the order of St. Anne, in recognition of his services in the preparation of standard measures for the Russian government.
Royal Commission
When a Royal Commission was established in the early 19th century to report on weights and measures, Kater was appointed to the Commission along with Joseph Banks, Thomas Young and others. A program of detailed experiments and measurements was carried out by Kater. Using microscopes to compare lengths, he concluded that he could measure to one 10,000th part of an inch. The report of the Commission led to the Weights and Measures Act of 1824 which introduced Imperial Standards. Subsequently numerous copies of the new standards were required, in which Kater worked closely with several of London’s leading instrument makers.
He lived chiefly in London, employed in his scientific pursuits. After the death in 1827 of his daughter, Agnes, a mathematical prodigy,aged 16, and in 1833 his wife, Kater became reclusive, still working on his experiments but narrowing his circle to a few scientific friends.
Lord of the Manor
From 1822 until 1839, Captain Henry Kater was patron of the Wickersley Rectory, and Lord of the Manor of Wickersley , which was long held by a family of its own name.
Kater died at his residence, York House, Regent's Park, London, on 26 April, 1835.
Edward Kater (1816-1866)
Edward entered Downing College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1838 as a fellow-commoner in Lent. Early in February 1840, he was staying with the Rev. Dr. James William Worthington, the first vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Gray’s Inn Road. By March he had become a member of the Parthenon Club. Edward had articles published in the Foreign Quarterly Review.
Edward joined scientific societies and in March 1840 he sent a paper to J. F. W. Herschel, an old friend of his father, asking Herschel to communicate it to the Royal Society; it was titled Description of an Escapement for an Astronomical Clock, invented by the late Captain Henry Kater, F.R.S. , drawn up from his own memorandums by his son Edward Kater, Esq.. As a result, Edward was proposed for membership by several eminent scientists and explorers, all Fellows of the Society including Herschel, H. Harvey, Basil Hall, F. Beaufort, W. H. Smyth, John George Children, and E. B. Beaumont. His paper was published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, in 1840.
In July 1840, he was writing from 13 Nottingham Terrace, and by November 1840, when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, he was already a member of the Royal Institution and a fellow of the Statistical Society. At some point he became a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
He acquired a townhouse at Sussex Gardens, in the then fashionable suburb of Bayswater;he moved in literary and theatrical circles, which included people like Charles Babbage, Sir Edward Fitzgerald, John Forster, Miss Helena Faucit, Robert Browning, and Thomas Carlyle. He married Georgianna Mary Seton. There were no children.
There is little written of him after about 1842 when he abandoned his social life in London and went to live in Mexborough, South Yorkshire. He returned to Cambridge at some stage and died at 4 Camden Place, Cambridge, on 7 July 1866, aged 50.
Henry Herman Kater (1813-1881)
Henry Herman attended the Royal Military College at Sandhurst before entering Magdalene College Cambridge in 1836. He lead an active social life, in the best social circles. At Queen Victoria’s Coronation, he was an usher and assisted in the distribution of the medals specially struck for the occasion. After recovering from a riding accident which resulted in a skull fracture and change of temperament, he sold the families properties and he set of in August of 1839 for a new life in Australia, taking with him goods, servants, and livestock.
After his brother Edward’s death, many of his father's possessions passed to Henry Herman in Australia, who in 1873, gave some of these to the Sydney Observatory and the University of Sydney, where they remain.