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The Editor
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© F.Coakley , 2026
[from A.M Harrision's Descriptive List of Insular Societies]
The Manx Astronomical Society was very much the creation of one man, Thomas Keig, a cabinet-maker by trade who built up a major photographic business in Douglas, and who died after only six weeks in office as the first elected Mayor of the newly-created Borough of Douglas in April 1896.
A natural student with a scientific bent, he attended evening classes at the Queen's College studying English and drawing, perhaps acquiring his astronomical interests, in a two-year period spent in Liverpool as a young man. He was a member of the British Astronomical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, with a responsibility for reporting astrononomical events from his Island observatory.
The Society's meetings and the texts of papers read in their proceedings were fully reported in the Isle of Man Times and conveniently reprinted together at the end of every yearly session from 1888 to 1895.
At present the only known records of the society, they reveal a membership usually in the region of 50, including some of the leading men of the town and a noteworthy, if small, group of women, occasionally voted on to its council. The society met at Keig's studio on Prospect Hill throughout the winter session free of charge, papers being read to members fortnightly, the Tuesdays of the weeks intervening being reserved for observation of the heavens under Mr. Keig's instructions. The sessions ended with an annual conversazione at the Sefton Hotel, Douglas and then broke up for the summer, reassembling after the holiday season.
The subject range and the powerful and exciting, often lyrical, expression of the papers are very impressive, considering the smallness of the community from which the members were drawn and the specialised nature of the society's discipline. They came from the usual intellectually active groups: Canon Savage of St. Thomas' Douglas, a member of the IOMNHAS and the Ancient Monuments and Museum trustees; Canon Walsh, the head of the Roman Catholic Church on the Island, a president of the society; John Nicholson, the painter; John Taylor, the Douglas Public Librarian, member of the Ruskin Society and the Manx Socialist Society and host to Tom Mann; the Reverend F.W.Walters, Principal of King William's College, Castletown, the Reverend John Quine, Thomas Grindley and Alfred Haviland of the Manx Geological Society.
The Astronomical Society attended Thomas Keig's funeral in a body, meeting at St. Andrews Church, and walking from there to the the residence of the late Mr. Keig'; There is no record of any later papers of the society at the moment and it is difficult to imagine the club's survival for long without its benevolent and powerful head.
M.N.H.L..Papers of the Manx Astronomical Society, 1888- 1895, Meteorological
Class;
Isle of Man newspapers, Isle of Man Times. 1888 -1895, reprinted, all
others passim.
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Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received
The Editor |
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