Edinburghs Camera Obscura: A tale of Conflict and Deception

The 18^th century was a more leisurely era than today. In 1736 Colin Maclaurin, Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University, suggested setting up an observatory on Calton Hill. Nothing happened till 1776 when Thomas Short, a scientific instrument maker based in Edinburgh, either in Leith or the Southside of Edinburgh, who had inherited a number of scientific instruments and telescopes from his elder brother, a famous telescope maker, brought a 12 foot (144 inch) reflecting telescope to Edinburgh and proposed to start a public observatory as a business, charging for lectures and use of his Great Telescope. The University helped him with the cost, presumably using a fund Maclaurin had set up 35 years earlier. A condition of the funding was that the observatory would be available to students at the university.

Short commissioned James Craig, the architect and designer of the New Town to draw up a plan for the observatory. Craig’s plan included an octagonal tower 48 feet high: the architect Robert Adam suggested it should look like a fortress. By the time one of the towers had been built the money had run out and the council, who had been one of the sponsors, had lost interest. Craig occupied the house for a while and later Short used the round tower as a house and built a much smaller observatory nearby.

Short died in 1788 at the age of 77. His will allegedly contained the condition that none of his female heirs could inherit the observatory which passed to his grandson James Douglas. Some sources claim that one condition of his lease for the ground on which the observatory was built contained a clause stipulating that his female heirs could not inherit the observatory.

Short’s widow disputed ownership of the telescopes and carried off several items. James Douglas obtained warrants for their recovery and threw the Shorts out of the house. Mrs Short and her followers returned, armed, and tried to force entry. The town guard was called and Mrs Short and the others ended up locked in the Tolbooth. James Douglas was broke by now and had to return to sea.

The observatory then passed through a number of hands and deteriorated: by 1807 it was used as a gunpowder store.

The round Gothic Tower became a popular observatory and camera obscura, and a transit telescope was set up from a small building nearby. Since the scientific observatory had to know its exact location the old octagonal observatory was demolished in 1815 and the ground levelled to provide the base for a triangulation point of Captain Thomas Colby’s Trigonometrical Survey of Britain. The triangulation point is still on Calton Hill.

In 1827 Maria Theresa Short, claiming to be Thomas Short’s only surviving daughter, returned from the West Indies to Edinburgh. Since Thomas Short had died nearly 40 years ago her appearance cased a scandal and scepticism as to whether she was truly Thomas’s daughter. She was said to be 58 in the 1861 census which would mean she had been born in 1803 some15 years after Thomas died. It seems unlikely she was Thomas’s daughter.

Maria found herself cut out from the observatory, which was now controlled by the Edinburgh Astronomical Institute.

She claimed she had helped in the project and succeeded in getting back the great reflecting telescope. She also got permission to erect a wooden observatory, inside a wooden palisade,near the National Monument. In 1835 she opened Shorts Popular Observatory which catered for the public rather than the middle and upper classes and contained statues and sideshows run by Robert Forrest

Opponents of her observatory claimed the scientific displays were inferior and that “people of ill repute” were attracted to the “peepshow”. Eventually the Town council ordered its removal, despite a petition of 4,000 signatures and a plea that no defence had been heard. She was forcibly evicted in 1850 and her observatory demolished. There were protests about how instruments had been thrown onto the ground.

Having an observatory on Calton Hill was a good business and the stated reasons for opposing Maria Theresa’s wooden observatory may well have been a ploy to remove a successful business rival. The incident casts a shadow both on the sincerity of the complainants and the integrity of the council. Standards of business and political integrity were not very different at the start of the 19^th century from today and the Council’s refusal to allow her to defend her observatory is, to say the least, suspicious.

Maria was resilient and in 1853 she took over an old building near the castle. The building was believed to have been the original townhouse of the Earls of Dalhousie and had been converted into small flats in the 18^th century. She added two floors and ran it as an observatory with a museum of curiosities. She called it “Short’s Observatory, Museum of Science and Art”. The main attraction was a camera obscura (a sophisticated kind of pinhole camera) on the top floor.

Maria died in 1869 in the outlook Tower of her observatory, “aged about 70”, and her husband ran the observatory till 1892 when Patrick Geddes bought the business, renamed it the Camera Obscura and converted into an educational centre. He ran it till his death in 1932.

It was eventually bought by the Council then sold to a private company and is still running in the 21^st century. The observatory on Calton Hill became much less important once astronomical observations and research moved to Blackford Hill and the Calton Hill Observatory seems to have been used mainly by amateurs.

Maria Short had the last laugh.