Wallace Online (Western Kentucky University, ed. Charles H. Smith): 1870 wager primary record

Visit: 2026-10-10 (Investigator, STEP I, run 1). Access: curl worked (no Chrome needed). Site: https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/ ("Selected Secondary Sources From His Own Time" page and Wallace's own S-numbered writings).

How found

Google query "Hampden v. Walsh" 1876 wager Queen's Bench law report gave the WKU page https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/writingson_owntime.htm , which lists and hosts scans of period newspaper and journal items on the Bedford Canal wager. Saved locally as research/pages/wku-owntime.htm (not for publication).

Files downloaded to research/files/ (all scans hosted by WKU)

Wallace's own pages also saved (research/pages/): S162-163 (letters on the experiment), S202 (Reply to Mr. Hampden's Charges, 1871), S200aaAND, S248A (The Libel Case. Summary Punishment, 1875).

What was found

1. The Field, 26 March 1870 (p. 285): referee report and umpire's decision [web]

URL: https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/zCarpenter1870Field1.pdf - Carpenter (Hampden's referee) states the set-up: an oblong signal 6 ft by 3 ft on Old Bedford Bridge, centre 13 ft 4 in above the water; a staff at 3 miles with a red disc 1 ft across, centre 13 ft 4 in; a third signal on Welney Bridge, 13 ft 4 in; a large telescope (4 in object glass) and a level by Stanley, Holborn. A second disc on the middle staff was "9ft. 4in. above the water, or 4ft. lower" [web]. - Carpenter's opinion: the experiment "as a whole is unsatisfactory and inconclusive"; he proposes instead a boat rowed away from an observer at water level [web]. He signed the large-telescope sketch "under protest" because it "showed but two points when a comparison had to be instituted between three" and "was not levelled" [web]. - His argument from the level telescope: the three stations "appeared ... equi-distant in the field of view", so the central disc "does not depart from a straight line" [web]. He also lists reductio points, e.g. that a 5 ft rise in 6 miles is less than the "24 feet in six miles" of the accredited curvature and less than the "five feet in three miles" Wallace set out to show [web]. - Both inverted-telescope sketches carry "This is correct" signed by both Coulcher and Carpenter (3.10 p.m. from Welney Bridge; 4.30 p.m. from Old Bedford Bridge, 5 March 1870) [web]. Carpenter's report gives the date of the experiments as March 6 in one place and Coulcher's diagram caption as March 5 [web: same page]. - Walsh's "Decision in Hampden v. Wallace", dated 346 Strand, March 18: having received the referees' reports and "conferred on them with Mr Solomons, optician, of Albemarle-street, at the request of Mr Hampden", he finds Wallace has proved "the curvature to and fro" of the canal "between Welney Bridge and Welch's Dam (six miles) to the extent of five feet, more or less", and proposes to pay Wallace £1000 "next Thursday, unless I have notice to the contrary from Mr Hampden" [web]. - Bearing: this is the primary umpire record that claims.md flags as missing. It is the umpire's own characterization (Walsh was the stakeholder and Wallace's nominee per Hampden). Note the site naming: Carpenter places the line between Old Bedford Bridge and Welney Bridge; Walsh writes Welney Bridge to Welch's Dam. See the Ouse Washes note on local naming of the bridges.

2. Hampden v. Walsh, 1 QBD 189 (17 January 1876) [web]

URL: https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/zAnon1877ReportsCases.pdf - Judgment of Cockburn C.J., Mellor and Quain JJ. The headnote: the agreement "was a wager"; under 8 & 9 Vict. c. 109 s. 18 the depositor could still recover his own stake because he "demanded his deposit back before it had been paid over" [web]. - The judgment recites Walsh's decision for Wallace and that Hampden objected and demanded his £500 before it was paid; Walsh paid both sums anyway [web]. - The court rejected the defence that the agreement was a scientific trial, not a wager: Hampden's object "was not to ascertain a scientific fact, but to establish his own view" [web]. "Judgment for the plaintiff." - Bearing on the TFES wiki claim (claims.md, Corrections) that a court found Wallace "cheated": the reported judgment turns only on wager law and the stakeholder's authority. It makes no finding on the experiment or on Wallace's conduct [web]. This answers the "should be checked against the primary record" note for the 1876 case. Hampden's 1870s libel prosecutions are separate cases (see Epsilon note).

3. Rowbotham ("Parallax") 1870, Experimental Proofs (priority 1, the inventor's own work) [web]

URL: https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/zParallax1870ExperimentalProofs.pdf - Rowbotham says Hampden first wrote to him in October 1869, after reading Zetetic Astronomy, while Rowbotham was lecturing at Westbourne Hall, Bayswater. Rowbotham had been "lecturing, debating, writing" for "upwards of thirty years" [web: p.1]. He says he objected to Hampden's abusive style of advocacy [web: p.2]. - His criticism of the wager trial: the agreed test was three discs at 12 ft (one at each end and one in the middle), but "At the end of six miles instead of a disc an oblong flag was placed ... and nothing whatever was fixed close to the telescope!" [web: p.8]. He lists instrument errors (collimation, parallax, refraction, aberration, spherical confusion, chromatic dispersion) as an alternative explanation for what the level showed [web: pp.11-12]. - His own repeat on 5 April 1870: from the Old Bedford Sluice Bridge, with a telescope in a turf boat, he says he saw through the arch of "Welney Bridge" 6 miles off. He also says that with the telescope 18 in above the water, from a boat that went down to Welney Bridge, the sluice gate, a moored turf boat and a white notice board (bottom 6 ft 6 in) "were kept in view during the whole distance". He gives the globe figures for comparison (e.g. curvature of 13 ft 6 in over the remaining 4.5 miles) [web: pp.16-18]. He says several men on the bank looked through the telescope and saw the board and gate [web: p.18]. - Bearing: claim 1. This is Rowbotham's own contemporary account of "Experiment 5" (the 1881 deep read gives the 3rd-edition version). It also states his procedural objection to the Wallace trial in his own words.

4. Hampden's own letters (interested party)

• The Field, 2 April 1870: Hampden calls Walsh's ruling a "monstrous decision" and says Wallace "has had from the outset unlimited authority to conduct this survey" and that Coulcher was "a perfect stranger to us both" [web: zHampden1870Field.pdf].
• Weston-super-Mare Gazette, 16 April 1870: "the scandalously precipitate verdict of Mr. Walsh" [web: ztHampden1870Weston.pdf]. He says "The whole of last week was spent in a series of experiments" (i.e. the April 1870 zetetic repeats).

5. Later and other accounts

• R. M. Brown, Science, 15 May 1908: a short neutral-toned recap. It says the umpire "awarded the money to Wallace", that Hampden's referee "insisted ... that the three points were in a straight line", and that Hampden "refused to look through the instrument" [web: zBrownRM1908.pdf]. This is a secondary account written 38 years later.
• Scientific Opinion, 27 April 1870, prints the agreement and is openly hostile to Hampden (the journal had carried his advertisement) [web: zAnon1870ScienOpin.pdf].

Not yet read in full (next run or STEP 2 reviewers)

Chambers's Journal 1870; Carpenter Field letters of 2 and 9 April; Westlake letters; Chelmsford Chronicle 1875 interview; London Standard 1872; WKU S162-163, S202, S248A (Wallace's own letters and replies). The WKU list also names items not hosted there: Carpenter 1871, Water, Not Convex; Carpenter 1875, Wallace's Wonderful Water; James Naylor 1873, Bedford Canal Not Convex (Leeds). These are zetetic replies not found online this run.