Janet Taylor (1804 – 1870) was a remarkable British mathematician, author, teacher, nautical instrument maker and entrepreneur who pioneered improvements in sea navigation in the 19th century. Her work was initially ignored, then not taken seriously, until she finally gained recognition.
After a lifetime of breaking barriers in a male-dominated maritime sector, she was ultimately credited with improving the safety for seafarers through increased efficiency in navigating at sea. The Sea Ranger Service recognises Mrs Janet Taylor’s incredible life and achievements through the naming of its offshore work vessel SRS Janet Taylor.
Jane Ann Ionn was born on 13 May 1804 in Wolsingham, a small village in County Durham, England, the sixth child of the Reverend Peter Ionn and Jane Deighton. But tragedy struck the family when, two months after giving birth to their eighth child Frederick, her mother died at age forty-two. Peter Ionn aged just forty-nine was now left a widower with eight children who included Jane Ann who had just turned seven.
Jane Ann, a young child with a keen intellect, attended the boys Grammar School in Wolsingham where her father taught subjects that included astronomy and mathematics, her hunger for learning thriving in such an environment. Peter promised his late wife Jane that their daughters would be educated ‘as well as the boys’.
A scholarship became available to the daughters of clergymen, and Jane Ann, having just turned nine, was well below the minimum age of fourteen years. But she was a child prodigy who demonstrated an extraordinary gift for mathematics at such a young age. Queen Charlotte herself had heard about this remarkable girl and personally waived the age for admission, enabling her to enrol in the school in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, some 230 miles from home.
As there were no pupils near her own age at the school in Ampthill, Jane Ann’s time, especially for one so young, provided an interesting challenge and experience. After Queen Charlotte died on 17 November 1818, when Jane Ann was aged fourteen, the school was closed and so, after five years, she found herself homeless.
Through good fortune and family connections, Jane Ann was placed in a boarding school for girls, at Hendon, near the village of Hampstead, just outside London. Here she continued her own studies, as well as tutoring at a school, before obtaining a position as governess to the family of the Reverend John Thomas Huntley, Vicar of Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire, 62 miles north-west of London.
Jane Anne’s father Peter Ionn died unexpectedly on 2 May 1821, aged fifty-nine, when Jane Ann was only days shy of her seventeenth birthday. Three years later her brother Matthew finally received his share of his father’s estate and purchased a business in London, a linen draper’s shop at No. 44 Oxford Street. Jane Ann, now aged twenty, went to live and work with him by helping to set up the business and assisting with his household chores.
The highly intelligent and accomplished Jane Ann was now a young woman of means, meeting and falling in love with a widower, George Taylor Jane, a publican who had three children. On 30 January 1830, George and Jane Ann were married at the British Embassy in The Hague by the Reverend John Hay, Chaplain of the English Church at Rotterdam. She then changed her name to Mrs Janet Taylor.
After their honeymoon in Holland, Janet and George returned to London where, on 30 December 1831, exactly eleven months after their wedding, they welcomed their first child, Herbert Peter Taylor. Janet soon began teaching navigation at Red Lion Square and then at premises in Minories as well as commencing writing the first of her books.
In July 1833, at the age of twenty-nine, Janet published her first book, Luni-Solar and Horary Tables, a volume consisting of sixty pages of complex mathematical calculations, examples and formulas, as well as 233 pages of tables. She was adamant that her tables were better than those of others as they were based on the earth being a spheroid shape and not a sphere.
The first review of Janet’s first book, in the widely respected United Service Journal, was published in mid-October 1833 in which it described her as ‘a lady, soaring above petty pursuits and frivolity’. Overall, the sexist comments were unfavourable, although reviews in other journals were much more encouraging. She then sought
endorsement for her work from the ‘big three’: the East India Company, the Admiralty, and the Corporation of Trinity House.
Janet now turned her attention to inventing a nautical instrument she thought would revolutionise the nautical world. She called it the ‘Mariner’s Calculator’ and in March 1834, Mrs Janet Taylor of East Street, Red Lion Square, Middlesex, lodged an application for a British patent for it, claiming ‘improvements in instruments for measuring angles and distances, applicable to nautical and other purposes’.
Janet claimed that the Mariners Calculator would make ‘improvements in instruments for measuring angles and distances, applicable to nautical and other purposes’. The application, No. 658, was granted in September 1834. Between 1617 and 1852, only seventy-nine patents were awarded in the category ‘Compasses and Nautical Instruments’. The patents were awarded to renowned leaders in the field such as John Hadley in 1734, for his quadrant, and Edward Troughton in 1788, But only one of these was to a woman: Mrs Janet Taylor, aged thirty.
To determine its worth, the Admiralty gave the Mariner’s Calculator to their own Hydrographer, Captain Francis Beaufort, for assessment. The conclusion was that, while it was ingenius, it was impractical for use by sailors at sea. This came as a huge disappointment for Janet as she had invested a great deal of her own money on producing the device.
Undeterred, Janet continued with her other activities, including teaching navigation to young sailors, selling valuable charts to captains of vessels about to embark on journeys, writing more books and producing other nautical instruments. She became a confidante of Beaufort who saw in her a resolve to enhance the plight of mariners.
In July 1834, Janet produced a revised version of her first book, Luni-Solar and Horary Tables, as a first edition of a new work under the simpler title of Lunar Tables. At the same time she busied herself with an expanded companion text, The Principles of Navigation Simplified.
In addition to dedicating her Lunar Tables to King William IV, and the Mariner’s Calculator to Queen Adelaide, once more, Janet secured permission to dedicate the volume to Her Royal Highness Duchess of Kent. As 1835 commenced, Janet Taylor’s Nautical Academy was now praised in several publications, although the Nautical Magazine gave her work a bad review. She replied in a lengthy defence, thus gaining their respect and that of the nautical community.
Janet’s relationship with Captain Beaufort grew stronger and she visited him regularly. He even helped her to create a map for her Principles of Navigation Simplified and encouraged her to undertake a fresh approach at clearing the lunar distance that he sent to the eminent Irish astronomer Dr Thomas Romney Robinson. He was suitably impressed, and Janet subsequently obtained the necessary endorsements of the East India Company, the Admiralty, and the Corporation of Trinity House.
In the 1830s, London was fast becoming the largest city in the world and the nerve centre of Britain’s sea-borne empire. Janet’s role as a chart seller made her a key part of any business that focused upon the maritime world. However, she was forced to purchase her stock from Principal Agent for Admiralty charts, Robert Bate, whom Janet found unsatisfactory. In fact, she found the charts that she produced herself to be far more accurate and popular.
Janet received another gold medal in recognition of her accomplishments in the maritime world, this time awarded to her by Friedrich Wilhelm III, the King of Prussia. By now she had earned the respect of the Astronomer Royal, Sir George Airy, who sought her advice on adjusting the compasses of vessels after he realised that she oversaw one of the largest operations in the country.
At age 40, on 9 August 1844, Janet gave birth to her eighth and last child, her fifth surviving son, Alfred Robert. Her only daughter, Ada Marian, was born in 1843. She has received a medal from Pope Gregory XVI for her accomplishments, but no real credit from her own country who repeatedly refused to grant her a civil list pension.
In 1851 Janet submitted a magnificent sextant for the Great Exhibition in London. The radius was six inches, and was presented to the young Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. It ultimately passed to Queen Mary, the wife of King George V, and on the king’s death in 1936 it was presented to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich where it remains today.
On 12 September 1853 at the age of sixty-one, the 49-year-old Janet’s husband George passed away at age 61. She then expanded the business, renaming it ‘Mrs Janet Taylor & Co.’ and continued her role in chart selling, book writing, compass adjusting, teaching and other activities. The factory continued to manufacture sextants, quadrants, compasses, barometers and other types of meteorological and nautical instruments.
At age 65, Janet Taylor passed away on 26 January 1870 at her sister’s residence in Durham and she is buried in the churchyard at St Helen Auckland, County Durham. Despite repeated requests at the time, the British Admiralty refused to acknowledge that she was anything other than a ‘teacher of navigation’.
155 years after her death, on 2 April 2025, Janet Taylor received special recognition as Queen Máxima of the Netherlands christened the new Sea Ranger Service’s vessel SRS Janet Taylor. The event was attended by over 300 guests, with strong representation from the Royal Netherlands Navy, incl. its Hydrographic Service, Port of Rotterdam and the wider maritime industry. The Sea Ranger Service will continue promoting Janet Taylor’s incredible life achievements to ensure she will forever be remembered for her outstanding contributions to mariners across the world.
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