The Phenomenon of England!

Now Eight and a Half old, AND DOES NOT KNOW A FIGURE!

Published in Windlesora 25 (2009)

© WLHG

Not long after Windsorians heard the alarming news of Napoleons escape from Elba, they may have been diverted by this advertisement in the Windsor Express of 19 March 1815. George Parker Bidder, ‘the calculating hoy’, was coming to town, ‘ready to attend any Party of Ladies & Gentlemen at their Houses‘ and give instant answers to the most fiendish arithmetical problems they could devise.

Q: How many Groats are there in £187,298,685. 19s 6d? [a groat = 4d]

A: 11,237,921,158, with 2d left over.1

A modest, cheerful boy, George was born in 1806 at Mortonhampstead on the edge of Dartmoor, the son of a stone mason. He had no schooling but an elder brother taught him to count to 100, and then by laying with pebbles, conkers or other small objects in rows he discovered addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and released in himself the talent to calculate quickly and accurately. He could not recognise a written figure, but when villagers started paying him halfpennies to do difficult sums, his futher saw the commercial potential and took him first to country fairs and then to towns.

Q: Suppose the sun to be 98,000,000 miles distant from the Earth, how many Barley Corns, three to an inch, will reach to that distance?

A: 18,627,840,000,000.

William Herschel, living in Slough, took an interest in him, and organised a return visit to Windsor in 1817 when he went to the Castle and, entertained Queen Charlotte and the royal family.

Q: What number, multiplied by itself, will produce 18,207,289?

A: 4267.

His father did not want to give up the money-making, but eventually George Bidder went to Edinburgh University and became a civil engineer, working on the Ordnance Survey and later with Robert Stephenson. He retained his marvellous mathematical gifts till his death in 1878.2

Hester Davenport

  1. ‘Any error found in these figures should be put down to poor copying – George Parker Bidder was ALWAYS RIGHT.
  2. His eldest son George became a QC; his grandson George an eminent marine biologist, likewise his great-granddaughter Anna, a founder and first president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.