she visited St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Odessa, and Kasan, in which latter town she is said to have sung in the Tartar language. From 1843 to 1846 she sang in Italy with great success; at the San Carlo at Naples she appeared in twenty operas, her engagement asting for twenty-seven months. In 1846 she returned to England, together with Bochsa, and sang at several concerts. In 1847 Mrs. Bishop went to America, where she sang in the United States, Mexico, and California. In 1855 she went to Australia, where Bochsa died, and Mrs. Bishop returned to England by way of South America and New York, where she married a Mr. Schulz. She sang at the Crystal Palace in 1858, and, after a farewell concert on 17 Aug. In 1859, returned to America, and sang with great success throughout Canada, the United States, Mexico, and at Havana. In 1865 she left New York and went to California, whence she sailed for the Sandwich Islands. In February 1866 the ship in which she was sailing from Honolulu to China was wrecked on a coral reef, and Mrs. Bishop lost all her music, jewels, and wardrobe. After forty days’ privation the shipwrecked crew reached the Ladrone Islands, whence the indefatigable singer went to Manilla, and after singing there and in China arrived in India in 1867. In May 1868 she was once more in Australia, and after visiting London she went to New York, where the remainder of her life was spent. She died of apoplexy in March 1884. Mrs., or Madame Anna Bishop, as she was generally called, possessed a high soprano voice, and was a brilliant but somewhat unsymathetic singer. She was a member of many foreign musical societies, and her popularity in the United States was great.
[Times, 24 March 1884; Moore's Encyclopædia of Music; Cazalet's History of the Royal Academy of Music, p. 138; Men of the Time (10th ed.); Musical World, xii. 11, 179, 235; Add. MS. 29261.]
BISHOP, GEORGE (1785–1861), astronomer, was born at Leicester 21 Aug. 1785. At the age of eighteen he entered a British wine-making business in London, to which he afterwards, as its proprietor, gave such extension that the excise returns were said to exhibit half of all home-made wines as of his manufacture. His scientific career may be said to date from his admission to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1880. The amount and stability of his fortune hy that time permitted the indulgence of tastes hitherto in abeyance. He took lessons in algebra from Professor De Morgan, with a view to reading the ‘Mécanique Céleste,’ and acquired, when near fifty, sufficient mathematical knowledge to enable him to comprehend the scope of its methods. In 1836 he realised a long-cherished desire by erecting an observatory near his residence at South Villa, Regent's Park. No expense was spared in its equipment, and the excellence of the equatorial furnished by Dollond (aperture, seven inches) confirmed his resolve that some higher purpose than mere amusement should be served by the establishment. ‘I am determined,' he said when choosing its site, ‘that this observatory shall do something.' He attained his aim by securing the best observers. The Rev. William Dawes conducted his noted investigations of double stars at South Villa 1839–44; Mr. John Russell Hind began his memorable career there in October of the latter year. From the time that Hencke's detection of Astræa, 8 Dec. 1845, showed a prospect of success in the search for new planets, the resources of Bishop’s observatory were turned in that direction, and with conspicuous results. Between 1847 and 1854 Mr. Hind discovered ten small planets, and Mr. Marth one, making a total of eleven dating from South Villa. The ecliptic charts undertaken by Mr. Hind for the purpose of facilitating the search were continued, after his appointment in 1853 as superintendent of the ‘Nautical Almanac,’ by Pogson, Vogel, Marth, and Talmage successively, under his supervision. They embraced all stars down to the eleventh magnitude inclusive, and extended over a zone of three degrees on each side of the ecliptic. Seventeen of the twenty-four hours were engraved when the observatory was broken up on the death of its owner.
A testimonial was awarded to Bishop by the Astronomical Society, 14 Jan. 1848, ‘for the foundation of an observatory leading to various astronomical discoveries,' and presented, with a warmly commendatory address, by Sir John Herschel, 11 Feb. (Month. Not. R. A. Soc. viii. 105). He acted as secretary to the society 1833–9, as treasurer 1840–57, and was chosen president in two successive years, 1857 and 1858, although the state of his health rendered him unable to take the chair. After a long period of bodily prostration, his mind remaining, however, unclouded, he died 14 June 1861, in his seventy-sixth year. His character, both social and commercial, was of the highest, and his discriminating patronage of science raised him to the front rank of amateurs. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society 9 June 1848, was also a fellow of the Society of Arts, and sat for some years on the council of University College. He published in 1852, in one
