John Bevis was an English physician and amateur astronomer. He erected a private observatory at Stoke Newington on the outskirts of London in 1738. It was from here that he may have observed Uranus. His intended project, however, was to compile a star atlas that would contain more stars and be more exact than Johann Bayer's Uranometria (1603). The final product was to be the Uranographia Britannica, an atlas of 51 charts accompanied by a catalog of star positions. Unfortunately, the Uranographia Britannica was never published. Bevis' publisher went bankrupt in 1750. Undeterred, Bevis continued with his work until his death on 6 November 1771, after falling from his telescope platform while taking measurements of the Sun's meridian altitude.