Abstract
Most came from middle-class, professional families, who educated their daughters as well as their sons. Most never married. They lived in or close to both London and their male supporters. Once admitted to societies, they proved the equals of men. Sargant joined the Linnean’s Council after only one year; Saunders and Lister were Vice-Presidents. Sargant and Saunders were invited to chair the botanical section of the BAAS’ annual meetings. Smith was twice President of the British Mycological Society. They were not outstanding scientists whose names are remembered ever after. They were not significantly better, or worse, than their male counterparts. Their significance was that, together, they broke down barriers. They constituted a vanguard, making professional life easier for women who followed.
Wo man is an amazing creature. She has always largely made the world. In the future she must make it more and more.
—From a letter, written on 21 March 1889 by Lady Margaret Huggins (spectroscopist and astronomer), to Anna Swanwick (a member of Council of Queen’s College and one-time Principal of Bedford College, London) (‘Correspondence of Lady Huggins to Anna Swanwick’, online at catalogue.nli.ie [National Archives of the Library of Ireland].)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Council’s President from 1916 to 1920 was Dame Maria Ogilvie Gordon.
- 2.
Of the twenty-one early fellows listed in Burek’s Table 6, only five resided outside the zone stretching across London from Cambridge in the north to Reigate in the south.
- 3.
In the nineteenth century stipends varied enormously from parish to parish. A few parsons were paid more than their bishops but many more had to supplement their basic stipend by income from glebe lands or teaching.
- 4.
Even if wives of officers are included, only eleven of the twenty-five were married (see Appendix).
- 5.
Westminster Gazette, 14 March 1909.
- 6.
Not to be confused with earlier societies having a similar name.
- 7.
Grace Wigglesworth graduated from the (Victoria) University of Manchester in 1903, and then took an M.Sc. in palaeobotany. Which raises the question: Did she travel to London specifically for a meeting (unlikely), or was she in London learning from the palaeobotanists Oliver and DH Scott (more likely)? Grace later enjoyed a long a distinguished career as Assistant Keeper of Botany at Manchester Museum.
- 8.
Another member of the X-Club was Edward Busk, husband of Marian.
- 9.
Miss Beale and Miss Buss were soon appointed to its Council. www.churchhigh.me.uk/school-history/background-of-the-church-schools-company-limited.
- 10.
Both were set up with involvement from the Tuke family, a descendent of which was Margaret Tuke, Principal of Bedford College (1906–1929), see Chap. 8, Newnham College graduate and fellow.
- 11.
Unitarians rejected the notions of original sin and the fundamental depravity of man, the blame for which were placed upon women.
- 12.
Cited by Richmond (2006).
- 13.
Although the proportion of papers published by women increased steadily over the next half-century, it was not until 1979 that the Annals appointed its first female editor, Gillian Thorne.
- 14.
Tansley included in the first two volumes of New Phytologist (1902-3) papers by Margaret Benson, Edith Chick, Rose Jordan, Gulielma Lister, Ethel Sargant, Rina Scott, Annie Smith, Marie Stopes, and Grace Wigglesworth.
References
Boney, D. 1995. The Botanical ‘Establishment’ Closes Ranks: Fifteen Days in January 1921. The Linnean 11: 26–37.
Brooke, J., and G. Cantor. 1998. Reconstructing Nature. The Engagement of Science and Religion. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
Brown, Megan K. 2011. “A College for Women, or Something Like It”: Bedford College and the Women’s Higher Education Movement, 1849–1900. Dissertations and Theses University of Portland. Paper 209. Available online.
Burek, Cynthia V. 2009. The First Female Fellows and the Status of Women in the Geological Society of London. Geological Society, Special Publications 317: 373–407.
Embleton, Alice L. 1901. Goidelia japonica—a New Entozoic Copepod from Japan, associated with an Infusorian (Trichodina). Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 28: 211–229.
———. 1903. Cerataphis lataniae, a peculiar aphid. Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 29: 90–107.
Fara, Patricia. 2018. A Lab of One’s Own. Science and Suffrage in the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glick, Daphne. 1995. The National Council of Women of Great Britain. The First One Hundred Years, 1895–1995. London: The National Council of Women of Great Britain.
Higgitt, Rebekah, and C.W.J. Withers. 2008. Science and Sociability, Women as Audience at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–1901. Isis 99: 1–27.
Jones, Claire G., and Sue Hawkins. 2015. Women and Science. Notes and Records of the Royal Society 69: 5–9.
Lewis, D. 1969. The Genetical Society—The First Fifty Years. In Fifty Years of Genetics. Proceedings of a Symposium held at the 160th Meeting of the Genetical Society on the 50th Anniversary of Its Founding, ed. John Jinks, 1–7. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.
Locke, A. Audrey. 1916. The Hanbury Family. London: Arthur L Humphreys.
Richmond, Marsha L. 2006. The ‘Domestication’ of Heredity: The Familial Organisation of Geneticists in Cambridge, 1895–1910. Journal of the History of Biology 39: 565–605.
Schiebinger, Londa. 1999. Has Feminism Changed Science? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Veley, L. 1905. A further contribution to the study of Pelomyxa palustris (Greeff). Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 29: 374–395.
Warburton, C., and Embleton, Alice L. 1902. The life history of the black-currant gall-mite, Eriophyses (Phytoptis) ribis. Westwood. Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 28: 366–378.
Watts, Ruth. 2007. Women in Science. A Social and Cultural History. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ayres, P. (2020). They Sought Fellowship but Did They Make Good Fellows?. In: Women and the Natural Sciences in Edwardian Britain. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46600-8_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46600-8_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-46599-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-46600-8
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)