Science and sociability: Women as audience at the British association for the advancement of science, 1831-1901

ISIS

Volumn 99, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 1-27

  Higgitt, Rebekah ^a   Withers, Charles W J ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; FEMALE; HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATION; HISTORY; HUMAN; ORGANIZATION; SCIENCE; UNITED KINGDOM;

CONGRESSES AS TOPIC; FEMALE; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HUMANS; SCIENCE; SOCIETIES, SCIENTIFIC; WOMEN;

EID: 44149084457     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/587538     Document Type: Article

References (171)

1. Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981)
2. (hereafter cited as Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science).
3. The association was founded in 1831. Janet Browne, "A Glimpse of Petticoats: Women in the Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science," in "Science and British Culture in the 1830s" (Conference Proceedings, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1994), considers women as audience as well as speakers up to ca. 1860. Philip Lowe, "The British Association and the Provincial Public," in The Parliament of Science: The British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831-1981, ed. Roy MacLeod and Peter Collins (Northwood, Middlesex: Science Reviews, 1981), pp. 118-144,
4. concentrates on the formal policy and reception of the association without considering audience responses. Considerations of the BAAS usually concentrate on the interests of its leading elite. See, e.g., James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago/London: Univ. Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 406-435;
5. or Frank Turner, "Public Science in Britain, 1880-1919," Isis, 1980, 71:589-608.
6. Roger Cooter and Stephen Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture," History of Science, 1994, 32:237-267;
7. and Steven Shapin, "Science and the Public," in Companion to the History of Modern Science, ed. R. Olby, J. R. R. Christie, and M. J. S. Hodge (London/New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 990-1007.
8. This focus is epitomized by biographical dictionaries of women in science. See also Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1982);
9. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, ed., History of Women in the Sciences: Readings from Isis (Chicago/London: Univ. Chicago Press, 1999);
10. Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, eds., Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979 (New Brunswick, N.J./London: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1987);
11. and Barbara T. Gates, Kindred Nature: Victorian and Edwardian Women Embrace the Living World (Chicago/London: Univ. Chicago Press, 1998).
12. There has been recent interest in women as popularizers of science. See, e.g., Gates and Ann B. Shteir, eds., Natural Eloquence: Women Reinscribe Science (Madison/London: Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1997);
13. Shteir, "Elegant Recreations? Configuring Science Writing for Women," in Victorian Science in Context, ed. Bernard Lightman (Chicago/London: Univ. Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 236-255;
14. and Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Revealing New Worlds: Three Victorian Women Naturalists (London/New York: Routledge, 2001).
15. We have looked at newspaper reports from the Scotsman Online Archive (http://archive.scotsman.com/), the Times Digital Archive (www.gale.com/Times/), and the British Library Newspaper Library, as well as presscuttings from the BAAS Archives (Bodleian Library, Oxford) and those kept by local organizers of the meetings.
16. Cooter and Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places" (cit. n. 2), p. 241;
17. Richard Whitley, "Knowledge Producers and Knowledge Acquirers: Popularisation as a Relation between Scientific Fields and Their Publics," in Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularisation, ed. Terry Shinn and Whitley (Dordrecht/Boston: Reidel, 1985), pp. 3-28, on p. 4;
18. and Steven Shapin, "The Audience for Science in Eighteenth Century Edinburgh," Hist. Sci., 1974, 72:95-121, on p. 96.
19. On audiences for science see also Roger Cooter, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984);
20. and Anne Secord, "Science in the Pub: Artisan Botanists in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire," Hist. Sci., 1994, 32:269-315.
21. Kate Flint, The Woman Reader, 1837-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), p. 326
22. (the axiom in italics is quoted from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet [London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991]);
23. and J. Secord, Victorian Sensation (cit. n. 1), p. 519.
24. Diary writing has received attention in literary studies, particularly from feminists, See Rachel Langford and Russell West, eds., Marginal Voices, Marginal Forms: Diaries in European Literature and History (Amsterdam/ Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 1999);
25. and Harriet Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days: Englishwomen's Private Diaries (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1988).
26. See also Robert Fothergill, Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries (London/New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974);
27. and Sharyn Lowenstein, "A Brief History of Journal Keeping," in The Journal Book, ed. Toby Fulwiler (Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook, 1987), pp, 87-97,
28. On epistolarity see Rebecca Earle, ed., Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600-1945 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999);
29. and David Barton and Nigel Hall, eds., Letter Writing as a Social Practice (Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2000).
30. In responding to the emphasis by feminists interested in the history of diary writing, Harriet Blodgett suggests only that "diary keeping has been practiced so extensively by women because it has been possible for them and gratifying to them": Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days, p. 5.
31. We know so little about Agnes M. Hudson that it is not even clear whether she is the author of the journal in question. The name appears at the front, but the handwriting is not a clear match: Diary, probably by Agnes M. Hudson, of her attendance at British Association Meetings in Bristol and Sheffield . . . , 1875-1878, MS Eng.e.3386, Bodleian Library, Margaret Smith (1867-1904) described the 1901 meeting in Glasgow in a series of letters to her mother: Letters of Margaret Smith to Susan Emma Smith, Records of Archibald Smith, TD 1/967, Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Her father, Archibald Smith (1813-1872), had been a barrister and mathematician, and Lord Kelvin was a family friend, but Margaret is certainly an obscure figure, The diary of Caroline Fox, daughter of Robert Were Fox, is well known for its anecdotes of literary and scientific celebrities: Memories of Old Friends, being Extracts from the Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox, ed. Horace N. Pym (London: Smith, Elder, 1882)
32. (hereafter cited as Fox, Memories of Old Friends).
33. Caroline Fox attended BAAS meetings at least in 1836, 1837, 1852, and 1857, Clara Strutt (b, ca, 1825), mother of the physicist and BAAS president John Strutt, Lord Rayleigh (1842-1919), accompanied him to the 1884 BAAS meeting in Montreal, Her letter-diary of the trip, addressed to her mother, was privately published as The British Association's Visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters (Project Gutenberg-http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6876)
34. (hereafter cited as Strutt, British Association's Visit to Montreal, 1884),
35. Emily Poulton (d. 1939) was married to Edward Bagnall Poulton (1856-1943), an entomologist who took a prominent role in Section D and was president of the BAAS in 1937, She accompanied him to three of the BAAS's overseas meetings: Toronto (1897), South Africa (1905), and Australia (1914), recording her experiences in Diary of Emily Poulton, MSS Eng.e,2015 and 2023, Bodleian Library, Unless otherwise indicated, biographical information is taken from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (www.oxforddnb.com) or relevant archival catalogues.
36. It is generally thought that throughout the nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries diary writers became increasingly conscious of themselves as individuals and as writers (see Fothergill, Private Chronicles [cit. n. 7], pp. 32-33), but scholars have consistently overemphasized the more introspective, literary, and rewarding texts.
37. Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, pp. 148-157.
38. See also Browne, "Glimpse of Petticoats" (cit. n. 1). Patricia Phillips's rather impressionistic The Scientific Lady: A Social History of Women's Scientific Interests, 1520-1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990), pp. 200-203, looks at female audiences at the BAAS but highlights the minority who had active scientific interests and overplays their involvement.
39. William Buckland to Roderick Murchison, 27 Mar. 1832, 5 Apr. 1832, in Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, pp. 150, 151 ("Albemarle" is a reference to the Royal Institution, which began its fashionable Friday Evening Discourses at Albemarle Street in 1825);
40. Charles Babbage to Charles Daubeny, 28 Apr. 1832, in Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Early Correspondence of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London: Royal Historical Society, 1984)
41. (hereafter cited as Morrell and Thackray, Early Correspondence of the BAAS), p. 137;
42. and John Robison to John Phillips, 5 Oct. 1834, ibid., p. 193.
43. Murchison to Vernon Harcourt, 21 Feb. 1839, in Morrell and Thackray, Early Correspondence of the BAAS, p. 301;
44. J. Phillips to Harcourt, 27 May 1837, ibid., p. 243;
45. and J. Phillips to Ann Phillips, 11 Aug. 1836, in Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, p. 154.
46. On the organization of the sections see Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, pp. 451-460;
47. and O. J. R. Howarth, The British Association for the Advancement of Science: A Retrospect, 1831-1931, 2nd ed. (London: BAAS, 1931), pp. 79-89.
48. Women had been admitted to three sections in 1836 because wet weather canceled a grand promenade: Times, 25 Aug. 1836, p. 3d.
49. Caroline Fox was taken into Section A (mathematics and physical sciences) in 1837: Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 14 Sept. 1837, p. 21.
50. On women and botany see Ann B. Shteir, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora's Daughters and Botany in England, 1760 to 1860 (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996).
51. Murchison to Harcourt, 18 Sept. 1837, in Morrell and Thackray, Early Correspondence of the BAAS, p. 258;
52. Athenaeum (1835),
53. quoted in Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, p. 154;
54. and Murchison to Harcourt, 21 Feb. 1839, in Morrell and Thackray, Early Correspondence of the BAAS, p. 301. Provision of separate spaces for women in every meeting room was impossible for many host towns and was not insisted upon.
55. Ladies' Tickets cost £1 and were transferable to other women but did not allow the holder to sit on council or committees or to receive a copy of the report of the meeting. Women, still made up no more than 5 percent of the membership by 1900: Paula A. Gould, "Femininity and Physical Science in Britain, 1870-1914" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Cambridge, 1998), p. 102. From the 1840s women very occasionally wrote and presented papers (see Browne, "Glimpse of Petticoats" [cit. n. 1]), and toward the end of the century they might be found acting as sectional secretaries. From the 1910s a few women were elected to the sectional councils or as sectional presidents. A similar pattern was found in the American Association for the Advancement of Science; see Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, The Formation of the American Scientific Community: The American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848-60 (Urbana/Chicago: Univ. Illinois Press, 1976), p. 103.
56. Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, p. 149;
57. and Scotsman, 13 Sept. 1834, p. 2. Available data on ticket sales is patchy but suggests that Ladies' Tickets might make up anything from 7 to 3.1 percent of the total, meaning anywhere between ca. 100 and ca. 870 tickets. The average number of Ladies' Tickets sold annually between 1881 and 1901 was 406. See Statements of Tickets Issued, 1839-1848, 1851-1855, Dep. BAAS 5, fols. 155, 161, 178-179, Bodleian Library; and General Committee Meeting Minutes, 1881-1916, Dep. BAAS 12-13, Bodleian Library. The Ladies' Ticket existed until 1919, when it became a Transferable Ticket, available to both sexes for £1. See Papers of the Committee of the Council on the Working of the Association, 1918-1922, Dep. BAAS 31, fol. 17, Bodleian Library. In 1919 this monetary contribution was still considered a valuable asset.
58. Scotsman, 30 Mar. 1850, p. 4.
59. Lowe, "British Association and the Provincial Public" (cit. n. 1), p. 127.
60. Likewise, the significant minority of female members of the Geologists' Association and the British Astronomical Association served to ensure that the status of these organizations remained very different from that of the Geological Society or the Royal Astronomical Society. Women were admitted to societies as follows: Linnean Society (1904), Royal Geographical Society (1913), Royal Astronomical Society (1915), Geological Society (1919), Royal Society (1945). In contrast, the Zoological, Entomological, Botanical, Statistical, Anthropological, and Royal Scottish Geographical Societies had all admitted women in the nineteenth century.
61. Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, pp. 148-157;
62. and Browne, "Glimpse of Petticoat" (cit. n. 1), pp. 5-6.
63. Wives with, free time to appear at daytime social and cultural events functioned as status symbols. See Emma Barnes, "Fashioning a Natural Self: Guides to Self-Presentation in Victorian England" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Cambridge, 1995), p. 105;
64. and Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London: Hutchinson, 1987), pp. 272-315.
65. Glasgow News, 13 Sept. 1876, p. 4, BAAS Press-cuttings 1876, Dep. BAAS 413, Bodleian Library; and Shapin, "Science and the Public" (cit. n. 2).
66. Liverpool Mercury, 6 Sept. 1888,
67. quoted in David Sealey, "The British Association for the Advancement of Science: The 1896 Meeting Held in Liverpool" (M.Sc. diss., Univ. Liverpool, 1993), p. 28;
68. Irish Daily News, 19 Aug. 1878, BAAS Press-cuttings 1878, Dep. BAAS 414, Bodleian Library; "Press Reports, Liverpool Meeting, Book 1" (1923), Dep. BAAS 425, p. 73;
69. and News Chronicle, 4 Sept. 1933, BAAS 1932-1933, Dep. BAAS 428, Bodleian Library.
70. Punch, 19 Aug. 1871, 67:67;
71. Times, 4 Aug. 1841, p. 4c;
72. Irish Times, 17 Aug. 1878, p. 7,
73. BAAS Press-cuttings 1878, Dep. BAAS 414, Bodleian. Library; Liverpool Mercury, 6 Sept. 1888,
74. quoted in Sealey, "British Association for the Advancement of Science: 1896 Meeting Held in Liverpool," p. 28;
75. and Cambridge Independent Press, 1.1 Oct. 1862, BAAS Press-cuttings, 1857, 1859-1860, 1862, Dep. BAAS 405, Bodleian Library.
76. Glasgow News, 12 Sept. 1876, BAAS Press-cuttings 1876, Dep. BAAS 413, Bodleian Library.
77. It is noteworthy that the other main group discussed as an audience of the BAAS in newspaper reports was the working classes, to which special lectures were addressed from 1867 to 191.1; see Howarth, British Association for the Advancement of Science: Retrospect, 1831-1931 (cit. n. 13), pp. 103-106.
78. Shapin, "Science and the Public" (cit. n. 2), p. 993,
79. points to the importance of a "gap of comprehensibility" in order to demarcate the expert from the nonexpert. He takes this concept from Kuhn's view that the mathematical sciences were the first to acquire this noncomprehensibility: Thomas S. Kuhn, "Mathematical versus Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science," in The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago/London: Univ. Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 31-65.
80. See also Thomas F. Gieryn, "Boundary-work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists," American Sociological Review, 1983, 48:781-795.
81. Shapin, "Science and the Public," p. 1000;
82. and Robert M. Young, Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place in Victorian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985). Since women were regarded as a focus for domestic religious observance, the secularization of science itself acted to exclude them.
83. Shapin, "Science and the Public," p. 1000. This is a strategy equivalent to that described by Ann B. Shteir in "Gender and 'Modern' Botany in Victorian England," in Women, Gender, and Science: New Directions, ed. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and Helen E. Longino, Osiris, 2nd Ser., 1997, 72:29-38.
84. John Lindley aimed to create a "scientific" and defeminized form of botany and succeeded in part by publishing a Ladies' Botany (1834-1837) that placed women in. "a botanical separate sphere" that was supportive of but separate from the professionalizing male world of botany (pp. 35-36).
85. Glasgow News, 14 Sept. 1876, BAAS Press-cuttings 1876, Dep. BAAS 413, Bodleian Library. This was also the case in other settings: male students at University College London would apparently turn during lectures to watch the reactions of female students when handed specimens of human, brain. See Gould, "Femininity and Physical Science in Britain" (cit. n. 16), p. 42.
86. On the arguments over women's intellect see Gates, Kindred Nature (cit. n. 3), pp. 13-22.
87. See also Cynthia Eagle Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989);
88. and Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York/London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), Ch. 2.
89. Times, 24 Aug. 1836, p. 3b, 16 Sept. 1853, p. 5f.
90. BAAS Press-cuttings album, Newcastle 1863, Dep. BAAS 406, Bodleian Library; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 21 Aug. 1879, BAAS Press-cuttings 1879, Dep. BAAS 415, Bodleian Library;
91. and Sheffield, and Rotherham Independent, 23 Aug. 1879, BAAS Press-cuttings 1879, Dep. BAAS 4.15, Bodleian Library.
92. James Hunt, "Anniversary Address Delivered before the Anthropological Society of London, January 3rd 1865, Dedicated to the British Association for the Advancement of Science," [p. 6], Anthropological Society Supplements, A8/2/2, Royal Anthropological Institute Archives, London.
93. The troublesome nature of Section F in the association's early days, reflecting social and political questions, often with, a particular local flavor, is discussed in Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, pp. 291-296.
94. On the participation of women and the discussion of their rights in the Social Science Association see Lawrence Goldman, Science, Reform, and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association, 1857-1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), pp. 113-142.
95. On women and the methodology of the social sciences see Lynn McDonald, The Women Founders of the Social, Sciences (Ottawa: Carleton Univ. Press, 1994).
96. Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 21 Aug. 1879, BAAS Press-cuttings 1879, Dep. BAAS 415, Bodleian Library;
97. and Punch, 6 Sept. 1879, 77:99.
98. See also Susan David Bernstein, '"Supposed Differences': Lydia Becker and Victorian Women's Participation in the BAAS," in Repositioning Victorian Sciences: Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Thinking, ed. David Clifford, Elizabeth Wadge, Alex Warwick, and Martin Willis (London: Anthem, 2006), pp. 85-93.
99. Lancet, 30 May 1874, 1:772,
100. quoted in Gould, "Femininity and Physical Science in Britain" (cit. n. 16), p. 14.
101. On the depiction of scientific women in Punch see ibid., pp. 195-199;
102. and Constance Rover, The Punch Book of Women's Rights (London: Hutchinson, 1967), pp. 57-65.
103. On the need to "keep up appearances" see Gould, "Femininity and the Physical Sciences in Britain," p. 11 and Ch. 1.
104. Program for "Section W," Aug. 1897, James Bain MSS, B1965-0021/02, University of Toronto Archives.
105. Separate information regarding arrangements "so far as they affect Ladies" might be issued by the organizers, as in Leeds in 1858. As late as 1929 the organizers of the South African meeting formed a Ladies' Committee "for the entertainment of lady members": Memorandum, from Town Clerk, 29 June 1929, 3/CT 4/4/1/31 HM 217/4, Western Cape Provincial Archives, Cape Town.
106. David Rivett, the Organizing Secretary for the Australian meeting of 1914, was unable to comprehend the complaint of discrimination from the geologist Margaret Crosfield after he decreed that "ladies cannot go on geological excursions: these may be rough, wet and arduous": David Rivett to O. J. R. Howarth, 10 Feb. 1914, Annual Meeting Australia Correspondence, Dep. BAAS 234, fol. 205, Bodleian Library. He dismissed her complaint, adding "we have no ill feeling towards ladies as such": Rivett to Howarth, 28 May [1914], A. C. D. Rivett Papers, MS 83/31, 3-5, Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra.
107. It has not been possible to do a comparative study of the writings of nonscientific male attendees. One example, however, is J. J. A. Boase, who went "to see something of The British Association" in Oxford when en route to a tour of Ireland. He was accompanied by his son Charles, who lived in Exeter College, and he was decidedly a tourist, including descriptions and illustrations of buildings in his account. He was excited to see "the Lions," mentions events like dinners, and particularly enjoyed a talk on polar exploration. The chief difference between his account and those of the majority of the women discussed here is that he always included something, however brief, to describe the papers given and objects exhibited. J. J. A. Boase, "A Ramble in Ireland," Journals of Tours, Vol. 8 (1860), Add. MS 35,052, British Library, London.
108. Fox, Memories of Old Friends. 22 Aug. 1857, p. 312;
109. Strutt, British Association's Visit to Montreal, 1884, 29 Aug. 1884;
110. and Diary of Emily Poulton, 17 Aug. 1905, MS Eng.e.2023, fol. 29v, Bodleian Library.
111. H. E. Litchfield, ed., Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters, 1792-1896, 2 vols., Vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1915), p. 48;
112. and "Emma Darwin's Diaries, 1824-1896," Darwin Online (http://darwin-online.org.uk/ EmmaDiaries.html), entries for 12-18 Sept. 1855. Her diary for 1849 records only that she followed her husband to the Birmingham meeting.
113. Jane Dee, Elisabetha Hevelius, and Marie Lavoisier are three of the examples of women who contributed to "Domestic Science" offered in Patricia Fara, Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science, and Power in the Enlightenment (London: Pimlico. 2004).
114. Regarding the Huxleys see Litchfield, ed.. Emma Darwin. Vol. 2, p. 186.
115. Margaret Smith to Susan Smith, 13 Sept. 1901, 18 Sept. 1901, TD 1/967, Mitchell Library; and Diary of Emily Poulton, 9 Aug. 1914, MS Eng.e.2025, fol. 33, Bodleian Library.
116. Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 4 Sept. 1852, p. 278, 28 Aug. 1857, p. 313.
117. Lady Caroline Howard (b. 1837?), probably niece of the fourth earl of Wicklow, was at the Dublin meeting of 1857: Journal of Caroline Howard, 27, 28, and 31 Aug. 1857, Wicklow Papers, MS 4792, National Library of Ireland, Dublin. Howard was unable to attend Livingstone's lecture because she had sprained her ankle, but she reported that one of her companions "enjoyed herself so much and brought me back such an account of it that I felt quite in despair at being laid up."
118. Strutt, British Association's Visit to Montreal, 1884, 31 Aug. 1897;
119. M. Smith to S. Smith, 18 Sept. 1901, TD 1/967, Mitchell Library;
120. and Diary, probably by Agnes M. Hudson, 26 Aug. 1875, MS Eng.e.3386, fol. 6, Bodleian Library.
121. Glasgow News, 14 Sept. 1876, BAAS Press-cuttings 1876, Dep. BAAS 413, Bodleian Library;
122. Diary, probably by Agnes Hudson, 31 Aug. 1875, 22 Aug. 1879, MS Eng.e.3386, fols. 11v, 60v, Bodleian Library;
123. and Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 23 Aug. 1879, pp. 2, 6, BAAS Press-cuttings 1879, Dep. BAAS 415, Bodleian Library.
124. Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 23 Aug. 1852, pp. 276-277;
125. and [Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott,] Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe (London, 1854), 18 Sept. 1852, pp. 108-112, on p. 108. Sara Jane Clarke (1823-1904) was an American author (publishing as Grace Greenwood) who took in the meeting in Belfast during a European tour in 1852. She married Leander K. Lippincott in 1853.
126. M. Smith to S. Smith, 13 Sept. 1901, TD 1/967, Mitchell Library. Regarding etiquette see F.W.R. and Lord Charles X, The Laws, & Bye-Laws of Good Society: A Code of Etiquette (London: Simpkin, Marshall, [1870]), pp. 34-35;
127. other examples are given in Barnes, "Fashioning a Natural Self" (cit. n. 21), pp. 88, 92. Correct manner and attire were equally important when encountering strangers.
128. Liverpool Mercury, 6 Sept. 1888,
129. quoted in Sealey, "British Association for the Advancement of Science: 1896 Meeting Held in Liverpool" (cit. n. 23), p. 28.
130. On unfeminine self-absorption see Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days (cit. n. 7), p. 31.
131. Lippincott, Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe (cit. n. 49), 18 Sept. 1852, 23 Sept. 1852, pp. 108-112, on p. 112;
132. Journal of Caroline Howard, 29 Aug. 1857, Wicklow Papers, MS 4792, National Library of Ireland;
133. Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 22 Aug. 1836, p. 4;
134. Harriet Martineau, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, 2 vols., Vol. 2 (London: Virago, 1983), p. 137;
135. and Diary, probably by Agnes Hudson, 23 Aug. 1879, MS Eng.e.3386, fol. 62v, Bodleian Library.
136. Helen Shipton (b. 18577), an author published by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, attended the 1892 Edinburgh meeting during her residency at a summer school run by Patrick Geddes (1854-1932). Her experiences were recorded in Helen Shipton, August Episodes: Studies in Sociability and Science (London: A. D. Innes, 1893); the quotation is from p. 84.
137. Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 16 Sept. 1837, p. 22;
138. Martineau, Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (cit. n. 52), Vol. 2, p. 137;
139. and Shipton, August Episodes, pp. 85, 9, 13, 86.
140. Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 22 Aug. 1836, p. 4;
141. and M. Smith to S. Smith, 18 Sept. 1901, TD 1/967, Mitchell Library.
142. Lady Morgan (ca. 1783-1859), novelist and socialite, attended the 1835 Dublin meeting: Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan's Memoirs, Autobiography, Diaries, and Correspondence, ed. W. H. Dixon, 2 vols., Vol. 2 (London, 1862), pp. 404-406.
143. Fox's triumph is recorded in. Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 16 Sept. 1837, p. 22.
144. Journal of Caroline Howard, 26 Aug. 1857, Wicklow Papers, MS 4792, National Library of Ireland;
145. and Diary, probably by Agnes Hudson, 26 Aug. 1875, 25 Aug. 1879, 28 Aug. 1879, MS Eng.e.3386, fols. 6v-7, 64v-65, 66v, Bodleian Library.
146. See, e.g., "The Old Story (Scientific Version)," Punch, 1 Sept. 1877, 73:95.
147. One example was Paulina Jermyn Jermyn, who was introduced to her future husband, Walter Calverley Trevelyan, at the 1833 meeting;
148. see Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, pp. 149, 152. Browne, "Glimpse of Petticoats" (cit. n. 1), points to David Brewster, Leonard Horner, John Henslow, Lord Northampton, and William Jardine as examples of men of science who brought their marriageable daughters to meetings.
149. This was likewise true of scientific conversaziones and exhibitions elsewhere. An excellent example, from the male point of view, is provided by comments and a drawing in the diary of Andrew Ramsay (1814-1891) of the Geological Survey. The latter shows two survey men flirting with young women while ostensibly showing them and their female chaperone around London's Museum of Practical Geology. See J. Secord, Victorian Sensation (cit. n. 1), pp. 173-175.
150. Journal of Caroline Howard, 27 Aug. 1857, Wicklow Papers, MS 4792, National Library of Ireland (Jukes [1811-1869] was director of me Geological Survey of Ireland); and Shipton, August Episodes (cit. n. 53), p. 83.
151. For Geddes's views see Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson, The Evolution of Sex (London: W. Scott, 1889).
152. On theories of the nature of women see the introduction to Russett, Sexual Science (cit. n. 30);
153. and Gates, Kindred Nature (cit. n. 3), Ch. 1.
154. It has been suggested that the "underrepresentation of women, comes not so much from the exclusion of women from science, but rather from the exclusion of the domestic realm from science, and the incidental concomitant exclusion of women": Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, "Introduction," in Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives, ed. Abir-Am and Outram (cit. n. 3), pp. 1-16, on. p. 3.
155. M. Smith, to S. Smith, 13 Sept. 1901, TD 1/967, Mitchell Library.
156. Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 14 Sept. 1837, 4 Sept. 1852, pp. 21, 278. Lady Aberdeen (1857-1939) was married to the Governor General of Canada at the time of the 1897 Toronto meeting;
157. see Ishbel Maria Gordon, The Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen, ed. John T. Saywell (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1960), p. 408.
158. Gordon, Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen, p. 407;
159. and Owenson, Lady Morgan's Memoirs (cit. n. 56), 15 Aug. 1835, Vol. 2, p. 406.
160. M. J. Peterson has argued that social status overrode gender in allowing access to privileged spaces and particular individuals: Family, Love, and Work in the Lives of Victorian Gentlewomen (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1989), p. 190.
161. Diary of Emily Poulton, 2 Aug. 1914, MS Eng.e.2025, fol. 26, Bodleian Library. Another, later diary, which indicates that women on the BAAS overseas visits were "almost overwhelmed by the hospitality showered upon us," is that of Elnor Russell (1878-1965), who accompanied her husband Sir John Russell on the 1924 visit to Canada: Journal of Lady Russell, HERT 11/3/7, fol. 10, Museum of English Rural Life, Reading. On the overseas meetings more generally see Michael Worboys, "The British Association and Empire: Science and Social Imperialism, 1880-1940," in Parliament of Science, ed. MacLeod and Collins (cit. n. 1), pp. 170-187.
162. Gould, "Femininity and Physical Science in Britain" (cit. n. 16), pp. 67-86,
163. discusses the interest surrounding Hertha Ayrton as a speaker and experimenter in a number of institutions. She notes the newspapers' "eagerness to discover what a technically-minded woman might look, like" (p. 73)
164. and the Daily Telegraph's description of a woman speaker at the Institution of Electrical Engineers as a "sensation" (p. 85).
165. "The World of Women: Scientists and Other Personalities," Illustrated London News, 22 Sept. 1928, p. 512,
166. includes portraits of seven women who read papers at the BAAS meeting in. Glasgow. An example of a column aimed at women is S.B., "Women's Affairs: Women and the British Association," Johannesburg Star, cutting in George H. Darwin's diary of the BAAS meeting in South Africa, 1905, Add. 8.166, fols. 2.1-22, Cambridge University Library. This emphasized "The Social Side" as of particular interest to women. Cicely Carr wrote an article entitled "Personalities of Science: Eminent Women to Address the British.
167. Association" for the Leicester Daily Mercury, BAAS Press-cuttings, 1932-1933, BAAS Archives, Dep. BAAS 428, Bodleian Library.
168. This is suggested in Phillips, Scientific Lady (cit. n. 11), p. 203, which describes Caroline Fox and others as "part of a group that at every meeting sprang into action and demanded places for women."
169. Phrenology, e.g., was excluded. See Morrell and Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, pp. 276-281;
170. and Cooter, Cultural Meaning of Popular Science (cit. n. 5).
171. Cooter and Pumfrey, "Separate Spheres and Public Places" (cit. n. 2), p. 250.