This is a revised version of a paper given at a joint meeting of the British Society for the History of Science and the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, London, January 1980.

¹ Now among the T. B. Hall MSS in Merseyside County Museum. I am indebted to the Keeper of Botany, Mrs B. D. Greenwood, for bringing this letter to my attention.

² Heathcot, A., Magazine of zology and botany, 1836, 1, 502Google Scholar. The Society's original prospectus is quoted, ibid., as justifying the eligibility of women as members on the ground that ‘there are many who have devoted their attention with success to this delightful study, and whose occupations often leave them much leisure for observation and research’.

³ Athenaeum, 26 11 1836, p. 835a.Google Scholar

⁴ Excluding (as throughout this paper) the non-subscribing categories of Honorary and Foreign Members.

⁵ Proceedings of the Botanical Society of London, 1839, 1, 101–3Google Scholar. Only this one volume was ever published.

⁶ A report in the Literary gazette of the Anniversary (or Annual General) Meeting of 29 November 1837 asserts that this was ‘very numerously attended, comprising many ladies, members of the Society’. But while there may have been ‘many’ present, the implication that these were ail members is difficult to reconcile with the known figures. A journalist's misinterpretation seems probable.

⁷ Unexpectedly, this is considerably in excess of the total computable, with some estimating, from the Society's own year-by-year figures. The discrepancy is presumably due to many of those whose names feature in the reports never having enrolled formally. At least one person who rendered the Society much assistance over several years, the leading cryptogamist Taylor, Thomas (1786–1848)Google Scholar is said to have come into this category (Watson, H. C. to Babington, C. C., 27 03 1844Google Scholar; Babington correspondence, Botany School, Cambridge). The distinction between members and non-members is thus perhaps not one of much moment: the total of all who in some way contributed to its work would appear to be a truer measure of the Society's strength.

⁸ The principal sources of names are the 1839 membership list, lists of local secretaries appended to the early prospectuses, lists in the published meeting reports of those reading communications, exhibiting or contributing specimens, and data on labels in herbaria of gatherings identifiable as distributed through the Society.

⁹ Mrs Anna Atkins, of Halstead Place, near Sevenoaks.

¹⁰ For a fuller account see Allen, D. E. and Lousley, Dorothy W., ‘Some letters to Margaret Stovin (1756?–1846), botanist of Chesterfield’, The naturatist, 1979, 104, 155–63.Google Scholar

¹¹ A presumptive identification only. It is possible that the ‘Miss Hill’ listed in the Society's minutebook in 1846 as a subscriber to a portrait fund is not the collector of that name frequently referred to in the earlier literature.

¹² Greer, Germaine, The obstacle race, London, 1979, p. 12Google Scholar: ‘The single most striking fact about the women who made names for themselves before the nineteenth century is that almost all of them were related to better-known male painters’. In Greer's view, their motivation probably sprang from a desire to please and conform: they were not independent artistic personalities, with a self-generated determination to produce great art.

¹³ For a fuller account of Margaretta Riley see Allen, D. E., ‘The first woman pteridologist’, British Pteriodological Society bulletin, 1978, 1, 247–9.Google Scholar

¹⁴ A much earlier precedent has recently been claimed for MrsGraham, Maria, afterwards Callcott, Lady (1785–1842)Google Scholar as ‘the first woman to have a paper published by the Geological Society’; see Appleby, Valerie, ‘Ladies with hammers’, New scientist, 1979, 84, 714–5Google Scholar. But while it is true that she features as the author of ‘An account of some effects of the late earthquakes in Chili’, Transactions of the Geological Society of London, 1824 [2], 1, 413–5Google Scholar, this was merely an extract from a letter written by her to the vice-president and was not read before the Society—from membership of which its rules in any case excluded her.

¹⁵ Literary gazette, 1840, pp. 233, 314, 379.Google Scholar

¹⁶ As related by her obituarist in the Nottingham daily express, 20 07 1899.Google Scholar

¹⁷ For a fuller account see Allen, D. E., ‘The botanical family of Samuel Butler’, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 1979, 9, 133–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Basalla, George, ‘Observations on the present status of history of science in the United States’, Isis, 1975, 66, 467–70.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Copy in Department of Botany library, British Museum (Natural History), shelf-mark Obl. 22:58.

²⁰ Its Scotiish counterpart, the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, doubtless moved by its example, also began admitting women in December 1836, nine months after the foundation date. But Miss Katherine Sophia Baily (from 1838 Lady Kane), of Dublin, author of a recent Irish flora, the one honoured on that occasion, had been joined by no more than two others by the end of 1838. And the rather grudging nature of the move that this much more sparing recruitment suggests was underlined by the Society's insistence in corralling them in a separate membership category of their own: women—and women alone—could only be Life members. Similarly, the British Association began formally admitting women to its Sectional meetings in 1837—though (significantly) only those for Geology and Natural History initially—but was not yet prepared to admit them to membership other than indirectly or on the same terms as men; see Thackray, A. W. and Morrell, J. B., Gentlemen of science, forthcoming.Google Scholar

²¹ Mitchell, P. Chalmers, Centenary history of the Zoological Society of London, London, 1929, p. 32Google Scholar. By a resolution passed in April 1827 women were formally admitted as Members on the same terms as men. However, it was not till the end of the century that they became habitual attenders at the Scientific Meetings.

²² Bastin, John, ‘The first prospectus of the Zoological Society of London: new light on the Society's origins’. Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 1970, 5, 369–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ On this see, for example, Watson, H. C., ‘On the credit-worthiness of the labels distributed from the Botanical Society of London’, The phytologist, 1847, 2, 1005–15 (1008).Google Scholar

²⁴ Lowe, P. D., ‘Locals and cosmopolitans: a model for the social organization of provincial science in the nineteenth century’, University of Sussex M Phil thesis, 1978.Google Scholar

²⁵ Symons, G. J., ‘The history of English meteorological societies, 1823 to 1880’, Quarterly journal of the Meteorohgical Society, 1881, 7, 65–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ Hume, A., The learned societies and printing clubs of the United Kingdom, London, 1847, p. 112Google Scholar. A two-thirds vote secured election.

²⁷ 10th edn., London, 1831, p.v. Quoted by Shteir, Ann B., ‘Priscilla Wakefield (1751–1832): author, philanthropist, “respectable person”’, forthcoming.Google Scholar

²⁸ Even this seems to have depended crucially on the help and encouragement of a male botanical neighbour, the Rev. A. Bloxam. See Gregg, Mary (Née Kirby), Letters from my life, London, 1887.Google Scholar

²⁹ Hawksworth, D. L. and Seaward, M. R. D., Lichenology in the British Isles 1568–1975, an historical and bibliographical survey, Richmond, 1977, p. 26.Google Scholar

³⁰ Significantly, in Britain, unlike America, there was no tendency for women, in retaliation, to band themselves together in exclusive groups of their own, such as the Female Botanical Society of Wilmington in the 1840s, the Dana Society of Natural History of the Albany Female Academy in the 1860s and the later still Philadelphia and Syracuse Botanical Clubs. See Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory, ‘In from the periphery: American women in science, 1830–1880’, Signs, 1978, 4, 81–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similar bodies did make an appearance in Britain from the late 1880s onwards—but only in ornithology. British botany continued to be the exception in its non-discriminatory stance.