The lady astronomers of Victorian Britain

WOMEN & THE RAS: VICTORIAN AMATEURS The lady astronomers of Victorian Britain 1 Florence Taylor of the Leeds Astronomical Society. Her interests also included astronomical history and women in science. She lectured to the Leeds society in the 1890s about both Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville. Later marrying a Dr Hildred and living in Minnesota, USA, she continued her membership, and became a benefactress of the Leeds Astronomical Society. (Courtesy of the LAS) F or almost 40 years before the RAS 1895, soon after the reconstitution, it was admitted them to the Fellowship minuted that efforts would be made to in 1916, women were already playattract lady members, one of the leading ing a serious institutional role in British ones being Miss Florence Taylor (figure 1). astronomy. This followed the foundation of Florence was the highly educated daughseveral high-powered amateur astronomiter of a comfortably-off Leeds amateur cal societies, in Belfast, Leeds, Liverpool, astronomer and Society member. And, in Cardiff, Manchester and addition to observing, she “The first enduring Newcastle and, especially, was an active lecturer, with society was Liverpool, the British Astronomical interests in astronomical which from its early Association in 1890. These history and the women’s days had eight women” suffrage movement. In 1897, societies, moreover, published journals and produced she delivered and published abundant documentation of the practice a lecture to the LAS on Mary Somerville. In and promotion of “popular” astronomy in 1898, she married an American relative, a late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, most Dr Hildred of Nobles County, Minnesota, of which still survives. where she went to live. Her astronomy conThe first enduring society was that in tinued, however, along with her continuing Liverpool, founded in 1881, which even membership of the Leeds society, to which from its early days had eight women memshe was also a benefactress. bers and officers. Indeed, in several of the Credibility early societies women constituted around The British amateur astronomical societies 10–15% of the membership. Although were among the first academic institutions Leeds had an astronomical society and to open their full membership to women, an observatory back in 1859, it was not and in their ranks one finds school teachuntil after 1890 that it was refounded on a ers, professional writers and ladies of indepermanent footing, and the Leeds Astropendent means, for these bodies conferred nomical Society continues to this day. In 4.12 A&G • August 2016 • Vol. 57 • www.aandg.org Before they could join the RAS, many women were influential members of amateur astronomical societies across the country, as Allan Chapman explains. WOMEN & THE RAS: VICTORIAN AMATEURS an esprit de corps and academic credibility. Isle of Man and, rather amazingly, another One also notices that these societies were in the British expatriate community in being established at a time when women Pernambuco, Brazil. were first gaining access to higher educaMiss Elizabeth Brown and her sister tion, with the foundation of Oxford and Jemima were the daughters of a wealthy Cambridge colleges such as Girton (1869), Quaker wine merchant of Cirencester with Newnham (1871), Lady Margaret Hall a passion for astronomy and meteorology: (1872) and Somerville (1879), and of Royal passions which his daughters came to Holloway College, London (1879–86). share. Elizabeth was especially fascinated Miss E Graham Hagerty, by solar studies and, from “The founding of Council member and her private observatory in the amateur societies secretary of the Astronomigarden, undertook serious played a major role in cal Society of Wales, gave researches from the 1860s empowering women” her address as the Higher until her death in 1899. She Grade School, Cardiff, and was an early member of the put ARCSc. (Associate of the Royal College Liverpool Astronomical Society and its first of Science, now Imperial College, Londirector of solar studies. don) after her name: an early example of a By the 1880s, Elizabeth Brown saw a need woman specifying an academic qualificafor a national (or quasi-Imperial) amateur tion and professional address. By 1901, astronomical society. It was largely her moreover, the AS of Wales had a female energy and drive that brought the British membership of around 17%. Astronomical Association into being in These amateur societies served a clien1890, she also becoming its first Solar Sectele that extended well beyond their home tion director. The BAA soon built up a sigcities; railways, the penny postal service nificant female membership, with women, and the electric telegraph meant that memincluding Miss Brown, on its council. berships could be geographically diverse. Though primarily interested in sunspots The Liverpool society had a branch on the and eclipses, Elizabeth Brown belonged A&G • August 2016 • Vol. 57 • www.aandg.org Eclipse chasers Elizabeth Brown was also an early eclipsechaser. She had gone on expeditions to Russia, Spain, Norway and other countries in pursuit of the solar corona (she was preparing to go to Portugal when she died). She and other early members of the BAA took advantage of the travel opportunities made available by a new global network of passenger steamships and railways, and by the burgeoning hotel business. The BAA eclipse expeditions of 1896 and 1898 (Norway and India respectively) included several women astronomers, both married and single – Annie and Walter Maunder, Miss Mary Ackworth Orr and others. Indeed, by the early 1900s, the BAA and other amateur society records present us with an active corps of women observers on eclipse expeditions. These included Mary Proctor, Miss Hart-Davis, Gertrude Bacon and Octavia Stevens, to name but a few. Intrepid ladies, off to India, Algiers and Mauritius – not to mention “safe” places like Europe or Canada – in pursuit of the solar corona. And fully within the British Grand Amateur tradition, these women invariably paid their own way. Without doubt, the founding of prestigious amateur astronomical societies in late Victorian England played a major role in empowering women, by putting them on an equal institutional footing with men. Nor was it just in astronomy that this happened, but in other amateur-driven sciences, such as meteorology, archaeology and fossil geology, to say nothing of parallel activities of women overseas, especially in the USA. For these societies gave British women their first serious institutional standing so that, by 1916, the RAS found no shortage of capable women applying to join the Fellowship. ● AUTHOR Allan Chapman is a historian of science at Wadham College, Oxford. For more detail and extensive primary source citation, see his 1998 book The Victorian Amateur Astronomer: Independent Astronomical Research in Britain, 1820–1920 (Praxis-Wiley, Chichester) 4.13 3 The Astronomical Society of Wales crest on th (...truncated)