British Geology in the Early Nineteenth Century: A Conglomerate with a Female Matrix

Abstract

During the first half of the nineteenth century—in addition to mining engineers or land surveyors, who used geological knowledge for their profession—a large group of non-professional scientists still existed in British geology. For these people with enough money, time, and leisure to study, travel, and publish, geology was more or less a private interest. In scientific circles such as the Geological Society of London serious workers and dilettantes were found together. The establishment of geology at British universities was at its beginning or still ahead in the future. Because of the informal character of this important part of early British geology, women were not excluded from participation. They were not yet opponents in the competition for jobs, but were welcomed as fellow-enthusiasts. More so, wives, daughters, and sisters or even non-related female acquaintances at that time were an integral part of the infrastructure of scientific work. As a result, there have been many female contributors to geology in the early nineteenth-century in the United Kingdom, forming a framework of assistants, secretaries, collectors, painters, and field geologists to the leading figures in the geological sciences, thereby adding to, and shaping their work.… some of the ladies were very blue1and well-informed, reading Mrs. Somerville, and frequenting the Royal Institution.2W. M. Thackeray: Vanity Fair, 1847