1904 petition to the Chemical Society

Last updated

The 1904 petitionto the Chemical Society was a petition written by 19 female chemists setting out the reasons why they should be afforded the status of Fellow of the Chemical Society. [1] The petition is of importance as it eventually led to the admission of women as Fellows of the Society [2] (one of the Societies that amalgamated to become the Royal Society of Chemistry), as well as identifying prominent female chemists working in Britain at this time. [1] [3]

Contents

Context

The Chemical Society was founded in 1841, but several attempts to allow the admission of women as fellows were unsuccessful. [2] [1] Attempts at change included a legal challenge based on the ambiguous language of the Society’s Charter in 1880, which was defeated because the issue of admitting women as fellows "was not expedient at the present time", [2] followed by an attempt in 1892, defeated by a Council vote of 8 to 7. [2] However, after the election of Marie Curie as a Foreign Fellow of the Society in 1904, 19 women signed a petition for admission of women as Fellows. The petition was organised by three of its signatories: Ida Smedley, Ida Freund, and Martha Whiteley. [2]

Petition contents

The petition was addressed to the President and Council of the Chemical Society. [4] It highlighted that in the previous thirty years that there were "about 150 women" who had appeared as authors on some 300 papers published by the Society. It listed the number of papers in the Journal of the Chemical Society in the periods 1873 - 1882 (20 papers), 1883 - 1892 (33 papers), 1893 - 1902 (142 papers), and 1903 to August 1904 (50 papers). They continue that as the Society deemed it fit to publish the work completed by female chemists, that they should help support this work by enabling "free access to chemical literature and by the right to attend the meetings of the Society".

Signatories

The signatories to the 1904 Petition are:

  1. Lucy Boole
  2. Katherine Alice Burke
  3. Clare de Brereton Evans
  4. Elizabeth Eleanor Field
  5. Emily Fortey
  6. Ida Freund
  7. Mildred Gostling (Mrs Mills)
  8. Hilda Hartle
  9. Edith Humphrey
  10. Dorothy Marshall
  11. Margaret Seward (Mrs McKillop)
  12. Ida Smedley (Mrs Maclean)
  13. Alice Emily Smith
  14. Millicent Taylor
  15. M. Beatrice Thomas
  16. Grace Toynbee (Mrs Frankland)
  17. Martha Whiteley
  18. Sibyl Widdows
  19. Katherine Isabella Williams

The network that allowed these women to co-sponsor the petition has been examined. [1] Smedley, Freund, and Whiteley led the petition. Smedley attended the King Edward VI High School as did Thomas and Hartle. [1] Freund was a demonstrator and a lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge between 1887 and 1912, as were Elizabeth Eleanor Field, Dorothy Marshall, and Mildred Gostling. [1] Thomas, Field, Whiteley, and Gostling spent time at Royal Holloway College, from where there were two additional petitioners: Margaret Seward and Sibyl Widdows. [1] Clare de Brereton Evans and Millicent Taylor attended the Cheltenham Ladies' College, Cheltenham and Taylor had connections with the University of Bristol, where Emily Fortey and Katherine Williams studied. [1] Lucy Boole studied at the London School of Medicine for Women and Katherine Burke studied at University College London under the supervision of William Ramsay - both of these women knew de Brereton Evans. Grace Toynbee studied at the University of Birmingham, and was possibly connected with Hartle. [1] Two petitioners Edith Humphrey and Alice Smith have unknown connections to the remainder, but it is proposed that they were connected by male chemists keen to promote their cause, such William Ramsay. [1]

Outcome

After the petition was received, William Tilden, the President of the Chemical Society in 1905, led agreement from Council that the Petition should be acted upon and that the Society's byelaws should be modified to give qualified women all the privileges of fellows, except for the power to hold office or vote at meetings. [2] However, when this was put to a vote, only 45 fellows showed up, and the motion was defeated. The subsequent discussions led to an eventual compromise in 1908 that women be admissible as "Subscribers" which would allow attendance at ordinary meetings, the use of the library, and the receipt of Society publications. [2] [5] Only 11 women joined as "Subscriber" in the period 1908 - 1919, when the category was abolished. [2] After World War I, at an extraordinary general meeting on 8 May 1919, the Society under its then President James Dobbie resolved that women should be admitted on the same terms as men, and the corresponding byelaw was passed in 1920. The first woman fellow admitted was Ida Smedley (Mrs Maclean). [6]

Related Research Articles

The Chemical Society was a scientific society formed in 1841 by 77 scientists as a result of increased interest in scientific matters. Chemist Robert Warington was the driving force behind its creation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Hobson Mills</span> British organic chemist

William Hobson Mills FRS was a British organic chemist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ida Freund</span> Austrian-British chemist

Ida Freund was the first woman to be a university chemistry lecturer in the United Kingdom. She is known for her influence on science teaching, particularly the teaching of women and girls. She wrote two key chemistry textbooks and invented the idea of baking periodic table cupcakes, as well as inventing a gas measuring tube, which was named after her.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucy Everest Boole</span> British chemist and pharmacist (1862-1904)

Lucy Everest Boole FRIC was a British chemist and pharmacist who was the first woman to research pharmacy in England. She was the first female professor at the London School of Medicine for Women in the Royal Free Hospital, and the first female Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grace Frankland</span> English microbiologist (1858–1946)

Grace Coleridge Frankland known as Mrs Percy FranklandnéeGrace Toynbee was an English microbiologist. She was one of the nineteen female scientists who wrote the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society to request that they should create some female fellows of the society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edith Humphrey</span> British chemist

Edith Ellen Humphrey was a British inorganic chemist who carried out pioneering work in co-ordination chemistry at the University of Zurich under Alfred Werner. She is thought to be the first British woman to obtain a doctorate in chemistry and the first chemist to synthesize a chiral inorganic complex.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sibyl Taite Widdows</span> British chemist

Sibyl Taite Widdows (1876–1960) was a British Scientist and member of the Chemistry department at the London School of Medicine for Women for 40 years.

Mildred May Gostling, also published under her married name Mildred Mills, was an English chemist who completed research in carbohydrate chemistry. She was one of the nineteen signatories on a letter from professional female chemists to the Chemical Society requesting that women be accepted as Fellows to the Society.

Mary Beatrice Thomas was a lecturer in chemistry at Royal Holloway College and later at Girton College, Cambridge where she was also Director of Studies. She was a noted educator, co-editing a chemistry textbook written by Ida Freund, as well as being one of the nineteen signatories to a petition to the Chemical Society arguing for admission of women as Fellows of the Society.

Emily Jane Lloyd was an English chemist and one of the first women to become an Associate member of the Royal Institute of Chemistry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Seward</span> British chemist

Margaret Seward MBE became the earliest Chemist on staff at the Women's College, from 1896 to 1915. She became the pioneer woman to obtain a first class in the honour school of Natural Science and later received an MBE for her work on nutrition during World War I.

Katharine Isabella Williams was a British chemist who became a student, aged 29, at University College Bristol. She was known for her collaboration in the 1880s with Nobel prize winning Scottish chemist, William Ramsay and was also one of the signatories of the 1904 petition for the admission of women to the Chemical Society.

Dorothy Blanche Louisa Marshall was a British chemist who worked at Girton, Avery Hill and the National Physical Laboratory. In 1904, she signed a petition for women to be admitted as a Fellow of the Chemical Society.

Emily Comber Fortey was a British chemist and politician. She gained her B.Sc. in 1886 before working with Vladimir Markovnikov and Sydney Young on fractional distillation. In 1904, she was one of nineteen signatories on a petition to allow the admission of women to the Chemical Society.

Hilda Jane Hartle was a British chemist researcher and teacher. She was prominent in promoting the teaching of Chemistry to women and became known for her opposition to domestic science.

Clare de Brereton Evans was a scientist and academic who became the first woman to be awarded a doctorate in Chemistry (DSc). She was a pioneer translator of Meister Eckhart's German works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Eleanor Field</span> British chemist

Elizabeth Eleanor Field was a British chemist and the Head of Chemistry at Royal Holloway College for over nineteen years. She is also noted as one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition which aimed to grant women the status of Fellows of the Chemical Society.

Katherine Alice Burke was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society.

Alice Emily Smith was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society.

Millicent Taylor FRSC MSc DSc was a chemist who, in 1904, was one of the nineteen women who petitioned to join the Chemical Society

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Rayner-Canham, Marelene; Rayner-Canham, Geoff. "Pounding on the Doors: The Fight For Acceptance of British Women Chemists". Bull. Hist. Chem. 28 (2): 110–119.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mason, Joan (1991). "A forty years' war". Chemistry in Britain: 233–238.
  3. Creese, Mary R. S. (5 January 2009). "British women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who contributed to research in the chemical sciences". The British Journal for the History of Science. 24 (3): 275–305. doi: 10.1017/S0007087400027370 . PMID   11622943.
  4. Rayner-Canham, Marelene Rayner-Canham, Geoff (2008). Chemistry was their life : pioneer British women chemists, 1880-1949. London: Imperial College Press. pp. 64–68. ISBN   978-1860949869.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. "Proceedings of the Chemical Society, Vol. 24, No. 349". Proceedings of the Chemical Society (London). 24 (349): 277. 1908. doi:10.1039/PL9082400277.
  6. "Dr Ida Smedley | 175 Faces of Chemistry". www.rsc.org.