Abstract
After Girton College and research at The Jodrell Laboratory, Ethel Sargant set up her own laboratory (‘Little Jodrell’), employing talented young women such as Agnes Robertson (= Mrs Arber), who became only the third woman admitted to the Royal Society. Sargant toured European labs with her friend, Margaret Benson of Royal Holloway College, the first female professor of botany in Britain. Benson nurtured the careers of Emily Berridge and Helen Fraser. Dame Helen (= Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan) was Head of Botany at Birkbeck College and in 1907 awarded a D.Sc. Widowed, she was Head of Queen Mary’s Army Nursing Corps, then Commandant of the WRAF. At The Jodrell, Sargant had collaborated with Rina Scott, who became a pioneer of the time-lapse photography of growing plants.
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Notes
- 1.
In 1881, Graces were passed by the University whereby women could officially sit the Tripos examinations for the first time: previously this could only be done by arrangement. However, only ‘titular degrees’ were awarded by Cambridge until 1947.
- 2.
Letter to Agnes Arber (née Robertson), 3 October 1909, Archives of Girton College, Cambridge.
- 3.
Letter from Ethel Sargant to Agnes Arber, 28 Nov 1897. Archives of Girton College, Cambridge.
- 4.
Letter Ethel Sargant to Agnes Robertson, 16 June 1898. Archives of Girton College, Cambridge.
- 5.
Seeds of flowering plants produce either one or two seedling leaves (cotyledons). Grasses, lilies, and orchids are examples of the first type, roses, daisies, and beans of the second.
- 6.
Letters Ethel Sargant to Agnes Robertson. Archives of Girton College, Cambridge.
- 7.
- 8.
Helena was the sister of the artist Walter Sickert, who had studied briefly at The Slade (1881) and thereafter in Paris before settling in the artists’ community in Chelsea (see Chap. 8).
- 9.
13 March 1911, a letter from Ethel’s mother to Mary: cited in Crawford (1999, 690). Polling in General Elections took place on different days in different parts of Britain and Ireland.
- 10.
Letter to Agnes Arber (née Robertson), 7 December 1910. Archives of Girton College, Cambridge.
- 11.
Letter from Ethel Sargant to Agnes Robertson, 13 March 1898. Archives of Girton College, Cambridge.
- 12.
Letter from Ethel Sargant to Mrs. Agnes Arber (née Robertson), 10 June 1906. Archives of Girton College, Cambridge.
- 13.
W.E Delp. ‘Royal Holloway College, 1908–1914’. Archives of Royal Holloway College, University of London, RHC/131/6. Published online to celebrate International Women’s Day 2017. The College had been opened by Queen Victoria in 1886.
- 14.
The schoolbook of ‘Maggie J Benson’ (aged 12), with its charming drawings of plants and animals, is among the archives of RHC.
- 15.
Letter from Ethel Sargant to Emily Berridge, 2 March 1904. Archives of Royal Holloway College.
- 16.
Letter from Margaret Benson to Emily Berridge, 13 November 1904. Archives of Royal Holloway College.
- 17.
Letter from Margaret Benson to Emily Berridge, ‘Early November 1905’. Archives of Royal Holloway College.
- 18.
Undated letter (? March 1905) from Margaret Benson to Emily Berridge. Archives of Royal Holloway College.
- 19.
Pfeffer often taught his students using filmless ‘projections’ of living organisms, such as swarming zoospores.
- 20.
https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-henderina-victoria-scott. Holmesdale Natural History Club. Proceedings of the Holmesdale Natural History Club for the Years 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905. Reigate: Reigate Press, 1906.
- 21.
DH Scott to Miss Gulielma Lister, 24 January 1918, ‘Correspondence of Annie Lorraine Smith’ Archives of the Natural History Museum.
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Ayres, P. (2020). Miss Sargant and a Botanical Web. In: Women and the Natural Sciences in Edwardian Britain. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46600-8_5
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