An exceptional achievement
8th March 2021, International Women’s Day, and Bantry Library has chosen Ellen Hutchins as their local champion, an example of a woman who has “broken the mould” and achieved what might have been considered unachievable in their time.
Ellen studied the cryptogams – non-flowering plants – and sought to increase our understanding of them, at a time when women could not go to university, enter libraries, or be members of learned societies. She did it as a self-taught young woman, in a remote corner of Ireland, with no one nearer than Dublin to support her and with a limited supply of books. She found new species, provided detailed descriptions, identified their ‘fruiting’, suggested moves to a new ‘family’ [genus], and made hundreds of high-quality specimens and drawings that she shared generously with fellow botanists.
Our focus here today is on Ellen Hutchins not only as botanist and botanical artist, but as a devoted daughter, sister and friend. She showed great integrity in balancing her care for family members with her ‘passion’ or ‘pleasure in plants’. She faced great challenges from her own ill health and that of family members, at a time when medicine was very basic and often unable to help.
This is the start of a series of posts following Ellen’s letters to fellow botanist, Dawson Turner, written On This Day 210 Years Ago. It will run through 2021 / 1811, and the next letters are on 23rd March and 9th April.
8th March 1811, and Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815) wrote to botanist (and banker) Dawson Turner (1775-1858) in Yarmouth, Norfolk, England. It’s a wonderful letter, typical in many ways and containing many of the recurring themes of their seven year correspondence. You can choose whether to read it first HERE then the following paragraphs about its themes, or read about the themes first, then the letter itself.
How it started
The correspondence had started in April 1807 when Dawson Turner sent a formal thank you note to Miss Hutchins along with a box of plant specimens and some drawings. He was thanking her for numerous seaweed and other plant specimens forwarded to him by James Townsend Mackay, botanist at Trinity College Dublin, who had started Ellen on the study of seaweeds in 1805 and to whom she sent her specimens. Mackay sent these on to specialist botanists including Dawson Turner (seaweeds – Fuci) and Lewis Dillwyn (seaweeds and freshwater algae – Confervae).
Nearly four years since the exchange of letters, specimens and information began in April 1807, Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner had each written about thirty letters to the other. An incredibly strong friendship has developed, way beyond the mentoring in botany that Dawson Turner provided. Most but not all of their letters have survived and they make fascinating reading. 8th March 1811 is as good a letter as any to start from.
‘Anxious as I must ever feel’
Ellen’s anxiety about the health of the Turner family has a good foundation, as the Turners had by now had ten children of whom four had died; three as babies, and one in a fire in the nursery. Health and family issues nearly always came before botany in the letters.
Mr Hooker’s Icelandic Journal
William Jackson Hooker (1785 – 1865) was also mentored by Dawson Turner. He had toured Iceland in 1809 and had a dramatic incident on the voyage home when the ship caught fire. Hooker had just published his Journal of the Tour privately in 1811, for circulation to friends. He was working on a huge botanical publication on liverworts, entitled British Jungermanniae, with stunning watercolour illustrations of species which he drew himself. Ellen’s specimens of liverworts sent to Dawson Turner were passed to Hooker.
Ellen and the Cryptogams
Ellen is best known for her work on seaweeds, including the beautiful drawings she made of them. She had recently sent a parcel to Turner including drawings of seaweeds (Fucus loreus and Rivulariae – the image above is one of Ellen’s drawings of a Rivularia from March 1811 – image shown courtesy of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew).
Ellen was equally delighted by mosses, liverworts and lichens and the landscapes in which they are found. The lichens in particular she struggled with, as no good guide to them was available.
Botanical publications
Books, drawings and specimens were the key reference materials for botanists such as Ellen in the early 1800s. She referred to a French botanist’s work on freshwater algae, Vaucher’s Conferves d’Eau Douce and to Lewis Dillwyn’s use of it in his publication British Confervae. Species that Ellen discovered were included in Dillwyn’s publication as well as some of her drawings, and Dillwyn visited Ellen at her home in Ballylickey in 1809.
Held in high regard
Ellen’s work was very highly regarded and she was a valued member of a specialist community of the leading cryptogamic botanists of the age.
Click HERE to read Ellen’s letter of 8th March 1811 to Dawson Turner.
Above are the two panels about Ellen Hutchins that appear in the door of Bantry Library for International Women’s Day, 8th March 2021. They are part of a series of panels available as an Ellen Hutchins exhibition, based on the design of the exhibition in the Boole Library, UCC in Autumn 2018. Do contact the Ellen Hutchins Festival Team if you are interested in hosting an exhibition.