This 18th-century shell collection, saved from a skip, tells a story of empire, explorers and women’s equality

Within the Nineteen Eighties, a shell assortment that included specimens from Captain Cook dinner’s last voyage was unintentionally thrown right into a skip and believed misplaced ceaselessly. However a lot to the enjoyment of scientists, final week it was rediscovered secure and sound and donated to English Heritage.

Her title may not have made the headlines, however the girl who initially collected the shells, Bridget Atkinson (1732-1814), made a major contribution to pure historical past within the 18th century.

Atkinson was considered one of many ladies concerned with shells right now. It was a pursuit that drew in each aristocratic and center class lovers. Amongst them had been well-known collectors, such because the thinker and poet Margaret Cavendish and cousins Jane and Mary Parminter, the elite homeowners of the shell-encrusted home A la Ronde, in Exmouth.

Gathering shells was a typical previous time in Enlightenment Britain. This was a interval through which elite ladies had been changing into more and more within the sciences, and so they pursued its disciplines with wild enthusiasm.

That is demonstrated within the recognition of books resembling Newtonianism for Girls by Francesco Algarotti. Printed in 1737, the ebook was a bestseller and reprinted many occasions because the 18th century progressed.

Botany and pure historical past had been deemed notably acceptable automobiles for girls’s mental curiosity. Ladies engaged in these practices had been inspired to gather specimens, create shows and examine associated literature, typically written by feminine authors.

In consequence, the early nineteenth century noticed the publication of varied pure historical past books written by ladies, resembling The Conchologist’s Companion by Mary Roberts (1824), a sequence of letters on the properties of varied kinds of shell.

Atkinson’s assortment

Whereas Atkinson wasn’t uncommon as a girl amassing shells, the extent of her acquisitions units them other than many different collections of the interval. She acquired as many as 1,200 shells all through her lifetime, with many sourced from far-flung areas throughout the globe.

Atkinson was from a rich and genteel, however not aristocratic, household, and because of this, she is just not as nicely generally known as different shell collectors of the time. However, her assortment contains quite a few vital specimens of endangered and guarded species. Many had been amassed from her connection to George Dixon, an armourer on Captain Cook dinner’s third and last world voyage.

Whereas her surviving correspondence reveals her to be a less-than-perfect author, Atikinson’s experience in pure historical past led to her changing into the primary feminine honorary member of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1813. Ladies had been nonetheless deemed ineligible for full membership till 1877.

Atkinson’s assortment doesn’t merely mirror the scientific pursuits of a curious particular person. A examine of their acquisition reveals a broad, even world, system at play. Numerous her shells had been gifted to Atkinson via the networks of the British empire.

A number of members of Atkinson’s household had been employed in imperial roles. Her son and brother-in-law had been each part of the mercantile colonising forces of the East India Firm, and the latter even owned sugar plantations in Jamaica. This implies the Atkinson household had been direct beneficiaries of the enslavement of Black women and men within the Caribbean.

Atkinson used these connections to her benefit, writing to her family residing overseas to ask for shells and even imploring household buddies to do the identical. In 1796, her pal Mary Yates wrote to her son John, who then lived in Virginia to cross on Atkinson’s request for “snail shells picked off the bottom …the bigger the higher”.

Conveyed via the very routes and mechanics of the British empire, Atkinson’s collections are indivisible from the broader historical past of colonialism. That is one thing that future shows of the shells will inevitably have to handle.

The historical past of Atkinson’s assortment

Regardless of their apparent significance immediately, Atkinson’s shells haven’t all the time been handled with reverence. The gathering was handed down via numerous generations of the Atkinson household earlier than finally being acquired by Newcastle College within the Thirties (then generally known as King’s School). It was on this time that the shells had been misplaced.

Having been discarded right into a skip, an eagle-eyed marine zoologist named John Buchanan rescued them from obscurity. Going via his belongings after his demise, his household found the gathering and donated it to English Heritage.

This isn’t an uncommon story. Considered as trifling pursuits and trivial pursuits, a scarcity of curiosity in ladies’s collections of shells, each decorative and scientific, has led to many examples being misplaced over the centuries.

The nice sale of Margaret Cavendish’s assortment in 1786 is a typical instance. Her shells and corals from Britain, Italy and the Indian Ocean had been all positioned all on the market, alongside these collected for ornamental functions. Like Atkinson’s assortment, Cavendish’s shells included specimens from Cook dinner’s travels. However even this vital affiliation didn’t save them from being scattered extensively.

As Atkinson’s shells reveal, the gathering of those lovely pure objects crossed continents, informed vivid histories of imperialism and established ladies’s important position within the growth of pure historical past as a self-discipline. Their forthcoming show at Chester’s Roman Fort and Museum will make sure that they proceed to inform these tales lengthy into the long run.

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