Remarkable Women. Queen's House, Greenwich

For those lucky enough to live around London and able to attend, a series of lectures on Remarkable Women is taking place for National Women's History Month, March 2018, at Queen's House, Greenwich, London. Some of the women are already very well-known, but a couple less so. 

If I had the chance to attend, I'd be particularly interested in these two sessions to learn more about Sarah Sophia Banks, another woman in the shadow of a monumental historical male, being Sir Joseph Banks, and also the unknown architect, Mary Slade.

8 March

From Out of Her Brother’s Shadow: The Life and Collections of Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818) – Arlene Leis

The British Museum’s Trustees Report dating February 12, 1819, notes that John Thomas Smith, the Keeper of Prints and Drawings, was preparing a “catalogue of Miss Banks’s truly interesting collection of visiting cards and Co.” The collection to which the report refers is that of Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818), sister of the well-known botanist, collector and President of the Royal Society Sir Joseph Banks. During the two centuries since her death, Sarah Sophia, also an avid collector has remained for the most part in her brother’s shadow. However, as my talk will demonstrate, Sarah Sophia was an active collector in her own right, and to regard her projects as mere offshoots of her brother’s ventures would be to grossly underestimate their independent importance. At the time of her death, her stockpile of paper items boasted well over 19,000 articles; now housed at the British Museum and British Library, it comprises admission tickets, playbills, fashion plates, political caricatures, satirical prints, ballads, political prints, watch plates, trade cards, newspaper clippings, bookplates and visitor cards, amongst other items. Sarah Sophia also collected coins and medals: over 9,000 specimens are divided between the British Museum and Royal Mint.During Sarah Sophia’s life, her large collection was stored alongside her brother’s herbarium, library and printing press in the house that she lived in with Sir Joseph at 32 Soho Square, London, a thriving scientific hub where natural history specimens where collected, studied, and exchanged.Focusing on Sarah Sophia’s collection of printed materials alongside her surviving hand-written inventory, my talk will explore Sarah Sophia’s complex and innovative collecting practices and methodologies. Importantly, it will consider the Banks siblings’ collections as meaningfully interconnected but also distinct, reclaiming Sarah Sophia’s place in the house as an authoritative collector and ‘curator’. In doing so, it will demonstrate that women participated in and helped shape scientific and cultural pursuits in ways often undocumented by traditional narratives of the eighteenth century.  

Sarah Banks, The Royal Mint Museum

22 March

Working Women in Eighteenth-Century Deptford – Margarette Lincoln

This talk will focus on Mary Slade, often confused with her namesake, the cross-dressing female shipwright who also lived in Deptford. Slade was related to the greatest naval architect of the age, Sir Thomas Slade; she had relatives in high office in the naval dockyards, and was a considerable businesswoman in her own right, constructing properties that still stand today. Why is her achievement so little known? Based on research for a larger study of maritime London in the age of Cook and Nelson, this session offers insights into the neglected lives of local women who contributed to London’s maritime power in the time of those celebrated heroes.

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