Founded by 7 male and 3 female undergraduates, The Marshall Ward Society sought ‘to promote interest in all departments of botany and by free discussion to stimulate original research’. Women gave talks from the beginning. By its end, during the Great War, 25% of the members had been female, and there had been more female presidents than male. The women’s ‘fixture cards’ show that many meetings were held in male members' College rooms, something daring and revolutionary. Edith Saunders, a Newnham don and senior figure in the Society, was required to attend as a necessary chaperone, and so her presence is carefully minuted.

It is not recorded why the Society is named after Harry Marshall Ward. Why was he honoured? 

I asked a question that I had not considered in 2005: what exactly did he do to help young female botanists? 

As Professor of Botany, Marshall Ward inevitably influenced all the women, and men, who passed through his department.  However, selected here are the eight women for whom there is substantial evidence of his influence on their post-graduate studies.  They are Elizabeth Dale, Maria Dawson, Sybille Ford, Charlotte Gibson, Dorothea Marryat, Gladys Sykes, and Gabrielle Matthaei and Muriel Wheldale.  Most were directly involved with mycology and plant pathology, Marshall Ward’s specialisms.  The others, supervised by Ward's colleagues, FF Blackman and Albert Seward (see photo above and footnotes below), benefitted from his guidance and botanical connections.

Before looking at the lives of these women, why not explore the background and context provided by ‘Marshall Ward’s Botany School’, and ‘A Woman’s Experience in Marshall Ward’s Cambridge’? 

Here also we meet the women who did not pursue post-graduate research. Many transmitted a love of botany through their teaching in schools and colleges, while the lives of others involved public service in different fields, for example, in hospitals or the church. 

They were all remarkable women.

                                                                              ***

Footnotes.

Frederick Frost (‘FF’, aka ‘Fritz’) Blackman was the brother-in-law of Arthur Tansley; he married Elsie Chick, while Tansley married Elsie’s sister, Edith. As I tell in Ayres (2012), the two families were further entwined. Arthur Tansley and FF’s brother, Vernon Blackman, another botanist, shared a flat when the two young men were working in London early in their careers, thereby establishing a life-long friendship.

Vernon’s son, Geoffrey Blackman, was yet another botanist. He was the driving force behind, and Secretary of, The Biology War Committee.

While FF and Vernon Blackman were the sons of a professional man, a London doctor, Albert Charles Seward was from a background of commerce, in the north of England. His father owned a Lancaster firm that constructed stained glass windows for churches, public buildings, and grander residences.

 Harry Marshall Ward, the man Seward succeeded as Professor Botany in Cambridge, was the son of an impoverished music teacher from Nottingham (Ayres, 2005).  Clearly, ability was more important than background when Cambridge was making its senior appointments. 

Ayres, PG.  2005.  Harry Marshall Ward and the Fungal Thread of Death.  American Phytopathological Society. St. Paul: Mn.

Ayres, PG. 2012.  Shaping Ecology.  The Life of Arthur Tansley.  Wiley-Blackwell: London.