Post by Catsmate on Jun 7, 2016 12:02:33 GMT
'She' was Mary Anning and she did indeed sell seaside curiosities by the seashore, but she did much more besides. She was one of the best known paleontologists of her time, becoming world renowned for her fossil discoveries. She was born in the English seaside resort of Lyme Regis in Dorset in 1799 to a poor cabinetmaker who supplemented his income by 'mining' fossils from the chalk cliffs. Her father Richard died when she was eleven (falling off a cliff), and she was one of only two of the ten children born to is wife Molly to survive to adulthood.
There were numerous obstacles in Mary's path to becoming "the greatest fossilist the world ever knew". In addition to poverty there was the danger of her craft and the attitude of the (mainly) Anglican gentlemen who dominated scientific discourse in Britain at that time.
It's not known exactly when Mary, aided by her brother Joseph, discovered the first specimen of an ichthyosaur though it was around 1810. By the mid-1820s she'd established herself as a reputable anatomist and ran a family fossil business.
Mary Anning only left Lyme Regis once in her life, having a business to run, but was frequently visited by prominent scientists who'd journey to Lyme to call on her, commanding a rare degree of respect from contemporary male scientists. In 1865 Charles Dickens said of her:
Game use.
Anning is one of those odd historical figures who fascinate me, and she's got more than a little potential for insertion into a Who game.
1. As a background character she could crop up in a historical, or pseudo-historical, scenario set in Lyme Regis. Perhaps the Sixth Doctor is taking Peri to experience some historical culture (knowing his navigational skills they'll arrive in winter).
2. Someone like Peri might well be interested in meeting one of the female scientific pioneers. Or perhaps Jane Austen (whose family were frequent visitors to Lyme, the town appears in Persuasion ) was the intended subject of the visit. Or the painter Whistler (James McNeill) and the TARDIS arrives some decades early.
3. What else might be uncovered by one of the periodic cliff falls that exposed so many fossilised skeletons? Artefacts from the Eocene Epoch when the Earth Reptile civilisation rules the Earth, warring between factions perhaps? Or skeletons of Silurians killed in the events that scoured the Earth clear of their works.
4. Or perhaps Dorset was (is?) the site of one of the hibernation shelters from that period and one of the cliff falls disturbs their slumbers.
5. Then there are those strange events when she was a baby, was someone meddling with her life? Who? Why?
6. For less cosmic possibilities in the area, there are threats of invasion from across the channel, Napoleon especially, French spies, smugglers (rife in the area from ~1770 to 1870) and wreckers. In other periods everyone from George Somers (discoverer of Bermuda), James, Duke of Monmouth (attempted usurper of his uncle, James II), Judge Jeffreys (the infamous 'hanging judge' who liked the town), Henry Fielding (author and magistrate), John Fowles, Beatrix Potter (both people who loved the town) and Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons (The French Lieutenant’s Woman was filmed there in 1980). Francis Walsingham (the Elizabethan spymaster) was Member of Parliament for the town and the twon was besieged for two months during the English civil war, in 1644. Fictionally Sherlock Holmes and Endeavour Morse have both visited the town
Or maybe a time rift mixes them all together...
More information.
Also recommended are the books Jurassic Mary: Mary Anning and the Primeval Monsters and The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World.
- In addition to the normal hazards of the Georgian period she was almost killed at the age of fourteen months when lightning struck a tree, causing it to collapse and kill the four adult women with her. She was revived by a doctor using a bath of hot water and her survival pronounced 'miraculous'.
- But was it really just a random stroke of lightning. And who was the doctor?
- Curiously, according to Dorset lore, this incident caused a child previously considered 'slow' to display great intelligence. Hmmm...
There were numerous obstacles in Mary's path to becoming "the greatest fossilist the world ever knew". In addition to poverty there was the danger of her craft and the attitude of the (mainly) Anglican gentlemen who dominated scientific discourse in Britain at that time.
- Anning and her family were Congregationalists, a non-conformist protestant sect in a period when such believers were restricted from many spheres of public life, including university education, public office and the civil service. However the Congregationalists did believe in education for all and indeed her family pastor (James Wheaton) urged people to study the burgeoning science of geology. A later pastor, John Gleed, was a fellow fossil collector. She converted to Anglicanism in 1830.
It's not known exactly when Mary, aided by her brother Joseph, discovered the first specimen of an ichthyosaur though it was around 1810. By the mid-1820s she'd established herself as a reputable anatomist and ran a family fossil business.
- At the time fossil collecting was very much in vogue, and her customers weren't just 'scientific gentlemen' but also included European nobility.
Mary Anning only left Lyme Regis once in her life, having a business to run, but was frequently visited by prominent scientists who'd journey to Lyme to call on her, commanding a rare degree of respect from contemporary male scientists. In 1865 Charles Dickens said of her:
The carpenter’s daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it.
Game use.
Anning is one of those odd historical figures who fascinate me, and she's got more than a little potential for insertion into a Who game.
1. As a background character she could crop up in a historical, or pseudo-historical, scenario set in Lyme Regis. Perhaps the Sixth Doctor is taking Peri to experience some historical culture (knowing his navigational skills they'll arrive in winter).
2. Someone like Peri might well be interested in meeting one of the female scientific pioneers. Or perhaps Jane Austen (whose family were frequent visitors to Lyme, the town appears in Persuasion ) was the intended subject of the visit. Or the painter Whistler (James McNeill) and the TARDIS arrives some decades early.
3. What else might be uncovered by one of the periodic cliff falls that exposed so many fossilised skeletons? Artefacts from the Eocene Epoch when the Earth Reptile civilisation rules the Earth, warring between factions perhaps? Or skeletons of Silurians killed in the events that scoured the Earth clear of their works.
4. Or perhaps Dorset was (is?) the site of one of the hibernation shelters from that period and one of the cliff falls disturbs their slumbers.
- Bonus points for the GM that has a fossil hunter come face-to-face with a live dinosaur kept in the shelter as a pet.
5. Then there are those strange events when she was a baby, was someone meddling with her life? Who? Why?
6. For less cosmic possibilities in the area, there are threats of invasion from across the channel, Napoleon especially, French spies, smugglers (rife in the area from ~1770 to 1870) and wreckers. In other periods everyone from George Somers (discoverer of Bermuda), James, Duke of Monmouth (attempted usurper of his uncle, James II), Judge Jeffreys (the infamous 'hanging judge' who liked the town), Henry Fielding (author and magistrate), John Fowles, Beatrix Potter (both people who loved the town) and Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons (The French Lieutenant’s Woman was filmed there in 1980). Francis Walsingham (the Elizabethan spymaster) was Member of Parliament for the town and the twon was besieged for two months during the English civil war, in 1644. Fictionally Sherlock Holmes and Endeavour Morse have both visited the town
Or maybe a time rift mixes them all together...
More information.
Also recommended are the books Jurassic Mary: Mary Anning and the Primeval Monsters and The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World.