Mary Anning

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Life and career

Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, on May 21.1799. Richard Anning, (1766-1882) was a cabinetmaker and carpenter who supplemented his income by mining the coastal cliff-side fossil beds near the town and selling his finds to visitors; her mother, Mary Moore (c.1764–1842) known as Molly. Anning's parents married in Blandford Forum on August 8th and then migrated to Lyme, where they lived in a house built on the town's bridge. They gathered on Coombe Street, where they first identified themselves as independents and later became known as Congregationalists. Shelley Emling writes that the family lived so close to the sea that the fossils revealed themselves. On one occasion, the Annings' house flooded the Annings, causing them to crawl out of a bedroom window to prevent drowning.

Molly and Richard had ten children. Mary, the first child, was born in 1794. Joseph in 1796; and another in 1798, who died in infancy, were followed by her mother, who died almost simultaneously; and another in 1798, who died in infancy. The oldest child, (the first Mary), was four years old in December that year, and she died after her clothes caught fire, perhaps adding wood shavings to the fire. "A child, four years old, of Mr. R. Anning, a cabinetmaker of Lyme, was left by the mother for about five minutes in a room where there were some shavings," the Bath Chronicle wrote on December 27. The girl's clothes caught fire, and she was so dreadfully smoked as to cause her death.

Anning was also named Mary after her deceased sister when she was born five months later. Following her, more children were born, but no one of them survived more than a year or two. Only Mary Anning and her brother Joseph, who was three years older than her, survived to adulthood. The Anning family's high mortality rate was not unusual. Almost half of the children born in the United Kingdom in the 19th century died before the age of five, and in the early 1900s' packed living conditions of Lyme Regis, infant deaths from diseases like smallpox and measles were common.

Anning's 15-month anniversary, an event that became part of local lore occurred on August 19th. She was being held by a neighbor, Elizabeth Haskings, who was standing under a elm tree with two other women when lightning struck the tree, killing all three women below. Onlookers rushed the infant home where she was revived in a bath of hot water. A local doctor's life was miraculous. Anning's family said she had been sickly before the incident, but after she did, she seemed to blossom. For years after, members of her neighborhood would attribute the child's curiosity, intelligence, and bubbly personality to the event.

Anning's education was very limited, but she was able to attend a Congregationalist Sunday school, where she learned to read and write. The congregationalist creem emphasized the importance of education for the poor, not like that of the Church of England at the time. Her prized possession was a bound volume of the Dissenters' Theological Magazine and Review, in which the family's pastor, the Reverend James Wheaton, had written two essays, one insisting that God had created the world in six days and the other encouraging dissenters to study the latest science of geology.

Lyme Regis had become a popular seaside resort by the late 18th century, especially after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792, and rising numbers of wealthy and middle-class tourists were arriving there. Locals supplemented their income by selling what was described as "curios" to visitors long before Anning's time. These were fossils with colorful local names, including "snake-stones" (belemnites), "devil's fingers"), and "vertebrae), to which were sometimes attributed to medicinal and mystical properties. Fossil gathering was in vogue in the late 18th and early 19th century, first as a pastime, but it gradually became a science as the importance of fossils to geology and biology was understood. The majority of these fossils were found near Lyme Regis, which was part of a geological structure known as the Blue Lias. This is made up of alternating layers of limestone and shale laid down as sand on a shallow seabed early in the Jurassic period (roughly 210–195 million years ago). It is one of Britain's richest fossil sites. However, the cliffs could be dangerously fragile, particularly in winter, when rain causes landslides. Collectors were attracted to the cliffs in the winter months precisely because the landslides regularly exposed new fossils.

Anning and her brother Joseph were often taken on fossil-hunting trips to supplement the family's income. Richard was often taken by their father, Richard. On a table outside their house, they sold their finds to tourists. This was a difficult time for England's poor; the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars that followed caused food shortages. Wheat's price almost tripled between 1792 and 1812, but the working class's wages stayed relatively unchanged. The increasing cost of bread in Dorset sparked social unrest and even riots. Richard Anning was instrumental in organising a demonstration against food shortages at one point.

In addition, the family's status as religious protesters—not followers of the Church of England—attracted disabilities. Many people who refused to subscribe to the Articles of the Church of England were still not able to study at Oxford or Cambridge or in any of the Army's service, and many occupations were also barred from certain occupations by law. Her father had been suffering from tuberculosis and injuries as a result of a fall off a cliff. When he died in November 1810 (aged 44), he left the family with debt and no savings, prompting them to seek poor relief.

The family continued to collect and sell fossils together and assembled a table of curiosities near the coach stop at a local inn. Although Anning's news tend to center on her own, Dennis Dean argues that her mother and brother were also astute collectors, and that Anning's parents had sold fossils before his father's death.

When Mary Anning was 12 years old; her brother Joseph uncovered a 4-foot ichthyosaur skull; and Anning found the remainder of the skeleton a few months later. Henry Hoste Henley of Sandringham, Norfolk, who was the lord of Colway's mansion, near Lyme Regis, paid the family £23 for the manor, but in return, he sold it to William Bullock, a well-known collector who displayed it in London. When public knowledge of the earth's age and the variety of ancient animals was expanding, it sparked excitement. It was later sold at auction in May 1819 as a "Crocodile in a Fossil State," to Charles Konig, director of the British Museum, who had already suggested the name Ichthyosaurus for it.

Molly, Anning's mother, started the fossil business shortly after her husband Richard's death, but it is unclear how much actual fossil collection Molly did herself. Molly wrote to the British Museum in 1821 to request a specimen's payment. Joseph's father was increasingly influenced by his apprenticeship to an upholsterer, but he stayed in the fossil industry until at least 1825. By this time, Mary Anning had taken over the family specimen industry.

Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Birch, later Bosvile, a wealthy collector from Lincolnshire who bought many specimens from them, was the family's devoted client. Birch's family's poverty was a factor in 1820. They were at the point of having no major discoveries for a year, and they were in danger of having to sell their furniture to pay the rent. So he decided to auction the fossils on their behalf. On Thursday, he wrote to palaeontologist Gideon Mantell to say that the auction was "for the benefit of the poor woman and her son and daughter at Lyme, who had in fact discovered most of the fine things that had been submitted to scientific investigation." I may never have what I am about to do again, but doing it will have the pleasure of knowing that the money will be well spent." On May 15, 1820, Bullocks in London auctioned £400 (the equivalent of £34,000 in 2022). How much money was given to the Annings is uncertain, but it appears that it put the family on a steady financial footing, and with visitors from Paris and Vienna, the family's reputation has improved.

Anning continues to promote herself by selling fossils. Invertebrate fossils such as ammonite and belemnite shells were popular in the region and sold for a few shillings. Vertebrate fossils, such as ichthyosaur skeletons, are selling for more, but they were much more rare. Collecting them was difficult winter labor. An article in The Bristol Mirror described her in 1823: An article in The Bristol Mirror described her: "She was a woman in 1823."

Anning's profession was illustrated when she barely escaped being killed by a landslide that buried her black-and-white terrier, Tray, her constant companion as she began collecting in October 1833. In November of that year, Anning wrote to a friend, Charlotte Murchison, "Perhaps you'll be laughing when I say that the death of my old faithful dog has really shocked me, the cliff that fell on him and killed him in a moment before my eyes, and close to my feet... it was just a moment between me and the same fate."

Anning's reputation soared as she continued to make important discoveries. She made the first complete Plesiosaurus discovery on December 10th, 1828, and the first British example of the flying reptiles identified as pterosaurs was displayed at the British Museum in 1828, followed by a Squaloraja skeleton in 1829. Despite her limited education, she read as much of the scientific literature as she could obtain, and often, laboriously hand-copied papers borrowed from others. Christopher McGowan, a paleontologist, examined a copy made of William Conybeare's 1824 paper on marine reptile fossils and noticed that Anning's copy contained several pages of her detailed scientific illustrations that were impossible to distinguish apart from the original. She also dissected modern animals, including both fish and cuttlefish, in order to gain a greater insight into the anatomy of some of the fossils with which she was working. Lady Harriet Silvester, the widow of London's former Recorder, wrote about Anning in her diary:

Anning's Fossil Depot in 1826 managed to buy a home with a glass store front window for her shop, Anning's Fossil Depot. The company had grown so important that the move was covered in the local paper, which noted that the shop had a fine ichthyosaur skeleton on display. Many geologists and fossil collectors from Europe and America visited Anning, including geologist George William Featherstonhaugh, who referred to her as a "very clever funny Creature." In 1827, he purchased fossils from Anning for the newly opened New York Lyceum of Natural History. King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony visited her shop in 1844 and purchased an ichthyosaur skeleton for his extensive natural history collection. Carl Gustav Carus, the king's physician and aide, wrote in his journal:

Carus begged Anning to write her name and address in his pocketbook for future reference—he wrote it as "Mary Annins"—and then she told him, "I am well-known throughout Europe." Anning's interest in her knowledge grew, and she wrote to the Magazine of Natural History in 1839, disputing the assertion that a recently discovered fossil of the prehistoric shark Hybodus represented a new genus as an error since she had found fossil sharks with both straight and hooked teeth many years ago. Anning's was the only writing of her journal in the scientific literature during her lifetime, as shown by the excerpt from the magazine. Anning's personal letters, such as her correspondence with Frances Augusta Bell, were not published while she was alive.

Anning was regarded as an outsider to the scientific community as a woman. Women were not allowed to vote, hold public office, or attend university at the time in Britain. The newly established, but also highly influential Geological Society of London, did not encourage women to join or attend meetings as visitors. Farm labour, domestic assistance, and factory work were all typical of working-class women.

Although Anning knew more about fossils and geology than many of the wealthy fossilists to whom she sold, it was always the gentlemen geologists who published the scientific descriptions of the specimens she found, often failing to mention Anning's name. She became resentful of this. "She claims that the world has used her brains," Anna Pinney, a young woman who often accompanied Anning, wrote: "These men of learning have sucked her brains and produced a considerable number of academic papers, of which she authored but had no of the benefits." In a letter, Anning herself wrote: "I am afraid that this has made me suspicious of everyone." These little ones to Anning were part of a larger pattern of dismissing working-class people's contributions to early 19th-century scientific literature. Often a fossil could be discovered by a quarryman, construction worker, or road worker who would sell it to a wealthy collector, and it was the latter who was credited if the find was of scientific interest.

Many geologists from Anning went to find fossils or discuss anatomy and classification in addition to purchasing specimens. Following Henry De la Beche's removal to Lyme, he and his sister Joseph became best friends, and Anning and her brother Joseph went fossil hunting together. As he became one of Britain's top geologists, De la Beche and Anning stayed in touch. William Buckland, a geologist at the University of Oxford, loved Lyme on his Christmas holidays and was often seen looking for fossils with Anning. It was to him that Anning made what would be the scientifically significant argument (in a letter auctioned for over £10,000 per year) that the strange cone-shaped stones were really the fossilised faeces of ichthyosaurs or plesiosaurs. The objects in Buckland's case would be identified as coprolites. In 1839, Buckland, Conybeare, and Richard Owen met in Lyme together so Anning could lead them all on a fossil-collecting tour.

Anning also helped Thomas Hawkins with his attempts to find ichthyosaur fossils at Lyme in the 1830s. She was aware of his penchant to "enhance" the fossils he obtained. "He is such an enthusiast that he makes things as he feels they should be," Anning wrote. A few years ago, Hawkins was embroiled in a public controversy after it was discovered that the skeletons were constructed with fake bones, making some ichthyosaur skeletons seem more complete and then sold them to the government for the British Museum's collection, but without the appraisers knowing about the changes.

Louis Agassiz, a Swiss palaeontologist, visited Lyme Regis in 1834 and spent with Anning to find and study fish fossils discovered in the area. "Miss Philpot and Mary Anning were able to show me with absolute certainty which are the ichthyodorulite's dorsal fins of sharks of various species," Anning and her colleague Elizabeth Philpot wrote in his journal. He thanked them both for their help in his book, Fossil Fish.

Roderick Murchison, another leading British geologist, did some of his first fieldwork in southwest England, including Lyme, with his wife Charlotte. Charlotte Murchison wrote that they decided to "become a good practical fossilist" by being in Lyme for a few weeks, "collaborating with the renowned Mary Anning of that area." Charlotte and Anning became lifelong friends and reporters. Charlotte, who travelled extensively and met many well-known geologists through her husband's career, helped Anning establish her network of clients around Europe, and she stayed with the Murchisons when she visited London in 1829. Charles Lyell, who wrote to ask her opinion on how the sea was affecting the coastal cliffs off the coast of Lyme, as well as Adam Sedgwick—one of her oldest clients—who taught geology at the University of Cambridge and numbered Charles Darwin among her students. Anning was also visited by Gideon Mantell, the dinosaur finder.

Anning was having financial difficulties again by 1830, owing to difficult economic conditions in Britain that reduced the demand for fossils, as well as long gaps between major finds. Henry De la Beche, a geologist, aided her in obtaining a lithographic print based on De la Beche's watercolour painting Duria Antiquior, depicting life in prehistoric Dorset that was largely based on fossils, which Anning helped. De la Beche sold copies of the print to his colleagues and other wealthy friends and donated the funds to Anning. It was the first time a film known as deep time was widely distributed in the media. Anning made another major discovery in December, a skeleton of a new species of plesiosaur that sold for £200.

Anning went from attending the local Congregational church, where she had been baptized and in which her family and her family had always been active members, to the Anglican church around this time. The change was triggered in part by a decrease in Congregational attendance that began in 1828 when its most popular pastor, John Gleed, a fellow fossil collector, left for the United States to protest slavery. Ebenezer Smith, who was less likeable, was swapped for him. The increased social esteem of the church, in which some of Anning's gentleman geologist clients, such as Buckland, Conybeare, and Sedgwick, were ordained clergy, was also a factor. Anning, a devoutly religious girl, was enthusiastic in favor of her new church as she was growing old.

Anning suffered another significant financial setback in 1835 when she lost the majority of her life savings, about £300, in a poor investment. According to reports, the truth of the situation was vague. Deborah Cadbury claims she invested with a conman who swindled her and disappeared with the money, but Shelley Emling writes that it is not clear if the man fled with the money or if he died suddenly leaving Anning with no way to recover the investment. In exchange for her numerous contributions to the science of geology, Anning's financial situation, her old friend William Buckland begged the British Association for Science and the British government to give her an annuity known as a civil list pension. Anning had some financial stability thanks to their £25 per year pension.

Anning died of breast cancer at the age of 47 on March 9, 1847. Her fossil work had slowed down during the last few years of her illness, and although some townspeople misinterpreted the results of the increasing doses of laudanum she was taking for the pain, there had been rumors in Lyme that she had a drinking problem. The regard in which Anning was held by the geological Society was displayed in 1846, when the society learned of her cancer diagnosis, the Geological Society raised funds from its members to help with her expenses, and the newly established Dorset County Museum named Anning an honorary member. She was buried in the churchyard of St Michael's, the local parish church, on March 15th. Members of the Geological Society contributed to a stained-glass window in Anning's memory that was unveiled in 1850. "This window honors Mary Anning of this parish, who died 9 March 1847 and is erected by the vicar and several members of the Geological Society of London in honor of her contribution to the science of geology, as well as her beauty and humanity of life."

The eulogy began:

Henry Stuart Fagan contributed to Anning's life in February 1865 in Charles Dickens' literary magazine All the Year Round (although the essay was largely plagiarized and was long blamed to Dickens) that highlighted Anning's struggles, particularly her skepticism of her fellow townpeople. "The carpenter's daughter has received a prize for herself and has deserved to win it," the author concluded the story.

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