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Corresponding interests: artisans and gentlemen in nineteenth-century natural history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Anne Secord
Anne Secord
Affiliation:
Wellcome Unit, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3RH.
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Early nineteenth-century natural history books reveal that British naturalists depended heavily on correspondence as a means for gathering information and specimens. Edward Newman commented in his History of British Ferns: ‘Were I to make out a list of all the correspondents who have assisted me it would be wearisome from its length.’ Works such as William Withering's Botanical Arrangement show that artisans numbered among his correspondents. However, the literary products of scientific practice reveal little of the workings or such correspondences and how or why they were sustained. An exchange or letters is maintained if the interests of both recipient and writer are satisfied. Withering's book tells us only that his interests were served by his correspondents; it allows us to say nothing with certainty about the interests of those who wrote to him. Published texts effectively hide the means by which the author determined the veracity of distant correspondents and also the way these informants demonstrated their credibility.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 383 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1994

References

1 Naming correspondents as discoverers or informants in natural history texts did not detract from the author. Rather, it served to enhance the reliability of the information if associated with a reputable person and to deflect any challenge over the accuracy of information away from the author to the source of the information. For an analysis of this procedure, see Larsen, Anne, ‘Not Since Noah: The English Scientific Zoologists and the Craft of Collecting, 1800–1840’, Princeton University Ph.D. thesis, 1993, 183–95.Google Scholar

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3 The names of two artisan botanists, George Caley and William Evans, appear in a list of correspondents at the beginning of Withering, William, A Systematic Arrangement of British Plants: With an Easy Introduction to the Study of Botany, 4th edn, 4 vols., London, 1801, i, p. v.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Even though the names of these artisans would have been unfamiliar to most readers, their lowly status is reflected by their designation as ‘Mr’ as opposed to ‘Esq.’ Similarly, later in the century Baines, Henry, The Flora of Yorkshire, London, 1840, 130–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar, distinguished between ‘S. Gibson’ and ‘J. Nowell’ (two working men) and ‘W. Wilson, Esq.’ and ‘Sir W. J. Hooker’.

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6 Larsen, , op. cit. (1), 307–40.Google Scholar The most usual way this was done was by a separate letter of introduction from a naturalist known to both sender and recipient or by the correspondent mentioning the name of a mutual scientific acquaintance.

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14 Thompson, E. P., ‘The crime of anonymity’ and ‘Appendix’ in Hay, Douglas, Linebaugh, Peter, Rule, John G., Thompson, E. P., Winslow, Cal, Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, London, 1977, 255–340.Google Scholar

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17 When possible, the upper classes also avoided payment. Before 1840, peers and MPs had the privilege of franking their own letters and would often (illegally) offer this favour of free postage to their friends. See Robinson, Howard, The British Post Office: A History, Princeton, 1948, 113–18, 282–3.Google Scholar

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24 It was a naturalist, J. E. Gray, who claimed to be the first to come up with the idea of a penny post in 1834 (DNB).

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37 There were many ways of judging and developing character in the early nineteenth century. These ranged from the dominant view (culminating in Smiles's work) that character enabled one to rise above circumstances to the Owenites' diametrically opposed notion that circumstances form character, as well as phrenological schemes for developing character as revealed by one's cranial bumps, and various systems of physiognomy. This variety simply attests to the widespread preoccupation with sound individual and national character.

38 Collini, , op. cit. (35), 30–2.Google Scholar See also St George, , op. cit. (35), 37–44Google Scholar; Curtin, Michael, Propriety and Position: A Study of Victorian Manners, New York, 1987, 101–25Google Scholar; Sennett, Richard, The Fall of Public Man, New York, 1974, 153, 165–8.Google Scholar An example of the difficulty of judging gentlemanly status is provided by Charles Darwin's reaction to the news that Warren de la Rue, a manufacturing stationer, already FRS and member of the Council of the Royal Society, had been blackballed during the 1855 election of members to the Philosophical Club of the Royal Society: ‘I am…very sorry about De la Rue: he does not appear like a gentleman, but all that he says at the Council seems very gentlemanlike & nice: I would not have the blackballing of such a man on my conscience for a couple of hundred guineas: what a mortification for him.’ The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (ed. Burkhardt, F. and Smith, S.), Cambridge, 1989, v, 330.Google Scholar

39 Boucicault, Dion, London Assurance (The full original text (1841). Adapted and edited by Ronald Eyre), London, 1971, 87.Google Scholar

40 St George, , op. cit. (35), 33.Google Scholar

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42 Bradshaw's Manchester Journal (1841), 1, 180–2.Google Scholar During the class conflict of the 1840s, increasing attention was drawn to the fact' that there was very little interaction between the working class and the higher classes of society.

43 St George, , op. cit. (35), 7Google Scholar, argues that 1832 was the point when ‘etiquette gave way to manners and became a class-based set of rules for admitting oneself and keeping others out’. Despite the popular genre of biographies charting the rise of successful men from obscure and humble beginnings, the number of men who actually achieved this was small.

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46 Bellamy, H. to Leyland, Roberts, 7 11 1843Google Scholar, Calderdale Central Library, Halifax, Roberts Leyland Correspondence, SH: 7/JN/B/66/36. In the event, Bellamy did not engage in the proposed exchange as he did not possess sufficient duplicate specimens to do Leyland ‘justice’. Instead he offered to give Leyland some specimens in return for a donation to the Plymouth Natural History Society.

47 Corrie, Susanna to Leyland, Roberts, 13 12Google Scholar n.y., Calderdale Central Library, Halifax, Roberts Leyland Correspondence, SH: 7/JN/B/66/74.

48 The risks were usually thought low when dealing with social inferiors or foreigners, for example, who had little power in a network to challenge a gentleman and who were unlikely to encounter the gentleman face-to-face.

49 Shapin, , op. cit. (4), 83, 212, 223–7, 237–8.Google Scholar Similarly, Biagioli, Mario, ‘Galileo the emblem maker’, Isis (1990), 81, 230–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on 258, has shown that in seventeenth-century natural philosophy, being ‘disinterested – that is, not having one's mind clouded by the idols of the marketplace – was a prerequisite for having credibility’. This ideal persisted in early nineteenth-century science, and according to Agardh, , op. cit. (25)Google Scholar, found its apotheosis in the botanist Robert Brown who, he reported, ‘appears in deed and impulse to be science only, and not perso … Without vanity and without ambition, but nevertheless conscious of his own greatness, he publishes his writings, not to instruct the world, but to illustrate and advance the Science. It is indifferent to him whether they are read by the multitude, but it is not indifferent to him whether they are worthy of science and incorporated with it.’

50 Loudon, J. C., ‘Notes and reflections made during a tour through part of France and Germany, in the autumn of the year 1828’, The Gardener's Magazine (1829), 5, 113–25Google Scholar, on 123; Family Cyclopaedia, op. cit. (20), i, 196Google Scholar, whose ideal reader belonged to a middle-class family with an income of £400 a year (p. xii).

51 Smiles, , op. cit. (36), 154–5.Google Scholar

52 Bennett, E. T. to Leyland, Roberts, 22 05 1822Google Scholar, Calderdale Central Library, Halifax, Roberts Leyland Correspondence, SH: 7/JN/B/66/78.

53 I am not suggesting that an artisan consciously set out to display his character in these natural history letters, although being judged by character would not have been unfamiliar in the world of work. A man's ‘character’ was encapsulated in letters of recommendation to prospective employers and was known to be a reference to his moral worth.

54 I draw on anthropological literature for much of this analysis. Crucial to understanding the functioning of natural history exchange networks is the demonstration by Strathern, Marilyn, The Gender of the Gift, Berkeley, 1988, 221Google Scholar, that gift exchange is ‘the circulation of objects in relations in order to make relations in which objects can circulate’. Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice (tr. Nice, Richard), Cambridge, 1977, 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that gift exchange is distinguished from the circulation of commodities by the ‘sincere fiction of a disinterested exchange’, represented by the lapse of time between a gift and counter-gift. Given the epistemological importance of disinterestedness in science, we can understand the imperative for the circulation of natural history objects and information to be regarded as gift exchanges. Bourdieu allows us to appreciate why the lack of a counter-gift was regarded as tantamount to ‘stealing’ the original ‘gift’. For further discussion of the exaggerated contrast between ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’, see Thomas, Nicholas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, 14–22Google Scholar, and Appadurai, Arjun, ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’, in The Social Life of Things (ed. Appadurai, A.), Cambridge, 1986, 3–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Much of the literature on correspondence networks, cited in note 1, also details exchanges of specimens, etc. Kohler, Robert E., Lords of the Fly, Chicago, 1994Google Scholar, ch. 5, analyses the ‘moral economy’ of Drosophila exchanges in early twentieth-century American laboratories. Hagstrom, Warren O., ‘Gift giving as an organizing principle in science’, in Science in Context (ed. Barnes, Barry and Edge, David), Cambridge, Mass., 1982, 21–34Google Scholar, argues for the persistence of gift exchanges in modern scientific practice.

56 Belchem, John, Industrialization and the Working Class: The English Experience, 1750–1900, Aldershot, 1990, 33.Google Scholar

57 Desmond, Adrian, ‘The making of institutional zoology in London 1822–1836: Part I’, History of Science (1985), 23, 153–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on 176–7. Lucier, Paul, ‘Scientists, Salesmen, and Swindlers: Geology, Chemistry, and the Rise of Scientific Consulting in the American Industrial Revolution, 1830–1870’, Princeton University Ph.D. thesis, 1994Google Scholar, shows how early scientific consultants had to overcome the persistent belief that Selling services was a corruption of scientific ideals.

58 For further development of this argument, see Secord, , op. cit. (8), 291–4.Google Scholar

59 Joyce, Patrick, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class 1848–1914, Cambridge, 1991, 90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Behagg, Clive, Politics and Production in the Early Nineteenth Century, London, 1990Google Scholar, ch. 3. Similarly, rural workers regarded customary dues such as gleaning and the harvest home as part of their rights in return for their labour. See Bushaway, Bob, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England 1700–1880, London, 1982Google Scholar, ch. 4. For the perseverence of ‘customary prices’ well into the 1880s (even at times when the product cost more to make than it was sold for), see Thompson, , op. cit. (13), 260–1.Google Scholar

60 Conversely, Shortland, Michael, ‘Darkness visible: underground culture in the golden age of geology’, History of Science (1994), 32, 1–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on 28–37, argues that gentlemen field geologists had to assume the attributes of labourers in their investigation of caves; they consequently had to re-establish their gentlemanly status in their published works.

61 In some situations, however, gentlemen used payment in order to safeguard their scientific interests. The working-class mesmerist S. T. Hall was mortified when he was treated as a tradesman by Lord Morpeth, who sent him a fee for his mesmeric services and never accepted Hall's wish to be treated on equal terms. See Winter, Alison, ‘Mesmerism and popular culture in early Victorian England’, History of Science (1994), 32, 317–43, on 335.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

62 Hampson, James to Hobson, Edward, 5 05 1827Google Scholar, Botany Department, Manchester Museum, Edward Hobson's Botanical Correspondence, 138 (emphasis mine).

63 Hauworth, John to Leyland, Roberts, 12 02 1837Google Scholar, Calderdale Central Library, Halifax, Roberts Leyland Correspondence, SH: 7/JN/B/66/78. The value of the moss in question was clear to the men as they had already sent some to the bryologist William Wilson. They had little left because Wilson had been ‘desirous that we send him a good supply. And owing to his kind liberality in sending us a good number of species of very rare British mosses we have acted in accordance to his wishes’ (ibid.).

64 Hauworth, John to Leyland, Roberts, 16 10 1837Google Scholar, Calderdale Central Library, Halifax, Roberts Leyland Correspondence, SH: 7/JN/B/66/78.

65 Sim, John to Wilson, William, 15 08 1864Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, William Wilson Correspondence, vol. 10. Mentioning other artisan naturalists was more common later in the nineteenth century as they became better known through natural history publications. Had he known of Nowell and Wilson's acquaintance no other way, Sim would have seen Nowell's name in Wilson, 's Bryologia Britannica, London, 1855Google Scholar, which he was loaned for a short period.

66 Gentlemen, of course, did this implicitly by mentioning ‘connections’ or by relying on letters of introduction, which established them as people whose word could be trusted. Perhaps it was abuses to the system that led to more explicit statements concerning gentlemen later in the century. In 1861, Robert Davies introduced Peter Inchbald (well known to several naturalists) to William Wilson, with whom Inchbald hoped he might ‘occasionally communicate… by letter’, explicitly stating that Inchbald ‘is in independent circumstances’ (Davies, Robert to Wilson, William, 9 07 1861Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, William Wilson Correspondence, vol. 4).

67 Manchester Guardian, 21 12 1850, 5.Google Scholar Whittaker's trade as a joiner is given in The Gooseberry Growers' Register, Blackley, 1850, 183.Google Scholar

68 Wilson, William to Hooker, W. J., 19 07 1831Google Scholar, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Directors' Correspondence, vol. 6, letter 346. In this case, Wilson's opinion was based on a meeting with Martin as well as on his letter and specimens. In addition, Wilson's servant, who had been taught by Martin at Sunday School, testified to Martin bearing ‘an excellent character’ within his own community.

69 Letters were successfully used in this way by the ‘literate swindler’, especially after the introduction of the penny post. Chesney, Kellow, The Victorian Underworld, Harmondsworth, 1972, 289Google Scholar, notes: ‘A well-drafted letter in an educated hand still carried a strong presumption that the writer must be a respectable man, and it was a fine way of obtaining things on false pretences.’

70 Smith, Olivia, The Politics of Language 1791–1819, Oxford, 1984Google Scholar, especially 4–5. See also Vincent, , op. cit. (9), 82.Google Scholar

71 Smith, , op. cit. (70), 22.Google Scholar

72 I do not mean to imply that classificatory systems themselves transcend class and identity. With respect to the Linnaean system, recent work has revealed its social and political underpinnings and uses. See Browne, Janet, ‘Botany for gentlemen: Erasmus Darwin and The Loves of the Plants’, Isis (1989), 80, 593–621CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schiebinger, Londa, ‘The private lives of plants: sexual politics in Carl Linnaeus and Erasmus Darwin’, in Science and Sensibility: Gender and Scientific Enquiry, 1780–1945 (ed. Benjamin, Marina), Oxford, 1991, 121–43Google Scholar; Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London, 1992, 24–35.Google Scholar

73 Mellor, John to Leyland, Roberts, [20 05 n.y.]Google Scholar, Calderdale Central Library, Halifax, Roberts Leyland Correspondence, SH: 7/JN/B/66/78.

74 Cyffin, Carlo, ‘Correspondence to the editor’, Analyst (1835), 3, 289–90.Google Scholar I am grateful to Gordon McOuat for this reference. For an analysis of debates over nomenclature and the ‘value’ of names, see McOuat, Gordon, ‘Species, rules and meaning in early nineteenth-century natural history’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (forthcoming).Google Scholar

75 As Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power (tr Raymond, Gino and Adamson, Matthew), Cambridge, Mass., 1991, 242Google Scholar, points out, ‘even if the specifically symbolic power of naming constitutes a force which is relatively independent of other forms of social power’, it is never completely independent of the social positions of the parties involved in the struggle for the preservation or transformation of a particular field.

76 For the invisibility of assistants, see Shapin, , op. cit. (4), ch. 8Google Scholar; Sibum, Otto, ‘Reworking the mechanical value of heat: instruments of precision and gestures of accuracy in early Victorian England’, Studies in History and Philosophy of ScienceGoogle Scholar (in press). I have derived evidence of the status of informants in natural history texts primarily from botanical literature, but see Larsen, , op. cit. (l), 190–2Google Scholar, for the same process in operation in entomological publications.

77 Martin, John to Wilson, William, 19 06 1831Google Scholar, Warrington Library, William Wilson Correspondence, MS 53. For the comment about Martin's speech, see Wilson, William to Hooker, W. J., 15 10 1831Google Scholar, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Directors' Correspondence, vol. 6, letter 347.

78 Crozier, George to Wilson, William, 30 04 1843Google Scholar, Warrington Library, William Wilson Correspondence, MS 52. From the way in which Crozier described his circumstances to Wilson, it would be difficult to tell that not only had Crozier supplied Wilson with specimens in the past but was also known personally to him. The only indication of this in the letter is Crozier's statement that knowing Wilson, 's ‘kindness & willingness to help in times of need I have made bould to submit a few spesemons to you beging you will have the kindness to look them over & write your opinion of them’.Google Scholar

79 Sometimes geographical distance alone presented the same problem for gentlemen. One of the reasons Hooker gave in the 1830s for wanting to leave Glasgow, where he had amassed an enormous private herbarium, was that ‘so little use is made by others of my extensive collections & Library’ (Hooker, W. J. to Brown, Robert, 13 02 1838Google Scholar, British Library, Add. MSS 32441, ff. 328–9). Close to London, Hooker's collections would become more useful because of the ease of access.

80 Gray, John Edward, ‘Some remarks on museums of natural history’, Analyst (1836), 5, 273–80Google Scholar, on 274. I am grateful to Gordon McOuat for this reference. The Manchester Natural History Museum did not admit nonmembers until 1838, when visitors were allowed in for one shilling, and school children and members of the working class for sixpence each (Love, Benjamin, Manchester As It Is, Manchester, 1839, 125).Google Scholar

81 Bentley, William to Hooker, W. J., 21 01 1846Google Scholar, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Directors' Correspondence, vol. 24, letter 62.

82 Bentley, William to Hooker, W. J., 20 02 1843Google Scholar, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Directors' Correspondence, vol. 19, letter 86. Letter-writing manuals advised readers never to use a postscript when writing to a superior.

83 Joyce, Patrick, Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in later Victorian England, Brighton, 1980, 92–4.Google Scholar

84 Joyce, , op. cit. (83), 80.Google Scholar Joyce cautions that deferential behaviour in the 1840s should not be regarded as the ‘embourgeoisement’ of sections of the working class nor as passive acceptance of the difference in social ranks, by claiming that ‘deference was an aspect of the class relationship… with sufficient power…greatly to erode the consciousness of conflict but never to displace it’ (p. xvi).Google ScholarKirk, Neville, The Growth of Working Class Reformism in Mid-Victorian England, London, 1985, 18Google Scholar, points out that Joyce's underestimation of the independence of workers and his close attention to paternalistic employers has led to his accepting ‘a view of social reality as presented from the big house’. For a similar critique of paternalism leading to a description of social relations as seen from above, see Thompson, E. P., Customs in Common, London, 1991, 21–4.Google ScholarPrice, Richard, Labour in British Society, London, 1986, 11Google Scholar, argues that: ‘it is the presence of differing quantities and types of “subordination” and “resistance”, of “class consciousness” and “class co-operation”, of “hegemonical” influences and “independence”, that composes the character of the wider structures of social relations…The trick for the historian is to see how they operated as a process without losing sight of the historical transience of their particular forms.’

85 Behagg, Clive, op. cit. (59), 71–8.Google Scholar ‘Understandings’ were collective, unwritten, informal work practices based on custom and central to work organization, which reveal ‘a labour-oriented perception of social order’ (ibid., 123). See also Joyce, Patrick, ‘Work’, in The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950 (ed. Thompson, F. M. L.), 3 vols., Cambridge, 1990, ii, 165–6.Google Scholar

86 Bentley, William to Hooker, W. J., 21 01 1846Google Scholar, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Directors' Correspondence, vol. 24, letter 62. There is almost the hint that writing to Hooker was regarded as a chore. Bentley was probably secretary of the artisan Royton Botanical Society before becoming president in 1848.

87 Draft letter from Edward Hobson to Henderson, Joseph, 18 04 1826Google Scholar, Botany Department, Manchester Museum, Edward Hobson's Botanical Correspondence, 141.

88 Natural history collecting and taxonomy rank so low in the scientific pecking order – possibly because of the democratic nature of the Linnaean system – that it is important to stress how much knowledge was needed in order to recognize specimens that were different or interesting. As indicated earlier, botanists like Sir J. E. Smith had little patience with those who sent him common specimens believing them to be something new. For a discussion of whether natural history collecting is science, see Griesemer, James R. and Gerson, Elihu M., ‘Collaboration in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology’, Journal of the History of Biology (1993), 26, 185–203, on 202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89 Joyce, , op. cit. (83), 93–4.Google Scholar

90 Mabberley, D. J., Jupiter Botanicus: Robert Brown of the British Museum, London, 1985, 40.Google Scholar

91 Caley, George to Banks, Joseph, 7 03 1795Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, Dawson Turner Correspondence (DTC), 9, 201–2.

92 Caley, George to Banks, Joseph, 23 08 1798Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, DTC, 11, 37–43.

93 Caley, George to Banks, Joseph, 12 07 1798Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, DTC, 11, 6–8.

94 Caley, George to Banks, Joseph, 23 08 1798Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, DTC, 11, 37–43.

95 Thompson, E. P., op. cit. (14), 306.Google Scholar Caley, unwilling to suffer any more ‘injury’, issued an ultimatum to Banks: ‘if you do not answer this letter within ten days…I shall consider you as not acting in a proper manner, and shall think myself at liberty… and, if ever I am able… I will return you the money which you have given me, even the postage of the letters’ (Caley, George to Banks, Joseph, 23 08 1798Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, DTC, 11, 37–43).

96 Caley's refusal to train in botanic gardens made it impossible for Banks to recommend him for government support. In exchange for complete freedom to collect as he saw fit, Caley remained ten years in Parramatta in a position and at a wage (15 shillings a week) that no gentleman would have tolerated. For the social conditions of New South Wales at this time, see Hughes, Robert, The Fatal Shore, New York, 1988.Google Scholar

97 Banks, Joseph to King, Philip Gidley, 29 08 1804Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, DTC, 15, 73–8. Duelling was an expression between equals of an aristocratic code of honour. See Kieman, V. G., The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy, Oxford, 1988.Google Scholar Banks's reply to Caley, 's initial attack, 27 08 1798Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, DTC, 11, 44–5, put Caley firmly in his place and was the epistolary equivalent of the ‘thrashing’ gentlemen were supposed to administer to their social inferiors in lieu of a duel (Perkin, Harold, The Origins of Modern English Society 1780–1880, London, 1969, 274).Google Scholar

98 Caley, George to Banks, Joseph, 12 07 1798Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, DTC, 11, 6–8.

99 Sim, John to Wilson, William, 4 01 1865Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, William Wilson Correspondence, vol. 10.

100 Sim, John to Wilson, William, 19 08 1864Google Scholar, Botany Library, Natural History Museum, London, William Wilson Correspondence, vol. 10.

101 Gibson, Samuel to Wilson, William, 21 07 [1842]Google Scholar, Warrington Library, William Wilson Correspondence, MS 52. Gibson lived in Hebden Bridge, a substantial distance from Wilson's residence in Warrington.

102 For artisans' attitudes towards middlemen, see Joyce, , op. cit. (85), 165Google Scholar; Prothero, I. J., Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century London, Folkestone, 1979, 336.Google Scholar

103 Gentlemen, of course, received many letters from unknown correspondents. However, other signs would have indicated the lowly status of artisan correspondents: quality of paper and ink, penmanship and, before the advent of envelopes, the seal of a letter.

104 Strathern, , op. cit. (54), 167.Google Scholar

105 Although William Helme, John Nowell and Jethro Tinker were factory workers, they had originally been handloom weavers. Rule, John, ‘The property of skill in the period of manufacture’, in The Historical Meanings of Work (ed. Joyce, Patrick), Cambridge, 1987, 99–118, on 115Google Scholar, stresses that artisan attitudes persisted into new work contexts and that such men can be regarded as ‘factory artisans’.

106 Wilson, William's ‘Greenfield Memoranda’Google Scholar, on the back of a letter from MrChristy, , 14 06 1832Google Scholar, Warrington Library, William Wilson Correspondence, MS 52.

107 Hooker, W. J. to Hobson, Edward, 27 10 1816Google Scholar, Botany Department, Manchester Museum, Edward Hobson's Botanical Correspondence, 153.

108 Hobson's sets of mosses (Musei Britannici (exsiccatae), 2 vols., Manchester, 1818, 1822)Google Scholar, were announced in Hooker, W. J. and Taylor, Thomas, Museologia Britannica; Containing the Mosses of Great Britain and Ireland, Systematically Arranged and Described, London, 1818, p. x; 2nd edn, London, 1827, pp. xxvi–xxvii.Google Scholar

109 The correspondence between Helme and Kirby is known only from the extracts of letters from Helme published in Freeman, John (ed.), The Life of the Reverend William Kirby, London, 1852, 357–63.Google Scholar Freeman mistranscribed Helme's name as ‘Holme’. Letters in other manuscript collections are clearly signed ‘Helme’ and an obituary in the Manchester Guardian, 19 04 1834, 3Google Scholar, also bears this name.

110 Freeman, , op. cit. (109), 357.Google Scholar

111 Freeman, , op. cit. (109), 358, 362.Google Scholar

112 Freeman, , op. cit. (109), 362.Google Scholar

113 Draft letter from Edward Hobson to W. J. Hooker, n.d., Botany Department, Manchester Museum, Edward Hobson's Botanical Correspondence, 159.

114 Biagioli, Mario, Galileo, Courtier; The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Chicago, 1993, 40–1 and n. 101.Google Scholar

115 Freeman, , op. cit. (109), 361.Google Scholar In 1822, Helme found a new contact nearer home in Roberts Leyland: ‘your proposition of us keeping A little correspondence meets with my direct approbation and shall feel great pleasure in communicating and exchanging duplicates with you as I have been told… that you are an Assiduous collector of Plants Insects and shell &c which studys are the same with me’ (Helme, William to Leyland, Roberts, 24 11 1822Google Scholar, Calderdale Central Library, Halifax, Roberts Leyland Correspondence, SH: 7/JN/B/66/78).

116 This is particularly apparent in Joyce, , op. cit. (83), 95Google Scholar, where the difficulty of evaluating the nature of the ‘deferential response’ lies in the lack of evidence.

117 In his study of Galileo's self-fashioning, Biagioli, , op. cit. (114)Google Scholar, ch. 1, carries out an ‘epistolary anthropology’ in order to analyse the patron/client relationship. In such cases, however, both patron and client were aware of the etiquette employed (hence the skill required of the client in establishing a relationship), unlike the interaction between artisans and gentlemen naturalists.

118 Tinker, Jethro to Leyland, Roberts, 22 06 1834Google Scholar, Calderdale Central Library, Halifax, Roberts Leyland Correspondence, SH: 7/JN/B/66/78.

119 The solitude of Scottish working-men naturalists is not just a reflection of the ideological bias of Samuel Smiles's biographies of men like Thomas Edward and Robert Dick. For the communal nature of artisan botany in Lancashire, see Secord, , op. cit. (8).Google Scholar

120 Even Bentley, 's letter to Hooker, , op. cit. (86)Google Scholar, written on behalf of ‘would be Botanists’ indicated that artisans believed themselves capable of becoming botanists.

121 Helme, William to Hobson, Edward, [25 03 1817]Google Scholar, Botany Department, Manchester Museum, Edward Hobson's Botanical Correspondence, 138.