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Homeschool History: MARY ANNING
Hello and welcome to Homeschool History. I’m Greg Jenner, the historian behind TV’s Horrible Histories and the host of the BBC podcast You’re Dead To Me. I’m here to deliver a snappy history lesson to entertain and educate the whole family. Who says homeschooling can’t be fun? Today we’re journeying to the nineteenth century, to meet an extraordinary woman who was truly ahead of her time, Known as the Princess of Paleontology and the Greatest Fossil Hunter who ever lived - we’re learning about Mary Anning.
Mary Anning entered history with a bang in 1799 in a place called Lyme Regis
SFX BANG and SEAGULLS
on the south-west coast of England. And I mean a literal bang. When she was just one year old she was struck by lightning!
SFX LIGHTENING ZAP
Other people died, but she miraculously survived, which led some people in the town to think that she had super powers - kind of like the Flash.
SFX FLASH (AHHHAH)
Her parents were called Richard and, also, Mary, and they weren’t a very posh family. Tragically, they had 10 children, but only young Mary and her brother Joseph survived.
Dad, Richard, was a respectable cabinet maker, but money wasn’t always reliable. As well as being quite poor, the Anning family had unusual religious beliefs for the time, which meant other people were suspicious of them. Richard Anning strongly believed that poor people should have better rights and a good education, so when he wasn’t building fancy furniture he was involved in protests against food shortages. He was the Marcus Rashford of carpentry!
SFX SAWING AND MARCUS RASHFORD
Even though she was quite poor, and was a girl, young Mary’s parents made sure she had an education, and she soon became interested in geology and paleontology - which is the study of rocks and fossils from tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. This was a nice hobby to have in Lyme Regis because fossils were absolutely everywhere! You couldn’t go for a walk on the beach without tripping over the crusty remains of a prehistoric sea-snail.
SFX TRIPPING - ‘OW!’
To make some extra cash, Mary’s dad started collecting fossils that the family could sell to tourists. But collecting fossils was risky as the cliffs at Lyme Regis often collapsed - and one day they came down right on top of poor Richard, who then caught a nasty infection called tuberculosis and died.
SFX MOURNFUL BELL
Mary was only about 11 when she lost her dad.
Her dad had been the main money earner, which was very worrying, but their luck was about to turn!
When she was 12, her brother Joseph found a huge skull, but was too busy to dig it up, so Mary took charge. She carefully dug up a skeleton of an Ichthyosaur, which is a prehistoric sea reptile that looked a bit like a dolphin
SFX: DOLPHIN NOISE
It was the first Ichthyosaur skeleton ever found, so museums and important fossil collectors got really excited!
SFX OOOHHH!!
Suddenly, Mary knew how she could earn a living. Over the next few years, Mary found absolutely bucket loads of spectacular fossils.
Including a plesiosaur which has been described as long-necked, four-flippered ‘sea dragon’!
SFX DRAGON and WAVES
By the time she was aged 24, Mary’s plesiosaur discovery made her properly famous.
But she and her family still weren’t rich. And despite making rare and remarkable discoveries, people weren’t taking Mary seriously, mainly because she was a woman and didn’t come from a posh family.
SFX BOOOOO!
Remember how when she was a baby, she amazingly survived a lightning bolt?
SFX: FLASH! AH-AH!
Well, the year after she found the plesiosaur, there was a massive hurricane in Lyme Regis.
SFX STORM NOISES
Lots of people died, and a big chunk of Mary’s house was washed away.
SFX HOUSE FALLING DOWN
But luckily she survived!
She also survived a landslide in 1833.
SFX LANDSLIDE NOISES
And another time she nearly drowned!
SFX: WAVES
And then there was the time she was nearly crushed in a traffic accident!
SFX: HORSES WHINNYING
You could say that Mary was lucky for surviving all those near misses, although she probably didn’t see it that way, since she lost so much to these disasters. Sadly, her loyal dog Tray died in the landslide.
SFX: SAD WOOF
But don’t worry
Remember Mary’s impressive Plesiosaur? In 1823, it caught the attention of the very important French paleontologist George Cuvier, who was a bit of a #influencer. He thought it was a fake at first, but he’d seen Mary’s Ichthyosaur bones in London a few years before, and, when he realised she was a legit fossil boffin, he mentioned her name in his public writings, which meant other people started to take her seriously too.
By selling her fossils, Mary Anning was able to set up a little shop called ‘Anning’s Fossil Depot’ in the nice part of town.
SFX SHOP BELL
Mary wasn’t just a good digger, she was very knowledgeable about animal anatomy - she dissected animals, read all the scientific research, and even copied out articles by hand! Sadly, due to sexism and class snobbery, nobody would let Mary publish articles of her own. Collectors and museums bought her fossils then took all the credit for describing them.
But there is one official article in Mary’s name - a letter she sent to the Magazine of Natural History in 1839 to tell them one of their publications was wrong!
SXF FRANTIC WRITING AND GRUMPY WOMAN NOISES
Today her letters are really valuable. One letter, written in 1829 to famous palaeontologist William Buckland, recently sold for a whopping £100,000!
SFX KERCHING
And that letter was about a coprolite, which is fossilized poo!
SFX FART NOISE
Now, that’s one letter you don’t want written on scented note paper!
SFX PEE-YEW
We also have Mary’s commonplace book - which is a bit like a scrapbook diary - where she wrote down her favourite song lyrics, poems, prayers, and quotations
This book gives us an idea about what Mary was like as a person. But what did she look like? Well, think more Pride and Prejudice than Queen Victoria. There is an official portrait of Mary where she is all dressed up with, next to her trusty dog Tray.
SFX WOOF!
But it probably isn’t very reliable, and tried to make her look fancier than she was - like a posh-lady Snapchat filter.
SFX POSH LADY: ‘LET ME TAKE A SELFIE’
In reality, Mary was probably physically fit and tanned from all the outdoor fossil hunting. We do have a possible sketch of her by Mary’s geologist friend, Henry de la Beche. We’re not certain it’s her, but the person is wearing a plaid skirt, dark cape, and carrying a geological hammer. What is especially interesting, if it is her, is that she’s not wearing a bonnet, like most ladies of the day, but a top hat, which was only for men...
SFX GASP
So Mary was tough, clever, and had made many groundbreaking discoveries - perhaps whilst wearing a lovely top hat - so, surely the posh boys would let her into their geology clubs, right?
SXF NEGATIVE BUZZER
Wrong! She was still refused membership to the Geological Society of London. But her posher lady friends, like the geologist Charlotte Murchison, persuaded the snobby lads to at least let women sit in on lectures. So that’s something, I guess.
Being excluded did hurt Mary’s feelings. She once said “The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone.”. Awh, Mary.
Despite her talent, Mary Anning didn’t see her work in print, or get to join fancy societies, but she did make one big trip to London to stay with her friend Charlotte Murchison, and see her fossils on display at the biggest museum in the country. That must have been a grand adventure!
And in 1844, nearly two decades after opening Anning’s Fossil Depot, Anning was visited by the king of Saxony
SXF SHOP BELL AND HALLO!
Mary sold him a fossil, and informed him that she was a celebrity “well known throughout Europe”. Ooh, get you, Mary Anning, rubbing shoulders with proper royalty!
During her career, Mary never found any land dinosaurs, but she discovered winged pterosaurs, thirty new species of prehistoric fish, many ammonites - which are like mega ancient sea snails - and lots of near-complete examples of iconic, extinct marine reptiles. What an amazing list!
SFX: APPLAUSE
Mary was clever, courageous, and determined. She took no nonsense, and some men found her a bit surly, sarcastic, and blunt - the man who dubbed her the Princess of Palaeontology also said she expressed herself like a man, which presumably meant she was confident and a bit rude.
SFX: RASPBERRY
But Mary was also generous and kind-hearted. She remained very religious, and didn’t marry or have kids, but had a life filled with plenty of love, and was really admired by those who knew her. She was part of a friendship network of brainy women who loved geology and fossils, and her friend, Elizabeth Philpot, joined her fossil hunting nearly every day. What a cool friendship.
SFX: FRIENDS THEME
Rich and posh Elizabeth gathered a very impressive collection of her own and even opened her own mini-museum in her house in Lyme Regis. But Mary couldn’t do this because she needed to sell her best fossils to support herself and her family.
Mary died in March 1847, possibly from breast cancer. She was only 47 years old.
Mary wanted great recognition for her achievements in her lifetime but, outside of her friendships, she didn’t really get it.
SFX SAD NOISES
But she has it in spades now!
SFX YAY!
After her death, people started to recognise Mary’s scientific achievements. In 1865, even the famous Charles Dickens (remember him from season one?) included an article about her in his magazine. Some people also think she was the inspiration for the tongue twister “she sells seashells by the seashore”, though there’s not much evidence to back it up.
In 2010, the Royal Society named Mary as one of the most influential British women in the history of Science. And, it gets better, in 2015 she had a really cool fossil named after her! The Ichthyosaurus anningae - the only one of its kind ever found, and found by Mary herself!
SFX HAPPY DOLPHIN NOISES
And soon, thanks to a campaign by a young lady called Evie, Mary Anning will have her own statue in Lyme Regis, paid for by a huge crowdfund campaign. And let’s hear from Evie now…
SFX ”MARY ANNING ROCKS!”
Nice one, Evie! I agree
And that brings us to the end of our expedition with Mary. So now it’s time for the quiz! We have 5 questions...
Quiz You ready? Go!
1. What happened to Mary when she was one year old, leading some people to think she had super powers? STRUCK BY LIGHTNING 2. What was the name of Mary’s beloved dog? TRAY 3. How old was Mary when she dug up the first complete Ichthyosaurus skeleton? 12. 4. What was Mary’s shop called? ANNING’S FOSSIL DEPOT 5. Who was Mary’s wealthy friend who joined her fossil-hunting every day? ELIZABETH PHILPOTT
Now it’s time for the answers...
OUTRO
How did you do? If you didn’t get all five, why not listen to another episode from series one or two. Hopefully you’re a Mary Anning marvel.
Tune in next time for some more homeschool history. And make sure to subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. Thanks for listening, take care, and goodbye!
HomeSchool History was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio Four and BBC Sounds. The script was by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, Hannah MacKenzie, Emma Nagouse and me.The producer was Abi Paterson and the historical advisor was Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes.