| Activity | Ida Slater was one of the first women to work as a palaeontologist in London. Her education started at Newnham College, Cambridge where she met and became friends with another female student, Helen Drew (1881-1927), and with whom she studied Geology from 1900 to 1904. Ida was a very active student and joined the Sedgwick Club, becoming its Honorary Secretary in 1903. She also developed interests in geomorphology and stratigraphy before finally settling on palaeontology. In the early part of the twentieth century women were not permitted to graduate at Cambridge, and so Ida travelled to Dublin to gain her degree.
Henry Woods, then lecturer in palaeontology, encouraged Ida to study conulariids, a group of palaeoscyphozoans, and in particular their British species, which at the time had not been studied. She began visiting the British Museum (Natural History) where she became friends with Dr Arthur Smith Woodward, a former Keeper of the Geological Department of the British Museum. Woodward asked her to prepare a monograph for the Palaeontographical Society on the British Conulariae. The manuscript was completed and published in 1907 (Slater, 1907). Whilst studying the British specimens, Ida had to travel abroad to compare types and arrange the loans of specimens from various institutions and private collectors. She also applied for funding, and with the support of Arthur Woodward, was awarded the Daniel Pidgeon Fund from the Geological Society London.
Ida was a skilful illustrator with great palaeontological knowledge. This gave her the opportunity to prepare a series of drawings celebrating the signing of the Entente Cordiale of 1904, and which were exhibited at the Franco-British Exhibition in London in 1908. This provided her with a much needed income and allowed her to pursue her research. She collaborated with Gertrude Lilian Elles and E.M.R. Wood on the graptolite plates which appeared in Elles & Wood’s monograph of 1911. At the same time she was working as an educator/researcher at Bedford College, London, where she was a demonstrator in geology for another trailblazing female geologist, Catherine Raisin. This was her last proper work before marrying South Kensington solicitor William Donald Lees (1879-1974) in 1912.
Although Ida’s scientific career was short, she made important contributions to our understanding and knowledge of the Early Palaeozoic of Wales and Scotland, and the taxonomy of conulariids (palaeoscyphozoans). This made her one of the few women undertaking geological research which was at the time dominated by men.
The Natural History Museum Conulariid Collection on which Ida worked is considered the best in the world in terms of diversity, and second best in its number of specimens. Her work has been cited for over one hundred years and continues to be cited to this day by researchers on this group of fossils.
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| Source | Sendino, C. Ducker, E. & Burek, C. 2018. Ida Slater, A Collection Researcher in a Male World at the Beginning of the 20th Century. Edited by Decker, J and guest editors: Sendino, C. Note, M. & Ashton, J. (eds), Women & Collections. Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, 14, 439-453. |