Mary Wyatt - Queen Consort of Seaweeds

'She Sells Seashells on the Sea Shore,
the Sea Shells She Sells are Sea Shells I´m Sure.'

 There are other variations of this tongue twister / rhyme but this is the one I remember learning on the beaches at Torquay as a young child. What I did not know was that the rhyme almost certainly applies to a woman who walked the same shorelines some 130 years before me.

After her marriage to William Wyatt, Mary (1789–1871)[1] became a resident of Torquay and by 1830 she was one of the two Torquay dealers in shells and minerals with her premises in Terrace Road[2[. In the same year Mrs Wyatt was mentioned by Blewitt (Panorama of Torquay, First Edition)[3] as having a good collection of madrepores and shells “near the market”. When the Second Edition appeared in 1832 J Heggerty at the Old Quay and Mary Wyatt at 7, Torwood Row, are again listed as dealers in minerals and shells.[4] However, it is for her work on seaweeds that her name crops up in a number of library listings.

Mary Wyatt was born in 1789 in St Stephens, Cornwall, and worked as a servant for the family of phycologist and seaweed collector Amelia Warren Griffiths.[1] Wyatt accompanied Griffiths on her collecting expeditions, learning from her, but is usually described as having had no formal education.[5]  Be that as it may, Mary Wyatt compiled the respected Algae Danmoniensis. In the Introduction to his influential work, Manual of the British Algae (1841), William Henry Harvey (Keeper of the Herbarium at Trinity College, Dublin) wrote: I could have wished, and indeed had intended, that the work should be illustrated … the student will experience little loss by their omission who takes this MANUAL for what I wish it to be, a companion to the ALGAE DANMONIENSES, published and sold by Mary Wyatt, dealer in Shells, Torquay; a most important work.[6] Wyatt together with Amelia Griffiths in Torquay, or Miss Anne Ball of Youghal and Miss Ellen Hutchins of Bantry in Ireland[7] helped to fuel the Victorian craze for seaweed collecting, especially among women as it also represented a respectable pastime for women “who were not expected to study science for its own sake, but as a social accomplishment.”[8]

To view all the specimens illustrated in Volume 1 click here.

The most prominent of these, Amelia Warren Rogers, was born in Pilton, North Devon in January 1768. In 1794 she married Rev. William Griffiths, the vicar of St Issy and the couple moved to Cornwall. Eight years later, her husband died suddenly under mysterious circumstances, apparently by drowning, leaving his widow with five young children but not without money. Amelia Griffiths decided to leave Cornwall for Devon, living first at Ottery St Mary. Clare Howe writes that it was here that her interest in marine algae was sparked, encouraged by the Rev Samuel Goodenough.⁹ She had already established her reputation as “The Queen of Seaweeds” before she moved to Torquay, having contributed to the work of Harvey. He dedicated his seminal 1849 text British Marina Algae to Griffiths and several seaweed specimens were even named after her, such as the Furcus Griffithsia and in 1817, the Swedish botanist Carl Agardh named a genus of red seaweed Griffithsia in her honour. One of her first specimens, a Tufted Conifer-Weed is held at RAMM dated 1801.¹⁰

In 1829, Amelia Griffiths and two daughters moved to a house in Cary Parade, Torquay where her friend Mary Wyatt was living. Clare Howe writes that in Torquay: All four collected seaweeds and Mary eventually went on to run a shop selling pressed seaweeds, shells and other items.⁹ Mary is almost always referred to as “servant” but Frankie Dytor suspects a stronger relationship. “Griffiths, however, was not entirely alone in her efforts to collect and preserve seaweed specimens across the Devon and Cornish coast. At her side was Mary Wyatt, owner of a pressed plant shop in Torquay. Wyatt had originally worked as a servant in the Griffiths household, before developing a close friendship with Griffiths and setting up a business independently. Together, they scoured the coast, searching for specimens, and Wyatt eventually published the results of their findings in Algae Danmonienses, a multi-volume compilation consisting of specimens from Devon and Cornwall. Their work, in other words, was an active collaboration, as they scrambled across rocky shores in cumbersome skirts, compared notes and exchanged specimens in real time.”¹⁰

We know that Amelia moved to Torquay in 1829 and already in 1830 Mary was running a shop and had a good collection of madrepores and shells. It is much more likely that Mary had more education, or acumen, than she is normally credited with. Both Clare Howe and Frankie Dytor overlook the fact that the shop was already present when Amelia moved to Torquay. While Amelia collected dried samples of seaweeds now held in several museums including Kew, Torquay and Exeter (the Royal Albert Memorial Museum holds three slightly battered leather-bound volumes of her seaweeds) it was Mary who collected, pressed, prepared for publication and produced the impressive Algae Damnonienses. She was also in correspondence with Harvey as we have seen and Katherine Slade notes she was also writing to, and sending specimens to Lewis Weston Dillwyn, a noted Welsh biologist, for scientific investigation.¹¹

Wyatt opened her shop at 7 Torwood Row, Torquay selling corals, dried seaweeds, mosses, and other seaside souvenirs. This helped to support her and her husband, who was, according to Bea Howe, a "permanent invalid". It was at the suggestion of botanist William Henry Harvey that Wyatt began to prepare a named collection of seaweeds, supervised by Griffiths. ⁵

To view all the specimens illustrated in Volume 2 click here.

Algae Danmonienses: or dried specimens of Marine Plants, principally collected in Devonshire by Mary Wyatt; carefully named according to Dr. Hooker's British Flora' appeared in 5 volumes from 1833 to 1840. Each volume contained approximately 50 different species, and the supplement a further 36 examples, from Cornwall, as well as from Devonshire. Each specimen was named and numbered according to William Jackson Hooker's British Flora, with a short note of the habitat and locality where the seaweed is found, and an indication of its rarity. (The author has posted Volumes 1 and 2 online.) These sold well, at just a pound each for subscribers, and contributed to the popularity of seaweed collecting at seaside resorts in early Victorian Britain. The Journal of Botany called them "remarkable".¹

The publication of this work may have been assisted by Edward Cockrem. The proprietor of the local newspaper, Cockrem is known to have published a vast number of tracts for local people, including juvenile works of Blewitt.¹² Many of these would not have been for profit and been more a printing exercise. The volumes compiled by Mary Wyatt are fairly primitive: stiff plain card covers, thin leather spine, small printed labels cut out by hand and pasted on each page but a printed title page and careful binding.

Without citing evidence, many authors claim these were a joint venture between Griffiths and Wyatt, (e.g. Dytor quoted above) and it may well be that Griffiths left Wyatt the credit of publication as her own reputation was assured. Frankie Dytor´s LBTQIA suspicions are probably incorrect: Two female friends working together does not immediately suggest romantic involvement, an idea particularly at odds with our received notions of the Victorian period. If we press further, however, it becomes evident that the early Victorian period had a number of such close companionships, framed around the common activity of collecting. This was probably two women who enjoyed each other´s company, shared a common interest and had a similar marital history.

Amelia Griffiths died in 1858 and Mary Wyatt died in 1871, aged 82.  While Amelia Griffiths has largely been rediscovered, Mary Wyatt remains an obscure figure. In several articles Mary is still the servant or companion, but never equal of Griffiths. The publication of her books, with or without the supervision of her friend, surely should lead us to believe that there was more to Mary than meets the eye.

Copies of her work are rare. The author holds Volume 1 and a private collector in Torquay owns Volume 2: both are illustrated in full here. Devon Archives holds one volume only (sx589.45/DEV/WYA: but it is not clear which volume this is), the Natural History Museum holds all five vols bound in one and and Bangor University Library has a complete set of five vols. 

Other institutions holding this work include libraries at the New York Botanical Gardens, University of Michigan, Naturalis Biodiverstity Center in Leiden, NL and University of Hawaii in Manoa.  

References

1.    Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wyatt#cite_note-16 (last edited 19 May 2023).
2.    Pigot and Co.´s National and Commercial Directory; J Pigot & Co.; London; 1830.
3.    (Octavian Blewitt); The Panorama of Torquay (First Edition); Edward Cockrem; Torquay; 1830.
4.    Blewitt, Octavian; The Panorama of Torquay, Second Edition; Edward Cockrem; Torquay; 1832.
5.    According to Bea Howe (1989, quoted in Wikipedia) she was “illiterate”. See Howe, Bea (1989). Antiques from the Victorian home. Internet Archive. London: Spring Books. 
6.    Harvey, William Henry; A manual of the British Algae. Containing generic and specific descriptions of all the known British species of sea-weeds, and of conferae, both marine and fresh-water; John van Voorst; London; Page liv. 1841.
   
7.    Hilda M. Parkes; Some Notes on the Herbarium of University College, Cork in The Irish Naturalists' Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Oct., 1953), pp. 102-106 (6 pages). Published By: Irish Naturalists' Journal Ltd.
8.    Oatman-Stanford, Hunter. When Housewives Were Seduced by Seaweed in Collectors Weekly. Retrieved 2022-07-31.
9.    Clare Howe; Amelia Griffiths, Bay´s forgotten female scientist in Torbay; Thursday April 15, 2021. Also see Philip Strange in his Science and Nature Writing blog.
10.    Frankie Dytor writing as part of 'Out and About: Queering the Museum. "Amelia Grifffiths' Seaweed Collection". Retrieved 2022-07-31.
11.    Katherine Slade; Stories from Pressed Plant Books in the Botany Collections; 17 May 2019; Amgueddfa Blog.
12.    Kit Batten; Edward Cockrem and the Durnford Sisters; private printing; 2022. Includes a complete list of published works of Edward Cockrem.