Mary Anning (Radio Edit)

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Mary Anning (Radio Edit)" on You're Dead to Me

Introduction

In the Mary Anning (Radio Edit) episode of BBC Radio 4's You're Dead to Me, host Greg Jenner delves into the remarkable life of Mary Anning, a pioneering 19th-century paleontologist. Joined by historian Dr. Michael Taylor and comedian Sarah Pascoe, the episode blends humor with historical insight to illuminate Anning's contributions to science and the societal challenges she faced.

Early Life and Background

Mary Anning was born in May 1799 in Lyme Regis, Dorset, a picturesque yet economically precarious seaside town in southwest England. Growing up in a large family of ten children, only Mary and her brother Joseph survived into adulthood after tragic accidents claimed their siblings.

Notable Quote:

"So a tragically ordinary start to her life." – Dr. Michael Taylor [05:35]

Mary's father, Richard Anning, was a cabinet maker who struggled to provide for his family. Education for Mary was limited; she attended a congregational Sunday school where she began learning to read and write, skills that would later prove invaluable in her scientific endeavors.

Fossil Discoveries and Scientific Contributions

Mary's passion for fossil hunting began early. At the age of 12, she made her first significant discovery—a complete ichthyosaurus—after her brother Joseph found the skull but needed her help to uncover the rest of the skeleton. This accomplishment marked the beginning of her illustrious yet challenging career in paleontology.

Notable Quote:

"At 12, I was out of school for six months, so I was at home by myself, eating bourbon biscuits and making hot chocolate, watching Neighbours twice." – Sarah Pascoe [11:10]

Over the next decade, Mary continued to unearth extraordinary fossils, including a plesiosaurus in 1823 and a pterosaur in 1828. Her findings were so unique that they often baffled contemporary scientists, leading to significant advancements in the understanding of prehistoric life.

Notable Quote:

"She never found a dinosaur because these are sea dwelling or flying." – Sarah Pascoe [15:53]

Despite her expertise, Mary Anning never discovered a dinosaur in the strict sense, as her work primarily involved marine reptiles and flying reptiles. Nonetheless, her contributions were pivotal, inspiring future generations and even influencing popular culture, such as the legend of the Loch Ness Monster.

Recognition and Challenges as a Woman in STEM

Mary's work attracted the attention of leading scientists like Baron Georges Cuvier and William Buckland. However, despite her undeniable talent and contributions, societal norms severely limited her recognition. As a lower-class woman, Mary was barred from joining prestigious scientific societies like the Geological Society and the Royal Society, which only admitted men.

Notable Quote:

"She was the excavator, she's the JCB." – Dr. Michael Taylor [19:15]

Mary's financial situation remained unstable despite significant fossil sales. While she managed to establish her own fossil shop and gained international fame, frequent big discoveries were rare. Consequently, Mary often relied on charity from wealthy benefactors and scientific institutions to sustain herself.

Personal Life and Legacy

Mary Anning never married, dedicating her life to fossil hunting and maintaining a close relationship with her mother. Her solitary nature and commitment to her work left little room for personal relationships, yet she formed meaningful connections with some geologists and tourists.

Mary's legacy extends beyond her scientific achievements. She is commemorated in Lyme Regis with a stained glass window and has species named in her honor, such as those by Louis Agassiz. Her story highlights the often-overlooked contributions of women in science and the systemic barriers they faced.

Notable Quote:

"I'm going to say I'm a dinosaur discoverer." – Sarah Pascoe [16:22]

Conclusion and Reflection

The episode concludes by emphasizing the collaborative yet often uncredited roles women like Mary Anning played in the advancement of science. Dr. Michael Taylor underscores that Mary was not alone in her struggles, as many women of her time contributed significantly behind the scenes.

Notable Quote:

"People don't do things in a vacuum." – Sarah Pascoe [29:03]

Mary Anning's life is a testament to resilience and passion in the face of societal constraints. Her contributions laid the groundwork for modern paleontology, and her story continues to inspire and educate about the importance of recognizing and valuing the contributions of all individuals in the scientific community.

Final Thoughts

You're Dead to Me masterfully intertwines humor with historical narrative, bringing Mary Anning's story to life. Through engaging dialogue and insightful analysis, the episode not only celebrates Anning's achievements but also critiques the gender and class biases that obscured her legacy during her lifetime.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "So a tragically ordinary start to her life." – Dr. Michael Taylor [05:35]
• "At 12, I was out of school for six months, so I was at home by myself, eating bourbon biscuits and making hot chocolate, watching Neighbours twice." – Sarah Pascoe [11:10]
• "She never found a dinosaur because these are sea dwelling or flying." – Sarah Pascoe [15:53]
• "She was the excavator, she's the JCB." – Dr. Michael Taylor [19:15]
• "I'm going to say I'm a dinosaur discoverer." – Sarah Pascoe [16:22]
• "People don't do things in a vacuum." – Sarah Pascoe [29:03]

This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions of the Mary Anning (Radio Edit) episode, providing listeners a detailed overview of Mary Anning's life and legacy.

Transcript

[Greg Jenner]

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[Dr. Michael Taylor]

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts hello and welcome to youo're Dead To Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster and today we are chiseling our way back to 19th century Dorset to learn all about pioneering palaeontologist Mary Anning. And to help us dig up this story, we have two very special guests in History Corner. He's a historian of the 19th century who has held positions at Balliol College, Oxford and the British Library's Eccles Centre for American Studies. You might have read his Orwell Prize nominated book, the how the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery or his brilliant new book, Impossible Monsters, all about the religious backlash, the discovery of dinosaurs. It's my fave book of 2024. You heard it here first. It's Dr. Michael Taylor. Welcome, Michael.

[Greg Jenner]

I'm delighted to be here and thank you for inviting me in.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Comedy Corner. She's a comedian, actor, author, podcaster, screenwriter. She does it all. You'll know her from all the tv, the panel shows, Live of the Apollo, comedians giving lectures, the great British sewing bee, Last Woman On Earth, Taskmaster, her sitcom Out Of Her Mind. Maybe you've read her novel Weirdo, but you'll definitely remember her from our first ever episode of youf're Dead To Me, about Queen Boudicca. The iconic queen. And it's the equally iconic Queen of comedy herself, Sarah Pascoe. Welcome back, Sarah.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Thank you so much for having me. I've been at home waiting as you've had other people be repeat guests, thinking, when will my time in the sun come again?

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

We're delighted to have you back. We knew from five years ago that you were a big history fan. You'd been a tour guide.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Yes. The only little bits of history I know are from the tours because I didn't even do history. Gcse, actually, which is why I want to learn more as an adult.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

And what do you know about Mary Anning?

[Sarah Pascoe]

Well, when I got the email inviting me on the show, it said, you don't need to know anything. And I thought, I can either lie, as in do research, revision and then pretend I just knew it. And I've not done that. I've been honest. Which means I know nothing really. Apart from you just said she was a palaeontologist.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Yes, I did, yeah. Okay, so what do you know? Paleontology is the study of dinosaurs. We've all seen One of the 37 Jurassic park movies, or we know Ross from Friends. And the name Mary Anning might be familiar too. Maybe not to Sarah, but to some of you at home, the Royal Society named her one of the most influential women in British science history. You may have seen the Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan movie Ammonite, which is very loosely based on her life. But who was this fearless fossil finder? What was it like being a 19th century woman in STEM? Let's find out. Right, Dr. Michael, when and where was Mary born?

[Greg Jenner]

OK, so Mary's born at the turn of the 18th century, May 1799, in Lyme Regis, which, if you know, it's a beautiful seaside town in Dorset in southwest England. So Mary is born to her mother, also called Mary and Richard, her father. And she is one of 10 children. In fact, she's not even the only Mary because she had an elder sister, also called Mary, who very sadly died in a tragic accident whenever her dress caught fire from wood shavings in her father's workshop. Indeed, of the 10 children, it's only Mary and her brother Joseph who survive into adulthood.

[Sarah Pascoe]

So that's why we're doubling names up. We won't know them in a couple of years.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

We had a Mary and it was fine. Let's have another Mary.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Yeah, I liked Mary. I miss Mary. We'll call her Mary, too.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

I mean, it's ordinary for the 18th century, 19th century. It happens, but it's tragic. So a tragically ordinary start to her life. Born in 1799. But there was one very extraordinary event in Mary's young life. Can you guess what happened to her at a horse show when she was just 14 months old?

[Sarah Pascoe]

As a baby, we once went to, like, a petting zoo. My sister turned around to have a photograph taken, and she was eating some crisps, and the goat behind her started eating her ponytail. And because it was the 80s, we just thought it was hysterically funny. My sister now is still quite traumatized because when something horrible happens to you like that, I guess you want your mom or your sisters to be like, oh, should we get that goat offer? Rather than, like, taking more photos. So I'm going to guess it's something like that. Like a horse sort of came, gave her a sniff, took some interest in her perhaps.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Very sensible answer. It's not what happened?

[Greg Jenner]

No. She was struck by lightning. So there was much.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

What? Yeah, yeah.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Mary, too.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah. So there was much excitement in Lyme Regis the previous day. There had been a prodigious display of vaulting, as one historian records. And the next day, all the townsfolk of Lyme Regis had piled into the same field again to watch this performance by a traveling troop of horsemen. But it was the late summer, and a storm was rolling in off the English Channel, and people began to run away. So some people run away completely. Some people began to hide under coy sheds, and other people, including Mary's nurse, stood under the trees. The nurse dies. Mary is thought to have died at the same time. She's rushed back into the town and is eventually revived after being dunked in a warm bath. And apparently beforehand, she had been rather a dull child. But afterwards, the local legend grew that Mary became a bright and intelligent young woman.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

I mean, Sarah, what superpower would you Be willing to risk getting struck by lightning.

[Sarah Pascoe]

IV oh, 100% getting it on first try on a wordle.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Michael. Perilous weather aside, what was young Mary's childhood like? Is she educated? Is she well off?

[Greg Jenner]

So, beside the forces of nature, Lyme Regis is a pretty dangerous place. Growing up, it could literally have become a battlefront because this is the place in the south coast where the Earl of Monmouth landed his rebellious troops. It's where William of Orange decides to land his Dutch troops during the Glorious Revolution. And Lyme Regis is closer to the French naval base at Cherbourg than it is to London. And this is the high point of the French Revolutionary Wars.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Right.

[Greg Jenner]

Besides that, it's a pretty economically precarious place to live. Money is scarce everywhere, and Mary's father, Richard, is a cabinet maker. Now, sometimes, depending on what clientele comes along, you can have enough money to pay for your rent, to pay for your food. But lots of times it's a real struggle, even for a family where, sadly, there's only now two children rather than 10. Mary attends a congregational Sunday school, so she begins to learn a little bit how to read and write. And that very little learning will go a long way in her later life. Growing up and surviving to adulthood in Lyme Regis and being healthy and being sure of your future, it's a very uncertain thing. But the residents of Lime Regis did have another way finding fossils and selling them to tourists. This is a little bit like crafting on Etsy, perhaps. There are many reasons why people are coming from London and from other places to Lime Regents. One is that there's a real fashion for using saltwater as a cure for everything. So polite ladies will come down and in their elaborate bathing gear, will walk out into the water and paddle.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

And Jane Austen does, doesn't she?

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, she does. And Jane Austen is one of the visitors to Lyme Regis, and she in fact, goes to Richard Anning as a cabinet maker to request that he fix a box. But apparently he charged far too much and she took her business elsewhere.

[Sarah Pascoe]

You never really hear that about Austin, but she was a real haggler.

[Greg Jenner]

So this is the way that Richard kept his family in bread whenever his cabinet making business was going badly. But it wasn't really enough. So in 1810, whenever he's walking along one of the cliffs, he might have been in his cups, we don't necessarily know, but he was doing it at night and he fell down the cliff face. He almost broke his back, and it weakened him enough that he would eventually die of consumption. Which was endemic at the time. But he leaves debts, Richard, of about 120 pounds. And that might not sound an awful lot now, but you can multiply that by about 100. Mary's solution to all of this is to keep hunting for fossils.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Britain and Ireland in the early 1800s. It's a very religious society, society. So is it awkward when fossils are coming out of the ground that are perhaps looking very old and might be challenging the timeline of Adam and Eve?

[Greg Jenner]

So, first, it's important to state, you're right, it is a very religious society. It might be tempting to think that the Enlightenment has come and gone. The Enlightenment in England had been relatively conservative. Moreover, remember, who are England fighting at the time? Who are the British fighting at the time? They're fighting the French, who are secular, who are democratic, who are atheistic, who are egalitarian. So they represent the radical edge of the Enlightenment. And Britain, in turn, defines itself as a conservative Christian nation. Propagating some idea of science or a history of the world or a criticism of the Bible is a very dangerous thing. So what people are doing instead is practicing what's called natural theology, which was an idea developed by the English clergyman William Paley, which is that if you are investigating the world, if you are practicing what eventually we call science, you're not doing anything blasphemous. You're in fact, understanding the works of the Lord.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So let's return to Mary clinging to the cliffs. Dorset, Lyme Regis, and let's get to her first big discovery, the one that starts to make her name. How old was she when she found it? Sarah.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Okay. So she was struck by lightning when she was 14 months old, and then in that time, you know, she's lost siblings. Her dad has died, so I want to imagine now she's a teenager. So let's say she's 17.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

That's a good guess. She's 12.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Oh, God. Poor Mary. So she's learned to read and write, and then it's just out finding fossils.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Yeah, out on the cliff face. Yeah, yeah. And the first one that she finds, Michael, is the ichthyosaur. Is that right?

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah. It becomes known as the ichthyosaurus. So colloquially, it might have been termed a sea dragon at the time. The ichthyosaurus actually means fish lizard. Her brother Joseph found the skull first, but he had to go back and do upholstery so the family could eat. So he tasked Marian with finding the rest of the skeleton. And it took her a while. It took her almost a year to do it. But eventually they piece everything together and what happens is that whenever this new fossilized skeleton is presented to science, nobody really knows what to make of it, because nothing like it has ever been seen before.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So what was your greatest achievement at 12? At 12.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Oh, God. So if I admit this, I mean, so at 12, I was out of school for six months, so I was at home by myself, eating bourbon biscuits and making hot chocolate, watching Neighbours twice, because it used to be on twice a day.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

I remember those days. Yes. What happens to the skeleton of this sort of Ichthyosaurus, then?

[Greg Jenner]

So the skeleton's lifted up out of the ground, it's put together and it's bought by Henry Host Henley, who's the local lord of the manor. But he doesn't keep it. Instead he gives it over to a museum at Piccadilly in London, and that's where all of the clever men of the capital go to look at it.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Is this monetizable for her?

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, it is. It's, I think, 20 points.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Yeah, 23 pounds.

[Greg Jenner]

23 points. So, you know, that's. That's a lot of money for a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So she found it in 1811. It's not the only marine animal that Mary found.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So a decade later, in her mid-20s, she's now a young woman. She discovers a complete plesiosaurus. Michael, what's a plesiosausau when it's at home?

[Greg Jenner]

So aplesiosaurus, or Aplysiosaurus, the name means near lizard. So there had been other bits and pieces of ancient reptiles found about the southwest of England. The week before Christmas in 1823, Marie does make this discovery. So she finds this enormous creature. Again, nothing quite like it has been seen before and it's later memorably described as a serpent threaded through the body of a turtle. It becomes, in time, the inspiration for the Loch Ness Monster.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So this is 1823, she finds this one.

[Sarah Pascoe]

So she's found one every 20, 12 years so far.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So 1823, she's found one every 12 years. It's a good innings.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Yeah. It'd be hard to get the dopamine if you found a really, really massive sea Dragon at 12. Every time you. It's just another little handheld one. Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

You've peaked, haven't you?

[Sarah Pascoe]

Another ammonite. Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Boring. Bellam knight.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Yeah, I'll sell it for a quid.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

The name I want to bring in is. He's a Frenchman, Baron Georges Cuvier. How does he get involved?

[Greg Jenner]

So Cuvier is effectively the Napoleon of natural sciences. In the early 19th century. So he runs all of these scientific institutions in Paris which are incredibly well funded. And before the learned men of Britain really want to make a big announcement, they really want Cuvier's approval. So eventually they get his approval about the plesiosaurus, which he had maybe slightly doubted beforehand. And the Annings sell it. They sell it for 100 pounds, which is an enormous amount of money in the 1820s.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Then in 1828, she finds another fun species, a pterosaur, a flying reptile.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Wow.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

And there's also another person we should mention is William Buckland, who's a fun character in his own right. Churchman and scientist, often at war with his own sense of what he believed, I guess. But he has a lovely quote, doesn't he?

[Greg Jenner]

He does. So Buckland, who is a Church of England minister and an Oxford Fellow, whenever he's describing Mary Anning's pterosaur, which is named the Dimorphodon macronyx, he says it somewhat resembled our modern bats and vampires, but had its beak elongated like the bill of a woodcock and armed with teeth like the snout of a crocodile. In short, it was a monster resembling nothing that has ever been seen or heard of upon Earth, excepting the dragons of romance and heraldry.

[Sarah Pascoe]

And did anyone not believe in them?

[Greg Jenner]

Not so much as disbelieving that there are these fossils, but what is their importance? What do they signify? That's the really important question.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So Mary Annie by this point has been drawing the attention of William Buckland, who's the sort of the big daddy in England or Britain. You've got Cuvier in France, she's got the two giants in the field to take notice. She's now renowned as a paleontologist, a rock star paleontologist. But there was one thing she never discovered in her whole career, in 35 years of digging. Do you know what that was, Sarah?

[Sarah Pascoe]

True love.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

The one thing she doesn't find is a dinosaur.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Ah, we're quibbling.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

We are quibbling, but in some ways we're not quibbling.

[Sarah Pascoe]

So how are we defining dinosaur then?

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, so a dinosaur is a land dwelling reptile and in particular a land dwelling reptile where the hips and the legs are constructed underneath the trunk of the body.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So that's a dinosaur. So Mary Anning never found a technical.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Dinosaur because these are sea dwelling or flying.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sarah Pascoe]

I'm gonna say in to me, she's a dinosaur discoverer.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Okay. Okay.

[Sarah Pascoe]

So in terms of the way that she was making her living, I mean, could it Just be that she was so passionate about her career and her job, and because she made money, she didn't need to marry. That would have been incredibly rare, but she would have had the choice.

[Greg Jenner]

I guess from everything that we know of her, she was quite a solitary person. I mean, certainly hunting for fossils is something that you can do alone. And she's very, very close to her mother. And she does make friends among some of the geologists who come down to Leimrides or the seasonal tourists who come down as well. And there are reminiscences of Mary Anning in their memoirs, but so far as we know, there was never any kind of serious or romantic relations.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So when we say Mary Anning is digging up stuff out of cliffs, Sarah, we shouldn't undersell her talents intellectually. What do you imagine she was thinking when she's digging these things up?

[Sarah Pascoe]

Well, to have put as much time into it as she did at such a young age, it can't just have been monetary. There would have been a reason that propels you to go out and find something that can be sold. But for her to have spent a year digging something out, she must have had a huge curiosity. This is someone that, you know, barely learned to be able to write and read, who is making massive discoveries that are changing the world. Changing how? Very educated religious men, men with titles, are talking about the world. If she was a horrible person with a massive ego, I would forgive that because, I mean, to have so little and to make such a huge change in the world is incredibly rare, isn't it?

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Yeah, it's amazing.

[Greg Jenner]

She certainly knows how intelligent she is. Yeah. And she gets the papers sent down from the London scientific societies. And she really relishes reading what all of these grand men have written about.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Her and about, well, at least about.

[Greg Jenner]

The discoveries that she has made and pointing out where they've gone wrong. And whenever people come down to Lyme Regis, all the geologists do this. They don't come to pay homage, however, they basically exploit her. Gideon Mantell, who discovers the Iguanodon, says he's really unimpressed by this prim vinegar looking woman sitting in her shop selling fossils. Others are much more generous. So the widow of the senior judge at the Old Bailey comes down to Lyme Regis and she credits Anning with knowing immediately, whenever she looks at a bun exactly what kind of creature, what species it comes from. And Anning realizes this too. She eventually becomes quite bitter that she's being used by all of these men, that they are making great Names for themselves offer discoveries. And I think fairly so from everything.

[Sarah Pascoe]

You'Ve just said, she's not getting the due respect as an intelligent person. It's like she's the delivery driver or something rather than, oh, you know, or she's the. She's the muscle. She's the muscle getting them out.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

That's right. She's the excavator, she's the jcb. So she's an autodidact in some way. She's teaching herself. She's learning on the job. And she's obviously incredibly knowledgeable. So not just a practical digger, not just brave, but also increasingly an anatomist of tremendous skill. But she's also unmarried. She's a lower class woman because Mary Anning is not allowed join the Geological Society. Right.

[Greg Jenner]

She is not.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

The Royal Society won't have a. Nope.

[Sarah Pascoe]

So none of them allow women to join. And when has that changed?

[Greg Jenner]

It has changed.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Thank you. Looked at me in a way, Michael was like, oh, no. Still, they didn't know that any women are scientists.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So why can't. She's proved herself over and over. Why can't she join these societies, these scientific institutions? She's proved herself a scientist.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, in the mindset of the time, it's just not the done thing.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Because she's a woman.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

And the class.

[Greg Jenner]

And a lower class woman. Right.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Okay.

[Greg Jenner]

So I think a really telling example of this, and I was maybe going to save it for the nuance window, is that in the early 1830s, whenever the British association for the Advancement of Science is set up as an institution which will bring within science men of lower income, so middle class men can join this and can listen to all the great men speak. Even eminent women such as Mary Summer, the physicist and mathematician after whom an Oxford college is now named, is only allowed to attend the dinners and the conversational soirees for somebody like Mary Anning, no invitation at all is extended.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Yeah, but Mary Anning was recognized. There's someone called Louis Agassiz, is that right?

[Greg Jenner]

Yes. So during her lifetime, Louis Agassiz did name two species of fish after her. And then after Mary's death, there was a species of ichthyosaur which was named after.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Right, okay.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

So two species of fish for a lifetime of work.

[Sarah Pascoe]

And we don't know how she felt about it. Or do we?

[Greg Jenner]

Oh, we do. She was increasingly bitter about how she had been treated unkindly by the world.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

And would walk along the beach in Lyme Regis, giving off to anybody who would accompany her about all the young idiots who were coming down and enjoying themselves, not necessarily at her expense, but without giving her the credit that she deserved.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

But she was bringing the people in. Right. So there's a sort of paradox. Right. Her fame is quite well established. People are coming to visit Mary Anning and yet at the same time they're.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Not paying the proper dues.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Yeah. So how do you think Mary was cashing in on her ability, at least to draw in punters, people coming down to see the stuff?

[Sarah Pascoe]

Well, I would hope that she would be maybe teaching, demonstrating, showing people how she worked. Was it that kind of thing?

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Doing all sort of tours?

[Sarah Pascoe]

Yeah, yeah. Touring. Spend a day with her work. Yeah. Find out what I saw and where I found it. That little hole there's where Daddy hit the ground.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

I mean, is she doing tours? Is she doing day trips?

[Greg Jenner]

She's not doing that, but she's set up her own fossil shop. So eventually she's selling enough that she earns enough money to buy a place where she and her mother can live and they live above their fossil depot.

[Sarah Pascoe]

I just love how this woman takes control of her own life, even down to this. Because you say in terms of being, I think, rightly so, she was failed, actually, by the people who should have been her peers. And perhaps we lost out on a brilliant brain that we could have utilized more. But she just. She did very practical things constantly, didn't she?

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Yeah. But her reputation's international. She has one very fancy guest from quite far away. Do you want to guess who?

[Sarah Pascoe]

Michelle Obama. Yeah, he was. He was amazing.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Shakira. He's going to be a great. A great powerful woman. The Joan of Arc.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

I love all these girls. Yes. No, the King of Saxony in 1844. So a king shows up in Mary Anning's fossil depot.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Right.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

That's a proper coup, isn't it?

[Greg Jenner]

It is. So she is internationally renowned. The directors of museums in New York come to buy fossils from Mary Anning. Swiss naturalists pay repeated visits to Lyme Regis to come and see her. And in the 1840s, when he's touring Britain incognito, because he can't be bothered with all the official events, the King of Saxony and his doctor come down to Lyme Regis. They are impressed with what they see in the Anning fossil depot. They buy a perfect ichthyosaur and whenever they ask for her name, she writes it in the doctor's pocketbook and says, I am well known across all of Europe.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Good for her. And what would the Pasco Depot sell? If you were going to run your own shop.

[Sarah Pascoe]

So at the moment, what I've got is loads of Peppa Pig sets that.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

My toddler, Pasco's Peppa Pigs is quite good.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Yeah, Secondhand Peppa pigs, they sort of disprove evolution. One of them does run an ice cream fan, which I guess is advanced for a pig, but pigs can't do that anymore, so we should have. Should have stuck with God's vision.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Nice. So, I mean, Michael, the King of Saxony's shown up and he's bought some lovely. He's bought an ichthyosaurus. So she's got some cash. Does that mean we can say at last, Marianne, comfortable security, you know, retirement plan, pension scheme. She's going to live a life of, you know, not necessarily international glamour, but she's fine.

[Greg Jenner]

I'm afraid not all the way through her life. It remains a struggle because, you know, there are stories which arise from these big finds and these big sales, but they might only happen once every few years or maybe even once a decade. So we have repeatedly people offering their charity to her. So we have, towards the end of her life, some of the London institutions subscribing and giving her a pension. There is never really any stage during her life, even after being able to buy and live in the Anning fossil Depot, that they are completely comfortable and secure.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

And the British association for the Advancement of Science raised some cash as welfare. So this is 1838, so not the end of her life, but sort of in middle age there already there are handouts coming from people with deep pockets going, well, we should probably not let her starve.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah. There is an eventual recognition that Anning has given so much to science, that science really should give something back. But as she reaches her 40s, life doesn't necessarily get any easier. Her mother dies eventually and. And after that, Mary herself then develops cancer. And in the last few years of her life, she's using opium and alcohol to numb the pain.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Yeah, it's a really sad end to her life. She died of breast cancer in 1847, so she was about 47 years old, maybe 48. Joseph, her brother, died two years later. Three years after her death, there is a nice tribute to her.

[Greg Jenner]

So there's this stained glass window commemorating her in a church in Lyme Regis. And Henry de la beach, who's a pioneering geologist who'd come down to Lyme Regis quite a lot, does give a eulogy tour in his presidential address to the Geological Society. So she is remembered, but I think more recognition during and Maybe even more rewards during her lifetime would have been.

[Sarah Pascoe]

More fitting, a comfortable lifetime, as well as knowing you're going to have a legacy. I guess no one really is aware of their own importance during their lifetime, and I don't know what comfort that would be.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

The nuance window. It's time now for the nuance window. This is the part of the show where Sarah and I settle down on the sand with our rock hammers and we allow Dr. Michael to tell us something we need to know about Mary Anning. You have two minutes. So without much further ado. Take it away, Michael.

[Greg Jenner]

So as much as we have discussed how Mary Anning made all of these really extraordinary discoveries but still failed to receive the due reward and recognition because of her sex during her lifetime, it's really important to recognize that she was not alone in this. We've already mentioned very briefly about how the British association for the Advancement of Science decided not to invite women, even eminent physicists like Mary Somerville, to the main events at their meeting at Oxford. But many of the other key men in this period in geology and paleontology relied heavily upon the work of their wives. So William Buckland had met his wife Mary in a stagecoach, and they bonded over the work of Georges Cuvier. But Mary Buckland would go on to write many of William Buckland's treatises. He would dictate it, she would write it down. She also played a key role in many of his experiments. Whenever Buckland was trying to work out which reptile could have created certain footprints, it was Mary Buckland who had the idea to roll a slab of dough and to place their family tortoise on it. And by doing so, she allowed her husband to recognize those footprints as belonging to a tortoise. Gideon Hell was the Sussex surgeon and geologist and palaeontologist who discovered the Iguanodon and later the Hyliosaurus. There has been some debate about whether or not it was actually his wife who first discovered the fossils which gave rise to the discovery of the iguanodon. And Charlotte Murgeson, Mary Anning's friend, who was of a much higher class, was married to Roderick Murgeson, who was a key figure in the early development of geology. And in the late 1820s, whenever Charles Lyell, the famous geologist who would go on to upturn everybody's idea about the age of the earth and geological processes was marked. Marching through the south of France and down into Italy with Roderick Murkerson, it was Charlotte Mergeson who was accompanying them and planning their route. And Making sure that everything went to plan. So in this early period of the 19th century, Mary Anning was not alone.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Thank you, Michael. Sarah.

[Sarah Pascoe]

I think the difficulty with the way that history has historically been told is that there are brilliant men and it's very difficult to be brilliant by yourself. And the thankless or the wife title, taking away from what sounds like they are teams, they are teams of people working together. And because of the way society treated women or women's place, it's much easier for it to go under the man's name. There was absolutely no point saying Andy's wife or also do you know, she was actually there. I mean, who wanted to listen? So at least, hopefully we're getting a little bit better at realizing that people don't do things in a vacuum.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

Well, there we go. That's the life of Mary Anning. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner we had the tremendous Dr. Michael Taylor. Thank you, Michael.

[Greg Jenner]

Thank you, Greg, for having me.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

That's a pleasure. And in Comedy Corner we have the sensational Sarah Pascoe. Thank you, Sarah.

[Sarah Pascoe]

Thank you.

[Dr. Michael Taylor]

And to you, lovely Nisner. Join me next time as we dig up more hidden historical. But for now, I'm off to go and stand in a lightning storm to supercharge my intellect. Bye.

[Randy Feldface]

Hello, I'm Randy Feldface, a purple puppet from Australia, and I have managed to infiltrate BBC Radio 4 to bring you my very own four part series about how to speed up climate change and end the planet as quickly as possible. Dear BBC, when, oh when will you stop providing a platform to puppet? If you've never seen me before, Google satanic spawn of Barney the dinosaur and you'll get the general idea. The point is, the planet is getting hotter, we're on track for mass extinction and I want to see it happen. It's Randy Feldface's destruction manual, available now on BBC Sounds.

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