Margaret Bryan was a private schoolmistress and the mother of two daughters (pictured), who in 1797 published a collection of scientific lectures under the title ‘A Compendious System of Astronomy’. One of those impressed by them was Charles Hutton, a former Tyneside miner who was now a lecturer in mathematics at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, a winner of the prestigious Copley Medal, and editor of ‘The Ladies’ Diary’ from 1773 to 1817.
Part 1 of 2
THE Ladies’ Diary, published annually in London from 1704 to 1841, featured a prominent woman of society on the front cover, and offered within an almanack of useful dates, astronomical events, rhyming riddles and readers’ queries, such as
“I should be glad to know, what is the composition of the India rubber; and how and where it is made”,
to which fellow-readers provided an answer in the next issue.
Many submissions were riddling verses variously dubbed an Enigma or a Rebus, artfully contrived to provide a clue to a key word or name. Answers were often in equally ingenious verse; some were in Latin.
Early editions had included recipes, medical advice and fiction, but by 1720 genuinely challenging problems in algebra, geometry and even calculus dominated.* It was these erudite brainteasers that gave the Diary its enviable reputation, and attracted editors and regular contributors from quite ordinary backgrounds, and often with little formal education, but evident expertise.
A sample issue can be found online at The Ladies’ Diary Or Woman's Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord 1787. In 1817, editor Thomas Leybourn published a round-up of mathematical problems (and their solutions) in four volumes: Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4. The last of these includes an index of contributors. Note that Reuben Burrows’s “Ladies’ and Gentleman’s Diary, or Royal Almanack” was a short-lived competitor.
Part Two
Open cluster NGC 2360 (‘Caroline’s Cluster’) in the constellation Canis Major, discovered on 26th February 1783 by Caroline Herschel. Caroline was elected Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society and awarded their Gold Medal, the first woman to receive either accolade; she was also elected Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy. George III awarded her a government salary as her famous brother William’s assistant, making her the first state-funded female scientist in the country. A certain Wm Herschel appears as a prize-winning contributor to the maths section of the Diary in 1779. See our story William Herschel.
THE Diary’s editors were a credit to Georgian England’s social mobility. Surveyor and engineer Henry Beighton grew up on a farm; Thomas Simpson, a weaver, and Charles Hutton, son of a Tyneside miner, both taught mathematics at Woolwich military academy. All three were Fellows of the Royal Society.
Although male contributors were the comfortable majority, women asked and answered these brainteasers as equals; the Diary was specifically marketed ‘for the fair sex’, and founder John Tipper declared that “foreigners would be amaz’d” at his collection of some five hundred letters from women on technical subjects.
In an age when almanacks sprang up and withered almost overnight, the Diary lasted for 137 years, and at its peak reached 30,000 readers, by appealing explicitly to men and women for whom intellectual respect was a required foundation for friendship and love. “Wit join’d to Beauty” the cover for 1738 promised, “lead more Captive than the Conqu’ring Sword”. Or in Anthony Trollope’s words, “love desires an equal”.
