“Behind folding shutters in Whittingehame House”: Alice Blanche Balfour (1850–1936) and amateur natural history

Abstract

During the rise of professional biology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, individual naturalists continued to develop private collections by modest means and often within their own homes. Despite the increasing opportunities for women to participate in the sciences, the number of women entomologists remained relatively few. The amateur entomological career of Alice Blanche Balfour, the younger sister of Arthur James Balfour, first Earl of Balfour, reveals how a confluence of personal and social factors shaped a gentlewoman's capacity to pursue her interests in natural history. This paper revises earlier images of Alice Balfour by presenting her as an accomplished amateur naturalist who balanced her avocation with the responsibility of managing the daily domestic affairs of estate.

“The ‘Domestication’ of Heredity: The Familial Organization of Geneticists at Cambridge University, 1895–1910”

“…58 In between, many ''amateur'' as well as professional scientists pursued their experimental work in domestic settings, some constructing observatories, laboratories, Bateson, 1928, p. 106. 56 Opitz, 2004a. 57 Secord, 1994.…”

James Cossar Ewart and the Origins of the Animal Breeding Research Department in Edinburgh, 1895–1920

“…31 Alice Blanche Balfour to Ewart, 1 March 1900, Coll-14/9/6/6; 27 December 1902, Coll-14/9/8/123, JCE, EUL. For more on Alice Balfour, see Opitz (2004 For the study of Heredity and variation…the facilities are quite as inadequate as for the study of the relationships between microorganisms and disease. To provide facilities for these and other lines of research it is necessary that the University should have at its disposal some open space in the country on which buildings suitable for keeping animals in a state of health might be erected… [W]ithout the facilities of the kind indicated, most important fields of research will remain closed to the University of Edinburgh.…”

“…39 By 1912, Balfour and his friend Lord Esher had persuaded a wealthy donor, William George Watson, to endow (also anonymously) a permanent Chair in Genetics at Cambridge. Balfour and Esher themselves donated two acres of land on the outskirts of Cambridge which allowed for the construction of a house, Whittingehame Lodge, and laboratory for the newly appointed Professor of Genetics, Reginald Punnett (Olby, 1989;Opitz, 2004). Bateson had left Cambridge two years previously to take up the directorship of the John Innes Horticultural Institution, itself established by the bequest of the businessman John Innes.…”

Historical geography: natures, landscapes, environments

“…Anker (2004) examines the natural philosophy of Nehemiah Grew, the first Curator of Plants at the Royal Society of London, and focuses on the way in which Grew combined new ideas about mathematics and mechanical reasoning with his religious beliefs. Opitz (2004) takes the late Victorian and early twentieth-century period and investigates the role of women in amateur natural history, at a time when professional biology was in the ascendancy. Kohlstedt (2005) in turn focuses on the introduction of nature study into North American public schools in the late nineteenth century.…”