I'm doing some research around caving. I'd like to hear about women who caved with their families and friends, or clubs from the late nineteenth century up to 1939. There must be so many small stories that won't make it to books, but are still part of caving history.

I'd like to know how they got involved in caving and when,  what their background was, who they caved with and how much they did. Anything about what they wore, where they stayed, how they travelled would be helpful. Even odd bits of info will be welcome.

If you can help please contact me. Nothing will go public unless you are happy with that. If there is enough information for a booklet to go in the BCA library as a record of women caving in the early days I'll put one together.

Thanks.

There must be hundreds.  You need to through old journals of caving clubs such as Yorkshire Rambles MNRC etc.  The only woman I can think of, off hand is cave diver Mossy Powell 1935 in Wookey Hole.

Three others well worth searching on, coming immediately to mind, are

* Nellie Kirkham (in relation to the Peak District; try contacting P.D.M.H.S.)

* Mabel Binks (who was, I think,  sadly the first caving fatality, at Alum Pot; this is probably documented in the CRO book "Race Against Time).

* Barbara Binns, later Barbara Butterfield (in connection with pre and post war caving in the Dales; she's listed as one of the explorers in at least one of the chapter headings in Gemmell & Myers' Underground Adventure book, e.g. page 18: "Damming and Diving at Hull Pot". Her name changed because she married Frank Butterfield ("Buzzer") - who went on to become one of the NPC's great presidents. Note that the main Hull Pot extension was in 1940 but I'm pretty sure she was caving before then, so probably within your time frame.).

Something else to be aware of; the suggestion above of going to the journals is an excellent one. But in that period many caving clubs were male only (in the case of the Ramblers this only changed relatively recently I think). This male ethos in caving at the time was a considerable obstacle to potential female cavers. It may even have been that any female involvement with caving was subdued or even removed by editors of caving journals at the time. I mention this just so you don't place too much store on the frequency of references to women cavers in contemporary journals necessarily being a reliable reflection of their degree of involvement.

The only names I can immediately recall are:

Nellie Kirkham (she was actually involved in the original Mossdale explorations)
Miss B.D. Binns, who was involved in the Hull Pot exploration with Leakey et alia in 1940, but presumably was caving in 1939.
Mabel Binks, who got clobbered on the head in Alum Pot in 1936.
Miss Hall, who was involved in the UBSS explorations of GB in 1939.
Lyle Martin, who was the first woman to reach Groundsheet Junction in Lost Johns' cave.

I'm not convinced that there will be hundreds. There weren't that many  people caving before the war, and a lot of clubs didn't allow women members.

P.S. My post crossed with those of Pitlamp...

Thanks to everyone who has made suggestions so far. Everything helps.

The comments about issues around clubs being all male, and journal or book references for the time being brief are what prompted me to post. I'm hoping that somewhere out there are family stories or personal memories, maybe photos, of women cavers - grandmother, great- aunt etc.

Here's hoping!

Hello Langcliffe - haven't seen you for a while! (Not that long till the skylarks are in the air now; remember that little project?)

Yes, I agree with you, I doubt there were that many female cavers, pre-war. In many ways the obstacles were just too great. But some of those who were caving then were outstanding. As a sump flopper myself, Mossy Powell's achievements, in those very early days of the Cave Diving Group, seem pretty amazing. I'm far too young to have met Mossy but I did know (the late) Graham Balcombe who was diving with her - and who spoke highly of her abilities.

Speaking of which, the O.P. might like to refer to Martyn Farr's book: "The Darkness Beckons". This has images and text about her.

Two French ladies - Annette Bouchacourt and ?lizabeth Casteret.

Didn't Hans and Lotte Hass dabble a bit in cave diving? Or was that post war?

Pitlamp said:

Didn't Hans and Lotte Hass dabble a bit in cave diving? Or was that post war?

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If they did, it would have been post-war. Lotte was only 11 years old in 1939, and Hans 20.

There were a number of ladies doing some pretty serious caving with Leeds Cave Club in the 1930's, judging from Harold Haywood's photograph collection. Two of them in 1937 were Mrs C Speight and Mrs S Waller.

langcliffe said:

Two French ladies - Annette Bouchacourt and ?lizabeth Casteret.

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N. Casteret's mother too

I found some information in Trevor Shaw's book "Slovene Karst and Caves in the Past".  In particular, Poldi Fuhrich explored Eisriesenwelt and Skocjanske Jama besides contributing to the survey of Poulnagollum (mentioned in Mike Boon's books); Lily Johnson descended Eldon Hole, Gaping Gill and Alum Pot in the 1900's; and Dina Dobson descended the Swildons 40 in 1921.

andybrooks said:

I found some information in Trevor Shaw's book "Slovene Karst and Caves in the Past".  In particular, Poldi Fuhrich explored Eisriesenwelt and Skocjanske Jama besides contributing to the survey of Poulnagollum (mentioned in Mike Boon's books); Lily Johnson descended Eldon Hole, Gaping Gill and Alum Pot in the 1900's; and Dina Dobson descended the Swildons 40 in 1921.

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Here's a link.

UBSS logbooks may be worth a look, although often lacking in names:

1919 - As only one member of the B.S.R.S. was at the University at the time, the rules for membership of the society allowed for the election of outside members, and uniquely among caving clubs at that time, women were allowed to join on an equal footing with men.

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http://www.ubss.org.uk/history_of_the_ubss.php

Mike

I suppose it depends what you mean by caving. I recently chatted to my cousins mother in law who was caving after the WW2 on the Mendips but I don't know when she started. My aunt was adventurous enough to be taken well before the war across the lakes to Big Bertha in White Scar on some kind of a raft. Sadly she passed away in her early 90's a few years back.

Miss M. M. Hardy, Leeds Pennine Club (1937) Caves and Caving No 3 1938
Mrs M. H. Chantry, Derbyshire Pennine Club, Caves and Caving Vol 1 No 1 1937

Dr Gwendolen Cootes was a regular visitor to Dan Yr Ogof in the 1937-1939 period.

Here on a ladder in Cauldron Chamber heading up to Red Chamber.

Fantastic Caverns, a show cave in Missouri which at one time was owned by the Ku Klux Klan, was first explored in 1867 by a group of twelve women.

Passing quickly over the many prehistoric women who visited caves all over the world, sometimes leaving the evidence of their handprints outlined in ochre on the walls...and, I seem to remember reading somewhere, a guide to early nineteenth century visitors to Porth-yr-Ogof...

The USA can boast one of the few female authors of books about caves - Luella Agnes Owen, who only started caving aged 40 and wryly noted in her 1898 book, Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills:

After some uneasy discussion about the means of entering the new cave, it was finally decided that the available rope was too short and not of sufficient strength. This was, of course, a disappointment but not a surprise, as a very peculiar quality in the rope used to enter caves of this kind had come to notice before. The peculiarity is, that a rope entirely above suspicion for the safety of a two hundred pound man, at once weakens and must be condemned when threatened with one hundred pounds of woman's weight, yet there is an implied compliment hidden somewhere about this protective system that tends to reduce the sting of disappointment.

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. She seems also to have been the first female member of the French Societ? de Spelelogie...

Back in England, Wessex Cave Club journal 124 (Aug 1969) has Ruth Baker's  'Recollections of the first woman to cave in Swildon's Hole' - she and her sister-in-law went with her father (caver, librarian, and author, E.A.Baker) in 1922; however, she never went caving again... WCC Jnl 55 (1956) has O.C.Lloyd noting from the MNRC's records that "Mrs Dobson was the first lady to make the descent" to  the sump in Swildons, again in 1922. Further to this, June 1968 CRG Newsletter has E.K.Tratman recording that Dina Portway Dobson-Hinton (her name after two marriages), of UBSS, was the first woman to descend Swildon's 40 and Eastwater '2nd pitch'...the latter achievement in 1920 according to O.C.Lloyd in UBSS Proc.11(3) (1968).

E.A.Baker was also a friend of Dr Cotes/Coote (not sure where dudley bug got the name Gwendolen from), who took photographs in Dan-yr-Ogof in August 1937 and was then invited to accompany him the following month

Mary Hazelton, pioneer of biospeleology in Britain, was also caving before 1939...