2026 Senior Global Fellowship: Margaret Gatty’s Seaweed Collections at the University of St Andrews

In this blog, Professor Laurence Talairach, Professor of English at University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and 2026 Senior Global Fellow in the School of English here at St Andrews, shares highlights from their research on Margaret Scott Gatty.

Margaret Scott Gatty (1809–1873) is generally remembered today as a Victorian children’s writer and the founding editor of the mid-Victorian children’s periodical Aunt Judy’s Magazine (1866–1885). She was, however, an important Victorian algologist, who collected both freshwater and marine algae. Gatty also published in 1863 a famous seaside book, British Sea-Weeds. Drawn from Professor Harvey’s “Phycologia Britannica,” with Descriptions, an Amateur’s Synopsis, Rules for Laying out Sea-Weeds, and Order for Arranging Them in the herbarium, and an Appendix of New Species, which evidenced her knowledge of phycology as well as field practice.

The University of St Andrews hosts four albums of mounted marine botanical specimens (ms38224/1–4) compiled in part by Margaret Gatty and kept in University Collections. Her algal herbarium is held by the St Andrews Botanic Gardens (SABG). The seaweed albums were bequeathed to the University of St Andrews in 1990 by Margaret Gatty’s great granddaughter. Her algal collection, by contrast, had been donated to the Gatty Marine Laboratory in 1907 by Gatty’s daughter, Horatia Katherine Frances Gatty (1846–1945), alongside several books which belonged to Gatty’s library.[1]

Kept in the family and passed on from generation to generation, the four seaweed albums in University Collections evoke a typically Victorian domestic practice, mostly associated with women. The making of seaweed albums in the nineteenth century was, indeed, a culturally approved form of recreation and creative expression. My preliminary work both in University Collections and at the Botanic Gardens in November 2024 had revealed to me the significance of these under-researched archives. I was very fortunate to be able to come back in April 2026 as a Senior Global Fellow hosted by the School of English so as to study these collections further. The aim of my stay was to try to assess Margaret Gatty’s expertise in algology better. I therefore spent time examining these albums and their arrangement so as to contrast them with her algal herbarium. Most of the marine botanical specimens displayed in these albums give the species names, the date and place of collection, and sometimes the collector’s name. The earliest dated specimens are from the 1820s and 1830s. Many of them were collected by Catherine Cutler (1784–1866), who often gave hints to Gatty regarding specimen identification, collecting sites and how to preserve seaweed, and donated to her some of her seaweed collections and reference books. Others were collected by Amelia Warren Griffiths (1768–1858), known for collecting nearly 250 different species of seaweed in her lifetime. These may have found their way into Gatty’s collection through Catherine Cutler and William Henry Harvey (1811–1866), curator of the Trinity College Dublin herbarium and later Professor of Botany at Trinity College Dublin, with whom Gatty corresponded and exchanged specimens from 1850 to 1866. The collection data of specimens collected after Margaret Gatty’s death often reveals her daughter’s hand, and it may be assumed that Horatia may have arranged many of the specimens included in the various volumes, as she also helped her mother with her algal herbarium, especially when Gatty was hindered from work by paralysis (probably multiple sclerosis).

Like many other female beachcombers, Margaret Gatty had been introduced to the world of marine botany while convalescing at the seaside in 1848. Advised by her medical practitioner to start collecting seaweed, Gatty read the thirty-eight numbers then out of William Henry Harvey’s Phycologia Britannica, or, A History of British Sea-Weeds: containing coloured figures, generic and specific characters, synonymes, and descriptions of all the species of algae inhabiting the shores of the British Islands (1846–1851) he presented to her, which launched her interest in algology. The passion she developed echoed the many natural history ‘crazes’ of the century, the sea particularly attracting ‘amateur’ naturalists, both men and women. But unlike many of them, Gatty became a more systematic collector, and her insights and discoveries proved useful to several professional male botanists with whom she regularly corresponded. As evidenced by the collections kept at the University of St Andrews, the algae Gatty collected or received from other fellow collectors from around the world were used either to add to her private scientific collection, and arranged according to colour (green, brown or red) and genus on herbarium sheets, or they were laid into seaweed albums, which were generally made for charities, friends and family, or to enjoy them herself. The specimens were displayed ‘aesthetically’ rather than ‘scientifically’ on sheets of cartridge paper of various sizes.[2]

Over my four-week stay at the University of St Andrews, I had time to look closely at the four seaweed albums (Ms 38224/1–4) currently kept in University Collections. Two of them were made on purchased albums, the others were homemade booklets. They comprise a mix of algae and ‘zoophytes’ (plant-like animals). I shared my time between the Reading Room at Martyrs Kirk Library and in the archive stores, as one of the albums was too fragile to be removed and in need of conservation. My aim was to understand how they were arranged, whether Gatty had actually compiled them, especially as many specimens were added after Gatty’s death, and the role her daughter, Horatia, may have played. Ms38224/4, titled ‘A Few Weeds from the Rocks of the Sea with Their Names and a Few Notes’, is a very good illustration of the type of seaweed albums Gatty made for charities. It includes dried specimens (displayed on the right-hand page) and notes on the opposite page, which disclose Gatty’s fieldwork and knowledge about algology. University Collections also keep some of the books which were part of Gatty’s personal library and which I examined to analyse her scientific practice further, especially the places she often visited to collect marine and freshwater algae.

Assessing the woman of science with the few extant records testifying to her knowledge and discoveries will always remain difficult, but my research into the collections has enabled me to know more about what it meant for a Victorian woman to develop a passion for algae and practice science, both at home and in the field. I am extremely grateful to all the Reading Room team for their help throughout my stay, and for the keen interest their showed for Margaret Gatty and her algae collections. Many thanks as well to the colleagues from the School of English and the Global Office for supporting this research on women’s scientific contributions. Much remains to be done to promote further Margaret Gatty’s work as a Victorian phycologist, but the preservation of most of her collection in one place is a unique opportunity for researchers to gain an insight into women’s practice and knowledge of natural history in the long nineteenth century.  

Laurence Talairach
Alexandre-Koyré Center, Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès

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[1] H. Plaisier, J.A. Bryant, L.M. Irvine, A. McLean, M. Jones and M.E. Spencer Jones, ‘The Life and Work of Margaret Gatty (1809–1873), with particular reference to her seaweed collections’, Archives of Natural History, 43.2 (2016): 336–50, p. 343. Sheffield City museums also hold Gatty’s ‘zoophyte’ collection (hydroids and bryozoa).

[2] Letter from Margaret Gatty to Mrs Henry Harvey, 7 April 1862, Sheffield City Archives, HAS 48/241–2.