1904 petition to the Chemical Society

The 1904 petition to the Chemical Society was a petition written by 19 female chemists setting out the reasons why they should be afforded the status of Fellow of the Chemical Society. The petition is of importance as it eventually led to the admission of women as Fellows of the Society (one of the Societies that amalgamated to become the Royal Society of Chemistry), as well as identifying prominent female chemists working in Britain at this time.

The Chemical Society was founded in 1841, but several attempts to allow the admission of women as fellows were unsuccessful. Attempts at change included a legal challenge based on the ambiguous language of the Society’s Charter in 1880, which was defeated because the issue of admitting women as fellows "was not expedient at the present time", followed by an attempt in 1892, defeated by a Council vote of 8 to 7. However, after the election of Marie Curie as a Foreign Fellow of the Society in 1904, 19 women signed a petition for admission of women as Fellows. The petition was organised by three of its signatories: Ida Smedley, Ida Freund, and Martha Whiteley.

The petition was addressed to the President and Council of the Chemical Society. It highlighted that in the previous thirty years that there were "about 150 women" who had appeared as authors on some 300 papers published by the Society. It listed the number of papers in the Journal of the Chemical Society in the periods 1873 - 1882 (20 papers), 1883 - 1892 (33 papers), 1893 - 1902 (142 papers), and 1903 to August 1904 (50 papers). They continue that as the Society deemed it fit to publish the work completed by female chemists, that they should help support this work by enabling "free access to chemical literature and by the right to attend the meetings of the Society".

The signatories to the 1904 Petition are:

The network that allowed these women to co-sponsor the petition has been examined. Smedley, Freund, and Whiteley led the petition. Smedley attended the King Edward VI High School as did Thomas and Hartle. Freund was a demonstrator and a lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge between 1887 and 1912, as were Elizabeth Eleanor Field, Dorothy Marshall, and Mildred Gostling. Thomas, Field, Whiteley, and Gostling spent time at Royal Holloway College, from where there were two additional petitioners: Margaret Seward and Sibyl Widdows. Clare de Brereton Evans and Millicent Taylor attended the Cheltenham Ladies' College, Cheltenham and Taylor had connections with the University of Bristol, where Emily Fortey and Katherine Williams studied. Lucy Boole studied at the London School of Medicine for Women and Katherine Burke studied at University College London under the supervision of William Ramsay - both of these women knew de Brereton Evans. Grace Toynbee studied at the University of Birmingham, and was possibly connected with Hartle. Two petitioners Edith Humphrey and Alice Smith have unknown connections to the remainder, but it is proposed that they were connected by male chemists keen to promote their cause, such William Ramsay.

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