Ladies' Alpine Club
| Merged into | Alpine Club (1975) |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1907 |
| Type | Mountaineers |
The Ladies' Alpine Club was founded in London in 1907 and was the first mountaineering club for women. It merged with the Alpine Club of Great Britain in 1975.
In December 1907 a group of ladies who were climbers in the Alps met in London and agreed to form a new club, similar to the long-established Alpine Club, which at the time did not accept women members on account of their supposed physical and moral deficiencies in the matter of mountain climbing. The club's first president was Elizabeth Le Blond, who had been praised by T. G. Bonney when he became president of the Alpine Club as one of those "whom our stern Salic law prevents us from numbering among our members", and it was the first club specifically for women mountaineers. Initially, it was the Alpine Section of the Lyceum Club, an intellectual women's club, to which Elizabeth Le Blond belonged, but in 1908 it established an independent existence. The club had its base at the Great Central Hotel, Marylebone, but was seen as affiliated to the Alpine Club and junior to it.
As well as arranging climbing expeditions, the Ladies' Alpine Club organized a monthly lecture and provided rooms where members could meet for tea. For the duration of the First World War, the club's rooms were taken over by the War Department, but they were restored in 1919. The Alpine Club itself was at first sceptical about the Ladies' Club, but it soon began to take it seriously and to co-operate with it, especially after Queen Margherita of Italy accepted the position of Honorary President. According to Ann Bridge, a friend and climbing partner of George Mallory, the Ladies' Club held an annual dinner at the Great Central Hotel:
This was a large affair, 250 people at least; the Alpine Club came to it en masse, and the speech of the evening was always the one proposing the toast of "The Alpine Club", which one of the ladies had to make.
At the first such annual dinner, on 7 December 1908, the President of the Alpine Club, Herman Woolley, spoke supportively of the new organization and noted that ladies could make "ascents of the very first order". A former president of the Alpine Club then added that in his time he had wanted to admit women to membership, and indeed had found that a majority of other members supported this, but he had decided not to force the issue on an "unwilling minority".
...
Wikipedia