Odd People
Mary Anning
The baby who survived the lightning
At fifteen months she was the only one of four to survive a lightning strike. She spent her life pulling bones out of a cliff — and her name is not on the papers.
In 1800 lightning struck a crowd watching a show at Lyme Regis. Three people died, including the neighbour holding a baby. The baby lived. The town said afterwards that the strike was what had made the child sharp.
Her father was a carpenter who dug fossils out of the sea cliffs and sold them to visitors. When he died early, that trade became an eleven-year-old's living, and her family's.
The cliffs give up most after a winter storm, when the slumping ground exposes fresh layers. For the same reason that is when they are most dangerous. A landslip in 1833 buried her dog Trey; she got clear by moments.
Geologists wrote papers from her specimens. Her name is not on them. As a woman she could not join the Geological Society of London, and non-members could not be authors.
She copied out anatomical papers by hand to read them, and could explain the structure of the bones she had dug to the men who studied them. One wrote that she understood these creatures better than he did. The name still did not follow.
The question that remainsHad the Society admitted her, would the things from that cliff be called by other names?