Amelia Griffiths: 19th-Century Seaweed Queen

Though she is obviously not in the above 1916 photo of women collecting seaweed in Wales because dates are all wrong, Amelia Griffiths (1768-1858) a.k.a. Mrs. Griffiths of Torquay, how fun is that to say? was an amateur professional woman of science in the 19th-century and would totally have gotten into the seaside waves in a bathing costume with her sisters in seaweed.  

Her speciality was collecting seaweeds from the coast of Devon, England. 

Pressed red seaweed collected by Mrs. Griffiths of Torquay.

Griffiths' enthusiasm for phycology -- the study of algae -- probably lit the Victorian craze for the hobby called the rapacious collecting of seaweed.  Griffiths was part of a "seaweed sorority" of Victorian women, algal appreciators, early women in science who mostly collected for more famous men.

Do leave off whatever you're reading Eugenia, and let's us go collecting; I have my parasol.

The much more famous phycologist in Griffith's time was, you guessed it, a man, William Henry Harvey. 

Harvey chivalrously dedicated his 1849 Manual of British Algae to Griffiths, and once wrote, "If I lean to glorify any one, it is Mrs Griffiths, to whom I owe much of the little acquaintance I have with the variations to which these plants are subject, and who is always ready to supply me with fruits of plants which every one else finds barren. She is worth ten thousand other collectors."