March’s blog tells the story of Victorian entomologist Eleanor Ormerod. A pioneer in her field, she helped to define agricultural entomology as an academic discipline in Britain, and acted as de facto government entomologist long before the role was officially created. 

Ormerod was born in 1828, the youngest child of George and Sarah Ormerod of Sedbury Park, Gloucestershire. Her father, a historian and antiquary, was not fond of society, and the family largely lived in seclusion. Her mother oversaw the children’s education. For Ormerod and her two sisters, this comprised lessons in biblical knowledge, moral precepts, French, music and painting. Outside of these, they were encouraged to find their own intellectual pursuits: they made collections, carried out experiments, and entertained themselves in rearranging their small personal libraries. By her own account, Ormerod developed a “fondness for insect investigation” at an early age. In her autobiography, she recalls making her first observation:

“One day while the family were engaged watching the letting out of a pond, … I was perched оn a chair, and given to watch, to keep me quiet at home, a tumbler of water with about half-a-dozen great water grubs in it. One of them had been much injured and his companions proceeded quite to demolish him. I was exceedingly interested, and when the family came home gave them the results of my observations, which were entirely disbelieved.”

At 23 years old, with the help of James Francis Stephens’s A manual of British coleoptera, or beetles (1839), Ormerod began to study entomology in earnest. However, she didn’t become active in the scientific community until after the death of her parents. In 1868, she started contributing to the Royal Horticultural Society’s collection of agricultural insect pests, many of her specimens being procured with the help of local agricultural labourers. In 1870, the RHS awarded her a silver medal to acknowledge her contributions. In 1873, the year her father died, Ormerod published her first scientific papers. Her “Observations on the Cutaneous Exudation of the Triton erktatus, or Great Water-Newt” in the Linnean Society Journal make for fascinating reading: having demonstrated the toxicity of the newts through various experiments, she then bit one to determine the exact effects of its poison. These included foaming at the mouth, spasms, and a headache!

Ormerod and her two sisters lived at Sedbury Park until their father’s death. When they came into their inheritance the eldest, Susan Mary, moved to Exeter. She later donated four of Ormerod’s published works to the DEI. Ormerod herself relocated to Torquay with her sister Georgiana, and then to Isleworth. Here, she continued her entomological research at Kew Gardens, and in 1878 she became a fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. During this period Ormerod also made daily observations for the Meteorological Society, of which she became the first woman fellow in 1878. In 1880, she edited and published the meteorological journals of Caroline Molesworth. 

Around this time the need for an appointed government entomologist began to be felt in Britain, and prominent agriculturalists Maxwell Marsters and John Chalmers Morton asked Ormerod to step in. She sent questionnaires to farmers, asking about the pests they had observed, and the pest control remedies they had tried – an early instance of crowdsourcing data. Where possible, she carried out her own experiments to confirm the information she received. In 1877 she published her first annual report, and continued to do so until her death. She was not paid for this, or for any of her other entomological work.

Ormerod’s first book, the Manual of injurious insects (1881), was designed to be of practical use to farmers. Insect pests are arranged by crop, with a detailed description of appearance and behaviour followed by suggestions for prevention. The book is written in plain language, made even more accessible by the many woodcuts which illustrate the text. At the outset of her studies, Ormerod had found the lack of pictures in Stephens’s British coleoptera particularly challenging, and she made sure to include numerous diagrams in all of her works. Georgiana, her lifelong companion and collaborator, was an accomplished scientific illustrator and fellow member of the Royal Entomological Society. It is known that she provided illustrations for many of Ormerod’s books. However, the images in this first book are largely reproduced from John Curtis’s Farm Insects (1860), or based on Ormerod’s own drawings.

Ormerod went on to publish two further books: Guide to methods of insect life (1884) and A Text-book of agricultural entomology (1892). From 1882, she acted as honorary consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England, in which capacity she held face-to-face consultations with farmers. In these interviews she would often draw jars with live insects from her pockets, to aid the discussion. Ormerod was also instrumental in establishing agricultural entomology as an academic discipline in Britain. She delivered lectures at the Royal Agricultural College, and in 1889 successfully lobbied for agricultural entomology to become a voluntary subject for the senior exam of the RASE, and a compulsory exam subject for the Royal Agricultural College. From 1896-1899 she acted as examiner in agricultural entomology for the University of Edinburgh. Ormerod’s financial independence and social position meant she could afford to do all this work voluntarily. In 1900 she became the first woman to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Edinburgh, in recognition of her work.

Some of Ormerod’s ideas were controversial. Her pamphlet calling for the eradication of the house sparrow, for instance, was met with vocal opposition from animal welfare activists. To a modern reader, her enthusiasm for Paris Green is particularly jarring. In the first edition of Manual of injurious insects, Ormerod recommends this arsenic-based insecticide for use against Colorado potato beetles, larch aphids, and pine weevils. However, she is careful to stress that it should only be entrusted to “thoroughly careful hands, being a deadly poison”. In this later edition from 1890, Ormerod recommends the poison freely for use on food plants like apples and plums, and includes testimonies to its efficacy and safety. Her approach reflects the “pesticide optimism” of the time, and wider hopes that chemistry would provide silver bullets for the various challenges arising from industrialised agriculture. Ormerod was so convinced of its benefits that she joked about having “She brought Paris Green to Britain” written on her gravestone. However, she also considered the role played by beneficial insects and other wildlife in checking the spread of agricultural pests. Writing on the hop aphis, she remarks: “amongst natural means of protection we have some help from the Aphis-eating birds, but the chief assistance is from the Coccinellidae, the beetles well-known as “Ladybirds””. Unfortunately these beneficial insects were equally impacted by the broad spectrum insecticides which Ormerod endorsed. 

Indeed, Ormerod’s insect studies attest to the dramatic decline in the UK’s insect populations over the last century. Some of the species she describes as an overwhelming scourge have now almost disappeared. For instance, she writes that “the caterpillars of the Goat Moth are often seriously injurious, sometimes totally destructive, to various kinds of timber and fruit-trees, … and the infestation is to be found from the south of England to the north of Scotland.” This moth has since become nationally scarce, and is listed as a priority species on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan.

Twenty years after her death, Virginia Woolf fictionalized Ormerod as a “pioneer of purity even more than of Paris Green”. Woolf satirizes her conservative outlook, which jarred with the ideals of twentieth-century feminism: Ormerod downplayed the disadvantages she faced as a woman in science, was always careful to acknowledge help received from male colleagues, and resisted any attempts to make her an idol for the women’s rights movement. Yet on the whole, Woolf’s short story celebrates her as a driven, brilliant woman, who made a name for herself in a field dominated by men.

This blog was written by Fiona Schroeder, Library Assistant

 

In the library: 

Caroline Molesworth, The Cobham journals : abstracts and summaries of meteorological and phenological observations made by Miss Caroline Molesworth, at Cobham, Surrey, in the years 1825 to 1850 (1880), edited by Eleanor Ormerod. Classmark: J.13.1. 

Eleanor Ormerod, “A lecture on injurious insects : delivered at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester on … October 20th 1881” (1881). Classmark: Tracts 156/3. 

Eleanor Ormerod, Guide to methods of insect life and prevention and remedy of insect ravage : being ten lectures (1884). Classmark: N 2.37. 

Eleanor Ormerod, A manual of injurious insects : with methods of prevention and remedy for their attacks to food crops, forest trees, and fruit, to which is appended a short introduction to entomology (1890). Classmark: N 3.31.

Eleanor Ormerod, A text-book of agricultural entomology : being a guide to methods of insect life and means of prevention of insect ravage, for the use of agriculturists and agricultural students (1892). Classmark: 

 

Works consulted:

J. F. McDiarmid Clark, “Eleanor Ormerod (1828-1901) as an economic entomologist: ‘pioneer of purity even more than of Paris Green’”, British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 25, no. 4, 1992, pp. 431-52.

Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Revealing New Worlds: Three Victorian Women Naturalists, Routledge, 2001. 

Virginia Woolf, “Miss Ormerod” (1924), The Dial, volume 77, pp. 466-474. 

“19th Century Women of the Royal Entomological Society”, https://www.royensoc.co.uk/19-century-women-of-res/