A Questionable Project: Herbert McLeod and the Making of the Fourth series of the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 1901–25

Summary

Many people were involved in producing the seven volumes that make up the fourth series of the Royal Society catalogue of scientific papers. Included were about two hundred volunteers and about one hundred people working either on short-term contracts or carrying out piece work. At the Royal Society there was a small, largely female, secretariat working full-time. It included both clerical and bibliographic staff. Coordinating all the work was the chemist Herbert McLeod, appointed director of the catalogue in 1901. As is discussed, the position of director was created especially for him after his forced retirement from the Royal Indian Engineering College. The paper shows the complexity of the work involved in producing the catalogue, as well as something of the office culture at the Royal Society in the early twentieth century. The working conditions of the women employees, and prevailing attitudes toward the largely female clerical and bibliographic staff, are briefly discussed.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Geoffrey Cantor for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Thanks also to the library staff at the Royal Society, especially archivist Joanna Corden, and to Anne Barrett, archivist at Imperial College London.

Notes

¹Quotation from Boswell's Life of Johnson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), 4, 308.

² Royal Society catalogue of scientific papers, 1800–63, I (1867), preface. Strictly medical and surgical papers were not included, but papers on human physiology, and on human cell and tissue biology, were.

³Members of the original committee were Arthur Cayley, Augustus de Morgan, Thomas Graham, Robert Grant, William H. Miller and George Stokes.

⁴For example, W. Ritter von Hardinger sent about 2000 geological titles from the Imperial and Royal Geological Society of Vienna.

⁵Quotation from vol. XII (1902), preface. George Griffith was a retired science master from Harrow School who had worked on the catalogue for some years. He was also Assistant General Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Griffith continued to work on the catalogue after McLeod's appointment but, in May 1902, he collapsed and died on his way home from the Royal Society.

⁶The range of journals examined was extensive and, for those published in English, included not only those of the major learned societies and academies. Journals of many scientific trades, field clubs and naturalist societies were searched; for example, the Electrician, the Essex Field Club Journal, and the Journal of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists Society.

⁷Minutes of the Committee for the Royal Society catalogue of scientific papers, January 1890–November 1920: 14 May 1891, discussion of work involved in producing the supplementary volume to the third series; 1 June 1891, discussion on foreign language journals; 26 January 1893, discussion on subject indexes.

⁸Cambridge University Press sent a letter to the Physical Secretary, Joseph Larmor, expressing a willingness to undertake publication at its own risk. Royal Society, minutes of council, 15 March 1906.

⁹Ann M. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing scholarly information before the modern age (Yale University Press, 2010).

¹⁰On this topic see Richard Yeo, Encyclopaedic visions: Scientific dictionaries and Enlightenment culture, (Cambridge University Press, 2001). In the introduction to his book, Yeo outlines the Western tradition that gave rise to 18th century encyclopedias and dictionaries. In a brief discussion of bibliographies, he leans on Roger Chartier's The order of books: Readers, authors and libraries in Europe between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries; transl. L. G. Cochrane (Princeton University Press, 1987) and notes that the purpose of 18th century bibliothèques was to list and catalogue book titles so as to gather all sources of relevant textual knowledge in one place for the use of the reader (p. 91). Yeo also discusses Ephraim Chambers Cyclopaedia: Or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences 2 vols. (1728) and its influence on the makers of the Encyclopèdie. For the Encyclopaedia Britannica, first published in Edinburgh in 3 vols. (1768–71), see Frank A. Kafker and Jeff Loveland (eds.), The early Britannica (1768–1803): The growth of an outstanding encyclopaedia (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2009) and James M. Wells, The circle of knowledge: Encyclopaedias past and present (Chicago: Newberry Library, 1968). The first edition of the Britannica had much science content. Some early scientific reference works such as J. T. Jablonski's Allgemeines lexicon der künste und wissenschaften (Leipzig, 1721) are discussed in Daniel Headrick, When information came of age: Technologies of knowledge in the age of reason and revolution, 1700–1850 (Oxford University Press, 2009).

¹¹For the Encyclopédie see Robert Darnton, The business of Enlightenment: A publishing history of the Encyclopédie (Harvard University Press, 1986).

¹²Simon Winchester, The meaning of everything: The story of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2003). Jonathon Green, Chasing the sun: Dictionary makers and the dictionaries they made (London: Pimlico, 1997). Green's book looks at dictionary makers up to the time of James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary.

¹³Royal Society, council minutes, 12 March 1901.

¹⁴Jane E. Lewis, ‘Women clerical workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’, in Gregory Anderson (ed.), The white blouse revolution: Female office workers since 1870 (Manchester University Press, 1989), chapter 2. See also Samuel Cohn, The process of occupational sex-typing: The feminization of clerical labour in Great Britain (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985).

¹⁵This is inferred from looking at a range of minutes and seeing the first appearance of typed ones in 1896.

¹⁶According to Lewis, op. cit. (14), a well educated typist could earn between £2 and £4 per week in the early twentieth century. Those at the higher end of the scale would likely know a foreign language, or have much experience. Filing clerks could earn between 15–30 shillings per week.

¹⁷In 1914, £1 per week was considered the subsistence wage for a single person. See Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, The human needs of labour (London: Thomas and Nelson, 1918), 117.

¹⁸Imperial College London, Archives; Diary of Herbert McLeod, 1860–1923 (referred to below as ‘diary’). The first eleven years of the diary have been transcribed and published: see, Frank A. J. L. James (ed.), Chemistry and theology in mid-Victorian London: The diary of Herbert McLeod, 1860–70, (London and New York: Mansell, microfiche, 1987). For McLeod's early career see Hannah Gay, ‘Science and opportunity in London, 1871–85: the diary of Herbert McLeod’, History of science, 41 (2003), 427–58. For his mid to late career, ‘Science, scientific careers and social exchange in London: The diary of Herbert McLeod, 1885–1900’, ibid, 46 (2008), 457–96. Other papers dependent on the diary, but less so, include Hannah Gay, ‘“Pillars of the College”: Assistants at the Royal College of Chemistry 1846–71, Ambix, 47 (2000),135–169. “‘The Declaration of Students of the Natural and Physical Sciences” revisited: Youth, science and religion in mid-Victorian Britain’ in William Sweet and Richard Feist (eds.) Religion and the challenges of science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) and ‘Technical assistance in the world of London science, 1850–1900’, Notes and records of the Royal Society, 62 (2008), 51–75.

¹⁹ The Times, 3 January 1901, 6.

²⁰ The Times, 7 January 1901, 9 (FRS) and 12 January 1901, 10 (Kelvin). Kelvin sent a copy of his letter to Nature and then followed it up with another (Nature, 10 January 1901, 256 and 17 January 1901, 280). ‘FRS’ was Wyndham R. Dunstan, former professor of chemistry at St. Thomas's Hospital, and director of the Imperial Institute in South Kensington. Two letters signed ‘JP’ were from John Pennycuick, the former principal of the Royal Indian Engineering College. He had been asked to resign to make way for Ottley and was bitter about the changes and the dismissals. It would appear that Ottley had decided on a new curriculum and had it approved by the Board of Visitors. It downplayed the need for physics and chemistry in the teaching of engineers. William Preece, chief engineer at the Post Office, sat on the Board of Visitors and wrote to McLeod (diary, 27 December 1900) stating that while approving the new curriculum he had not anticipated the dismissal of staff. However, Preece later sat on a review committee (a sub-committee of the Board of Visitors) which upheld the dismissal decision. According to McLeod (a claim supported by further commentary in Nature) Preece made himself unpopular with many people for his stance. See, for example, Nature, 11 April 1901, 568–70.

²¹ The Times, 17 January 1901, 7; Nature, 14 February 2001, 378–80 and 21 February 1901, 399–401. The ‘official pedant’ that most people had in mind was Colonel Ottley.

²²In addition to The Times, there was much support for McLeod and his colleagues in The Morning Post, The Manchester Guardian and The Daily News. Two other newspapers appear to have supported the India Office decision, namely The Standard and The Daily Chronicle.

²³Very active on McLeod's behalf were the scientists Henry Armstrong, Arthur Church, William Crookes, Richard Glazebrook, Norman Lockyer, Oliver Lodge (whose brother Alfred Lodge was later also dismissed from the college), Raphael Meldola, Lord Rayleigh, Arthur Rücker, Harry Seeley and William Unwin. Non-scientists, too, were active in supporting the continuation of the college.

²⁴Lord Salisbury and McLeod had a friendship that began in the late 1860s. McLeod also helped Salisbury with a number of scientific projects; see Gay (2003), op. cit (18). Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister when McLeod was dismissed and sent letters to the India Office on McLeod's behalf; but clearly he was unwilling to press the issue (diary, 21 December, 1900 and 3 January 1901). This could well be because the college was indeed losing money, contrary to the statements of those who were dismissed. Lord George Hamilton claimed that the debt incurred over the period 1896–1901 was £7719 (diary, 27 February 1901). McLeod was given an annual pension of £466. 3s. 7d. together with a one-time gratuity of £620. He had worked at the college for thirty years and this was widely seen as inadequate compensation. Those dismissed later had slightly better settlements but McLeod was unable to reopen his case despite repeated attempts to do so. For more on the Royal Indian Engineering College, including its closure, see Brendan P. Cuddy, ‘The Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper's Hill (1871–1906): A case study of state involvement in professional engineering education’; PhD dissertation, University of London (Chelsea College, Centre for Science Education) 1980. Copy held at the University of London Library, Senate House.

²⁵See The Times, 13 February 1901, 11. The other delegates were the President of the Royal Society, Lord Lister, Sir Frederick Bramwell, Lord Rayleigh, Sir Henry Roscoe, Sir William Crookes, Sir Norman Lockyer, Sir Frederick Abel, Sir Clement Le Neve Foster, George Carey Foster, George Johnstone Stoney, Raphael Meldola, and John Perry. The newspaper article gives a good summary of the government position but supports the petitioners.

²⁶One theme running through McLeod's diary in this period is a concern for helping his former colleagues find work. He wrote letters and spoke to people he thought could help. For example he wrote several letters on behalf of Alfred Lodge who was dismissed from Cooper's Hill two years after his own dismissal. Lodge later found work as a mathematics teacher at Charterhouse School. See, for example, diary entry for 6 July 1903.

²⁷McLeod had earlier been a chemistry examiner at the University of Oxford and at the University of London. More work came in at this time from Percy Frankland at the University of Birmingham, and from the University of Cambridge. For several years, beginning in 1902, McLeod earned about £40 per year at each of these two institutions. He applied also for further work at the Pharmaceutical Society where he had earlier been examiner, but was not rehired (diary, 14 April 1902). McLeod sent a monthly report on Royal Society meetings to Chemiker zeitung for which he earned about eight shillings per report. He received small sums for review work for Nature. He also sold off a part of his collection of serials; for example, a long run of Liebig's Annalen for £5 (diary, 3 May 1902). Together, his salary, pension, interest from savings, and fees from his work as an external examiner, gave him an annual income of about £1150 per year. Heavy school fees meant that his bank account was often overdrawn.

²⁸Diary, 16 February, 15 March 1901. Sir Thomas Edward Thorpe (1845–1925), was professor of chemistry at the Royal College of Science until leaving in 1894 to become Government Chemist. He returned to academic life as professor of chemistry at Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1909. Thorpe, too, had long volunteered on the catalogue.

²⁹McLeod did much proof reading for the third series of the catalogue. He also contributed many titles.

³⁰The Central Bureau of the International Catalogue was situated at 34 Southampton St., just off the Strand. It was supported by the scientific academies of fourteen different countries but work on the project did not survive WW1 – though the titles collected were handed over to some learned societies for their own bibliographic listings. There was a British executive committee on which McLeod served for many years, and an international executive committee. Joseph Larmor was Britain's representative on the international committee until 1905 when replaced by McLeod. For more on the International Catalogue see Henry Lyons, The Royal Society 1660–1940: A history of its administration under its charters (London, 1968), 309–10; also Cyrus Adler, ‘The International Catalogue of Scientific Literature’, Science, 6 (1897), 184–201. Adler's paper has some interesting detail on an international conference held to discuss the making of the catalogue.

³¹Several libraries sent in lists of their serials. McLeod could then see where serials not available in London were held and decide whether to send people to list titles, or to ask for more local help (see note 44 below). Some libraries sent bound serials on loan for title copying at the Royal Society. For example, the Cambridge University Library sent seven volumes of Annals of mathematics. See diary, 6 November 1905.

³²For an estimate of the number of volumes needed see Minutes of the Committee for the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 12 March 1901. There were several revised estimates. For example, 10–12 quarto size volumes of 800 pp was the estimate in 1906. Royal Society, minutes of council, 9 (1903–08) 15 March 1906. For the final estimate, see catalogue committee minutes, 13 September 1912.

³³For example, earlier volumes of the catalogue had included lists of species published by biologists. It was decided that this would not continue since such lists could be obtained from other sources. Royal Society, minutes of council, 9 (1903–08), 5 April 1906.

³⁴Sir John Evans (1828–1908) was a paper manufacturer with interests in archaeology and numismatics. He was the father of the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. Entries in McLeod's diary give the impression that while Evans was helpful he was also a little too interfering. In 1903 a new catalogue committee was appointed with eighteen members. Aside from Evans, the chairman, those on the committee who actively helped McLeod with the catalogue were H. E. Armstrong, W. T. Blanford, J. W. Judd, E. E. Klein, D. H. Scott, E. Saunders and T. E. Thorpe. Armstrong's son, E. F. Armstrong, did much proof reading for the catalogue. He also listed titles in some German chemical journals and those in the American chemical journal. Archibald Geikie was chairman of the committee from 1908–1912. The 1912 committee still included Thorpe. Other chemists on the 1912 committee were H. T. Brown, A. C. Seward, and W. A. Tilden; also serving were the astronomer F. W. Dyson, the botanist J. B. Farmer, the geologist A. Strahan, and the physiologist, C. J. Martin. The new chairman was the physicist, S. P. Thompson.

³⁵Ludwig Mond (1839–1909), chemical industrialist. See Frank Greenaway, ‘Mond Family (per. 1867–1973), chemical manufacturers and industrialists’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

³⁶See various entries in Royal Society, minutes of council, 9 (1903–8). The first twelve volumes of the catalogue cost a total of £3100. The situation was much changed in the early twentieth century. By 1915, the costs of the fourth series alone had totalled approximately £36 500 of which about £20 000 came from outside contributions. See minutes of council, 15 December 1914 and ‘Report to the Catalogue Committee’ in the minutes of the catalogue committee, 29 September 1915. I do not have the total figure for 1925 when the catalogue was completed. In 1903 the salary bill for the permanent secretariat came to £1085. 8s. 8d. (Year book of the Royal Society (1903) 206–7.) Much more was spent on short term contracts and on piece work given to the various specialists.

³⁷Diary, 11 September 1902.

³⁸When the third series was being planned seventeen subject indexes were envisaged. By 1901, and the fourth series, this had come down to ten. The statistical and anthropometrical papers of Karl Pearson, for example, appear to have been problematic with respect to classification, as were papers on the ether and gravitation. For the latter Larmor made the final decisions, (diary, 22–29 June 1909).

³⁹The Press losses by 1919 were about £550 per volume. The Royal Society gave the Press a grant of £250 per volume. Royal Society, council minutes, 11 (1914–20), 27 February 1919.

⁴⁰See, for example, Report of the Catalogue Committee, January 1908.

⁴¹Diary, 28 April 1908. Larmor was Physical Secretary at the Royal Society 1901–12. Isobel Falconer, ‘Joseph Larmor, 1857–1942’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 2004).

⁴²For experiments on how best to make duplicate copies see diary, 12 June 1901; for Hammond typewriters see diary, 28 October, 1901. The Royal Society already owned some typewriters. The minutes of Council, and of various committees, were typed with some regularity from 1896 onwards.

⁴³Alfred White became assistant librarian in 1885 and was given the job of cataloguing the library collection. Debates on cataloguing are mentioned frequently in McLeod's diary, from the early 1890s onward. It would appear that McLeod found White's cataloguing schemes somewhat old fashioned. H. W. R., ‘Alfred George Hastings White, (1859–1945)’, Notes and records of the Royal Society 4 (1946) 109–112.

⁴⁴For example, McLeod's Progress Report for 1907 (reprinted in the catalogue committee minutes) mentions F. Jenkinson at the Cambridge University Library, E. W. B. Nicholson at the Bodleian, Lloyd Praeger who covered five libraries in Dublin and Hugh Marshall who covered libraries in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

⁴⁵According to Winchester, op. cit. (12), before Murray and the English Dictionary work moved to Oxford in 1885, women sorters (of slips) were paid 15 shillings per week.

⁴⁶Permission to hire three office boys to help with the catalogue at a ‘wage not exceeding 12 shillings per week’ was given in the 1890s. See Royal Society, minutes of council, 14 June 1893.

⁴⁷This often meant making accurate copies of listings loaned from other libraries. For example, lists were sent from the Bodleian, Trinity College Dublin, Glasgow University and the Franklin Institute in the USA among others.

⁴⁸See McLeod Diary, 31 July 1902, 2 December 1903, 25 March 1909, 3 April 1910 and 19 November 1918. Another office clerk, Miss Seymour, also died in the influenza epidemic. McLeod noted that several members of his own family and others at the Royal Society suffered from the 'flu, and that the Treasurer, Sir Alfred Kempe, was seriously ill. In his diary McLeod noted frequent illness among the female clerks. This suggests poor nutrition and housing associated with relative poverty.

⁴⁹He argued successfully with the Treasurer for a pay raise for the junior staff in 1903. (diary, 13 November 1903). It appears that some of the poorer women were helped financially by some of the Fellows.

⁵⁰I give full names where known. When Miss Bremner retired in 1914 after twenty years of service, the Treasurer was asked to buy her a gift ‘of not more than £50’. Royal Society Council Minutes, 10 (1908–1914), 21 May 1914.

⁵¹There were a number of existing conventions that had to be considered. For example, in the case of chemical journals McLeod took note of what his friend T. E. Thorpe was doing in his Dictionary of applied chemistry.

⁵²See, for example, diary, 12–18 February 1904.

⁵³For example, Miss Bremner was given a raise in 1902 when she earned £125. By 1905 her salary had risen to £140.

⁵⁴See preface to vol. XIII of the catalogue. The salaried women most involved in the making of the fourth series were, at the start, Miss Barnard (who had taken over the role of organizing the wage earning women from Miss Chambers), Miss Bremner, Dora Chadwick and Ellen Chapman. Chadwick retired in 1911 after 15 years of service and was given a gratuity of £7.7s. (Council minutes, 6 July 1911). Chapman retired in 1920 because of ill health. In 1916, Marie Vagner who had worked on the catalogue for several years was appointed Superintendent of the Catalogue Staff, a position she held until her retirement in 1922. Mary Earthy was her assistant.

⁵⁵McLeod had to negotiate for an exception to be made in her case; diary, 24 February 1904. As mentioned, strictly medical and surgical literature was not included in the catalogue.

⁵⁶See, for example, diary, 1 February 1904; McLeod had to check the work of Miss Smedley who had been copying titles inaccurately. She was later dismissed. This was not the chemist Ida Smedley who also worked on the catalogue.

⁵⁷The Treasurer asked Mond for some extra money to pay for this. He agreed, but not for work on subject indexes other than mathematics, physics and chemistry. Diary, 14 November 1908.

⁵⁸There were a number of problems associated with listing authors. Sometimes it was difficult to know whether authors of the same name were, in fact, the same person. The staff did not always think things through carefully. For example, papers written later in the century by an A. Volta were listed under the more famous Volta who died in 1827. This error was eventually detected (diary, 22 October 1912). The final sorting was handled by experts who were given batches of 10 000 slips each. The experts (a mix of volunteers and paid professionals) were to be ‘entrusted … for editing and arrangement for press, and for proofreading’. Royal Society, minutes of council 9 (1903–08), 30 November 1908. By 1913 the total number of slips collected for the author-title index was about 500 000. The final number was about 600 000.

⁵⁹When Larmor gave the Bakerian Lecture, McLeod remarked, ‘he made part of it intelligible’; diary, 18 November 1909.

⁶⁰Royal Society, catalogue committee minutes, 23 October 1890.

⁶¹In his diary McLeod records having read and sent her proof sheets during the 1890s.

⁶²Royal Society, minutes of council, 23 October 1890; 18 December 1895; 5 December 1901. McLeod diary, 10 May and 17 June 1901. Miss Chambers was supervising some women who were searching for titles in the British Museum serials collection, and preparing typed slips. She failed to send in slips at the expected rate.

⁶³For McLeod's harsh dealing with Miss Mackie and his being reprimanded by Robert Harrison, see diary 8 and 14 November 1907. Harrison, who succeeded Herbert Rix as Assistant Secretary in 1896, had studied physics and chemistry at King's College London, had worked at the Kew Observatory on cloud photography, had been Private Secretary to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, and then Registrar at the City and Guilds’ Central Technical College before moving to the Royal Society as a full-time bureaucrat. He was highly efficient but also, if McLeod is to be trusted, a little high-handed and overbearing. Harrison appears to have had the major say on the pay rates of people who worked on the catalogue. For more on Harrison see P. D. R. ‘Robert William Frederick Harrison (1858–1945), Notes and records of the Royal Society, 4 (April, 1946), 113–120.

⁶⁴Entries in McLeod's diary, for example those in July 1902 and July 1910, imply that there were disciplinary problems among the women working in the typing, shorthand and filing pool. Other entries indicate that the more senior women bibliographers, too, regularly demanded better pay. See, for example, diary entry 24 September 1907.

⁶⁵Papers in other languages were occasionally listed. Swedish chemists, for example, often published in German, but their work was not overlooked when published in Swedish. Journals in English included many more than those published by the Royal Society and the major learned societies in Britain and North America; for examples, see note 6.

⁶⁶An advertisement that ran in January 1904 resulted in many applications and a few new appointees. For example Miss Burne Pool was given a trial and then given work on some physics serials; diary, 12 and 16 February 1904.

⁶⁷John Wesley Judd FRS (1840–1916), professor of geology at the Royal College of Science. For example, Judd suggested a Dr. Andrews (possibly Charles. W. Andrews FRS (1866–1924)) among others; diary, 22 October 1901.

⁶⁸Sir Alfred Bray Kempe FRS (1849–1933) had a career as a lawyer but published some well regarded papers in mathematics. Sir Alfred Greenhill FRS (1847–1927) had been a colleague of McLeod's at Cooper's Hill before moving to a chair at Cambridge, and then to Woolwich where he was professor of mathematics for the Royal Artillery. He and McLeod were good friends. See, for example, diary, 28 November 1901.

⁶⁹Henry Edward Armstrong FRS (1848–1937), professor of chemistry at the City and Guilds Central Technical College, was a major player in science politics, and was on the catalogue committee.

⁷⁰For this see, Hannah Gay, ‘Clock synchrony, time distribution and electrical timekeeping in Britain 1880–1925’, Past and present, 181 (2003), 107–140.

⁷¹Emanuel Edward Klein FRS (1844–1925) worked both at the Brown Animal Sanitary Institute (later veterinary college) and at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Klein recommended Thomas (later Lord) Horder (1871–1955), then a young doctor working under him at St. Bartholomew's. Horder, who was to become a renowned clinician, worked on the catalogue and, in turn, recommended his friend, W. D'Este Emery, who undertook work on bacteriology serials. Philip Henry Pye Smith FRS (1840–1914) was a polymath with many interests beyond his medical specialties of dermatology and physiology. He and his engineer brother, Arthur, were long-time friends of McLeod. McLeod was also friendly with physician Arthur Gamgee FRS (1841–1909), another who helped with the physiology listings. One of the people recommended by Pye Smith was a fellow physiologist at Guy's, Arthur P. Beddard. Herbert French, author of the Index of differential diagnosis (1912) that saw its 13th edition published in 2000, also worked on the physiology listings.

⁷²One person who did some work on Dutch serials – as well French and Italian ones – was Mrs. Tcherkiroff. A German, educated in Holland and married to a Russian, she had been recommended to McLeod by his friend Henderina Scott, the Dutch wife of paleobotanist Dunkinfield Henry Scott FRS, President of the Linnean Society, Jodrell Professor at University College, and Honorary Director of the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew. McLeod became friendly with Scott when, earlier, they had been colleagues at the Royal School of Mines where Henderina was a student. D. H. Scott was one of many volunteers on the catalogue. As it happened, Mrs. Tcherkiroff began by translating and listing titles not from Dutch journals, but from a journal published by an Italian Stazione Sperimentale. See McLeod diary, 26 September and 12 and 17 October 1905. Further examples: William Pope, professor of chemistry at Cambridge, helped with Russian titles; a Japanese student of William Watts at the Royal College of Science helped with Japanese serials. Two people I have not been able to fully identify worked on German serials over a long period. They are referred to by McLeod as Leyfeldt and Moberley. See, for example, diary, 25 and 30 September 1901. And a Dr. Hussey worked on Liebig's Annalen; diary, 24 March 1902.

⁷³Ida Freund (1863–1914), Demonstrator at Newnham College, was an important teacher of women chemists. She was the author of a fine historical and practical text, The study of chemical composition: An account of its method and historical development (Cambridge University Press, 1904).

⁷⁴Jerome Jevons, son of economist W. Stanley Jevons FRS, was a very young child when his father died. He appears to have been mentored by the geologist T. G. Bonney who recommended he drop in to see McLeod. W. Stanley Jevons, a stellar chemistry student, left London at the age of 18 to take up work as an assayer at the new mint in Sydney, Australia. There he developed a keen interest in geology before turning to economics and returning to London. Jerome, too, went to Australia, in his case seeking geological work. He spent only a short time in London working on the catalogue, but offered to do more when in Australia. See diary, 11 February, 6 May 1902.

⁷⁵Mr Crow came from the Jenner Institute, then located on the Chelsea Embankment (diary, 23 July 1903). For Walpole, diary, 10 April 1905. McLeod noted that Smirnoff was given a room at the hotel and was paid far more generously for his translation work there (£5 a week) (diary, 23 February 1905). Not surprisingly Smirnoff worked only briefly on the catalogue.

⁷⁶The preface to Volume XIII of the catalogue acknowledges fourteen women and forty-two men who acted as expert referees. Other referees worked on the later volumes, though there was some overlap.

⁷⁷The same instructions had been given for the Third Series. Staff were asked to use common sense in selecting titles and to pass on only questionable ones to the experts. The experts were not expected to carefully read all the papers, rather to glance at them and decide whether they were suitable for inclusion. In 1901 the Royal Society council resolved to pay 8s. 4d. per hundred slips of approved titles if needed, though much of the work was carried out by volunteers. Minutes of catalogue committee, 5 December 1901.

⁷⁸Peter Chalmers Mitchell FRS (1864–1945) was a zoologist, a journalist, and biographer of T. H. Huxley. He was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1903. Victor Herbert Veley FRS (1856–1933) was an Oxford educated chemist who made his career at Oxford before moving to London in 1908 to engage in various business ventures. He had worked earlier with McLeod when McLeod was an external examiner at Oxford. William Thomas Blanford FRS (1842–1905) had studied geology at the Royal School of Mines but, while working in India, developed an interest also in zoology. He was the editor of some early volumes of Fauna of British India published from 1888, and was a referee for some of the zoology listings. Sir John Rose Bradford (1863–1935), a later president of the Royal College of Physicians, was a referee for some of the physiology listings. Edward Saunders FRS (1948–1910) worked on listings in entomology.

⁷⁹Thomson and Mitchell's remarks were not recorded in the minutes; see diary, 16 December 1915. Peter Chalmers Mitchell, My fill of days (London, 1937); J. C. Edwards, ‘Mitchell, Sir Peter Chalmers’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). For information on the tiger I am indebted to Mitchell's great nephew, Martin Kitchen.

⁸⁰Benjamin Daydon Jackson (1846–1927) was a major bibliographer of botanical literature. The close proximity of the offices of the Royal Society and the Linnean Society meant that personnel from each could work closely together. Several of the women working on the catalogue worked for periods at the Linnean under Jackson's supervision. Also working as voluntary botany referees were William Carruthers FRS (1830–1922), Keeper of the Botanical Department at the British Museum, Sir David Prain FRS (1857–1944), who after many years working on the Indian subcontinent was, from 1905, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew; Sir Arthur William Hill FRS (1875–1941), Assistant Director at Kew – appointed Director in 1922, and T. G. Hill a plant physiologist at University College, London.

⁸¹Raphael Meldola FRS (1849–1915) was professor of chemistry at Finsbury Technical College, He, Warington and McLeod were long-term acquaintances. All had been students at the Royal College of Chemistry. Robert Warington FRS (1838–1907), the son of a chemist of the same name, had been an assistant to McLeod's friend, Sir Arthur Church FRS (another who volunteered his time on the catalogue) at the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester, and later worked with John Lawes at the Rothamsted experimental station. An expert in agricultural chemistry, Warington was briefly Sibthorpian professor of rural economy at Oxford. He decided which serials in agricultural science would be surveyed, and then further refereed the titles. Sir William Napier Shaw FRS, Director of the Meteorological Office, 1905–20, was the principal referee for serials and papers in meteorology. Charles Chree (1860–1928) was superintendent of the Kew Observatory and a close neighbour of McLeod's in Richmond. A specialist in geomagnetism, Chree helped referee titles in the earth sciences and was someone with whom McLeod often discussed the catalogue work.

⁸²William Cawthorne Unwin FRS (1838–1933) was professor of engineering at the City and Guilds Central Technical College. He had earlier been a professor at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper's Hill and was one of McLeod's closest friends.

⁸³Perhaps Poincaré felt some obligation having been the first recipient of the Royal Society's Sylvester Medal in 1901. He also sent some titles. McLeod consulted Marcellin Berthelot on French chemical literature. After the mathematics subject index was published, McLeod received a letter from a professor at the University of Illinois complaining that some important mathematical serials had been left out (diary, 16 October 1908). Other complaints came in later. For example, George Carey Foster wrote that the physics index had not done justice to the works of Regnault, or to those of Dulong and Petit. McLeod agreed and wrote as much to Larmor (diary, 2 and 7 June 1913). In part because of such complaints, the author-title catalogue published later was more inclusive.

⁸⁴Crook worked also on making lists of papers published in Canadian journals. McLeod was also helped with geology listings by volunteer Sir Arthur Smith Woodward FRS , Keeper of Geology at the British Museum.

⁸⁵Alice Everett (1865–1949) was the daughter of Joseph David Everett FRS (1831–1904). Her father, recently retired from the chair of natural philosophy at Queen's College, Belfast, had moved to London and volunteered his time to work on the mathematical listings. She joined him and, after his death, became a paid referee in both mathematics and physics. She was well qualified, having taken the mathematical tripos at Girton before pursuing a career as a computer first at Greenwich and then at the Potsdam Observatory. She had also worked briefly at Vassar College in the United States before returning to work with her father not only on the catalogue but also on a major study of the optical glass being used by Zeiss in Jena – something of interest also to Silvanus Thompson, the principal of Finsbury Technical College and another catalogue volunteer. After the catalogue work was over Alice Everett worked at the National Physical Laboratory and was later associated with the emerging television industry. See Mary T. Brück, ‘Alice Everett and Annie Russell Maunder: torch-bearing women astronomers’, Irish astronomical journal vol. 21 (1994), 280–91. I have not been able to further identify Hargreaves, but think he may have been one of Larmor's Cambridge students. William Walter Bryant (1885–1923), educated at Cambridge, was an assistant at the Greenwich Observatory. Chemist William Marshall Watts (1844–1914) was educated at Owens College, Manchester and the University of Heidelberg before returning to Owens as assistant to Henry Roscoe. Later Watts held an assistant professorship in Glasgow before becoming a schoolteacher, first at Manchester Grammar School and then at Giggleswick School. On retirement he came to London where he carried out some research in the Davy-Faraday Laboratory at the Royal Institution. He was a chemistry and physics referee for the catalogue and helped McLeod in numerous other ways. Ida Smedley was a demonstrator in chemistry under Henry Armstrong at the City and Guilds Central College. She later became well known for her work in lipid chemistry. Ernest Goulding was a pharmaceutical chemist who worked at the Imperial Institute in South Kensington. R. J. Dallas was a Cambridge mathematician who had worked under Larmor. Together with Everett and Hargreaves, he carried out much work on the mathematics and physics subject indexes. Frances Mickelthwaite was a research student under Sir Gilbert Morgan FRS. She was appointed lecturer in chemistry at Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1914. Alfred Cort Haddon (1855–1940) had been a professor of zoology at the Royal College of Science, Dublin, before moving to a lectureship in ethnology at Cambridge. He led a major expedition to the Torres Straits in the late 1890s during which much biological, anthropological and ethnological data was collected.

⁸⁶Francis Darwin came into the Royal Society on one occasion to see how the catalogue was being organized and remarked to McLeod that he hadn't realized how much work was involved. See diary, 4 May 1904.

⁸⁷See, for example, diary, 29 October 1906. On the basis of a three year estimate, Mond agreed to donate a further £2000 a year to 1909. Overall he gave about £15 000 toward the fourth series.

⁸⁸McLeod's diary contains many interesting observations. For example, he described the admission of the Prince of Wales to the fellowship of the Royal Society and the speeches made on that occasion by Lord Kelvin and Lord Rayleigh. He also noted that most people then stayed to hear William Crookes's paper (diary, 6 February 1902). Papers given by Crookes appear to have been well attended. James Dewar was another who drew large crowds as, for example, to his Bakerian Lecture on the solidification of hydrogen (diary, 13 June 1901). McLeod noted the extraordinary attendance when Crookes's portrait was presented to the Royal Society by Raphael Meldola (diary, 16 February 1911). McLeod described also a talk that A. H. Becquerel gave to the Royal Society on radioactivity and the large reception held in his honour the following day at the home of Silvanus Thompson in Hampstead. There McLeod chatted with other guests, including Lord and Lady Kelvin. (diary, 6–7 March 1902). Another special event at the Royal Society was a 1908 lecture by Sir Edward Thorpe to mark the anniversary of the discovery of sodium and potassium by Humphry Davy. McLeod noted that Robin Strutt gave some ‘striking demonstrations’ when lecturing on nitrogen at an evening event and that, later, he chatted with people over claret cup, sandwiches and biscuits (diary, 10 May 1911). McLeod noted the awards given at Anniversary meetings. He was especially pleased when his friend D. H. Scott was awarded the Royal Medal, and Hertha Ayrton the Hughes Medal (diary, 30 November 1906). He also noted the ongoing feud between William Ramsay and James Dewar and that rows between them broke out during several of the discussion periods at the Royal Society. See, for example, diary, 10 May and 13 December 1906. On this topic see also, William H. Brock, ‘Exploring the hyperarctic: James Dewar at the Royal Institution’ in Frank A. J. L. James (ed.), ‘The common purposes of life’: Science and society at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002), chapter 8. 169–90.

⁸⁹McLeod records several funerals in this period. Among them was that of his colleague on the catalogue, George Griffith. The funeral at Harrow was attended by many Fellows and the burial rites were conducted by Thomas Bonney FRS with whom McLeod often discussed the catalogue. McLeod, who was very conscious about saving money, noted that while he travelled to Harrow in a third class carriage, the other Fellows all travelled first class (diary, 13 May 1902). Later that year he attended Sir Frederick Abel's funeral at St. Martin's in the Fields, along with a large crowd of scientists (diary 11 September 1902), and he gave brief, but good, descriptions of Lord Kelvin's funeral in Westminster Abbey (diary, 23 December 1907), and the memorial service held for Sir Michael Foster at St. James's, Piccadilly (30 January 1907). McLeod's reputation as a bibliographer made him a natural choice for writing obituaries and he was approached to do so on several occasions.

⁹⁰There was a party at the Royal Observatory each June. McLeod knew the Astronomer Royal, William Christie, and was a keen attendee. Richard Glazebrook, Director of the National Physical Laboratory, was a family friend and McLeod was a frequent guest at Bushey House. McLeod recorded many scientific gatherings there, starting with the opening of the laboratory in 1902 when he presented one of his electrical clocks. Later he donated his pendulum, and his vacuum apparatus from Cooper's Hill. He also attended the opening of the new laboratories in 1913. Kew was a popular gathering place for scientists and a choice venue for entertaining foreign guests as, for example, those attending the Applied Chemistry Congress in May 1909; (there are several diary entries on this congress).

⁹¹See diary, 25 July 1905; further discussion of catalogue at Mond's house, diary 14 November 1908.

⁹²For example, chat with Lord Rayleigh; diary, 18 January 1906; chat with Arthur Schuster and W. C. Unwin, 1 May 1913 (on the occasion of the election of new Fellows).

⁹³For example McLeod regularly attended the dinners held after the Anniversary meetings of the Royal Society. He also attended Chemical Club dinners which were routinely held after the Royal Society's fortnightly Thursday meetings, and before the Chemical Society meetings held on the same evenings. He records several discussions on these occasions, often with Henry Armstrong, from whom he regularly sought advice; see, for example, 21 February 1901 where he asks Armstrong's advice on whether to take the job of director of the catalogue; see also discussion with Armstrong at Royal Society soirée, 8 May 1901; and entry, 7 June 1916, where he records talking about the catalogue with several people in the tea room.

⁹⁴Michael Foster, professor of Physiology at Cambridge, was unwell at the time and retired also from Cambridge in 1903. Foster had connections to London chemists having been a student of Alexander Williamson when studying medicine at University College. McLeod noted visiting Foster at his home in Great Shelford during the 1904 BA meeting at Cambridge, when Foster was too ill to attend (diary, 21 August 1904). Foster died three years later at the Harley Street home of his (and McLeod's) friend, physician Philip Pye Smith, after collapsing at a British Science Guild meeting earlier on the same day (diary, 30 January 1907). Foster's resignation as Secretary appears to have been clouded in controversy – not that this is mentioned by Sir Henry Dale who refers only to Foster's health as the cause. See Henry Dale, ‘Sir Michael Foster, KCB, FRS, A Secretary of the Royal Society’, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, 19 (1964), 10–32. For Foster's scientific work see Gerald Geison, Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology (Princeton University Press, 1978); see p. 302 for a brief discussion of Foster as part of a resented oligarchy at the Royal Society. The oligarchy had included also members of the X-Club with whom Foster was friendly but, by the late 1880s, their time of influence had passed. See Ruth Barton, “‘An Influential Set of Chaps’: The X-Club and Royal Society Politics 1864–85,” The British journal for the history of science, 23 (1990) 53–81, especially pp. 79–80.

⁹⁵See, for example, diary 12 June, 13 August and 30 November 1901. This attack is interesting since much of the criticism appears to have been that Foster was overly biased towards the biological sciences.

⁹⁶Geikie received 125 votes to Halliburton's 41; diary, 1 December 1903. Halliburton was professor of physiology at King's College London. See Neil Morgan, ‘William Dobinson Halliburton, F.R.S. (1860–1931): Pioneer of British Biochemistry?’, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, 38 (1983), 129–145. Later, from 1917 to 1922, Halliburton was director of the catalogue during the final stages of getting it through the press. Geologist Sir Archibald Geikie (1835–1924) was President of the Royal Society 1908–13. He was chairman of the catalogue committee, 1909–12.

⁹⁷McLeod found illustrations of eudiometer tubes, so named, in a book held in the British Museum Library, namely Marsilio Landriani's Ricerche fisiche intorno alla salubrita dell 'aria, (Milan, 1775); (diary, 16 March 1893). Today Landriani is accepted as the inventor of the eudiometer tube.

⁹⁸See diary, 22 July 1904. Cook's appointment was decided jointly by the Admiralty and the Royal Society. McLeod found there were some competitors.

⁹⁹McLeod wrote a short article on this from which the quotation is taken. See his ‘Notes on the History of the Metrical Measures and Weights’, Nature, 3 March, 1904, 425–7. Earlier he had spent some time at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane but gave up searching there because the correspondence between England and France during the period 1783–1791 occupied thirty uncatalogued volumes. He did, however, enjoy reading reports from Paris sent during the Revolution. (Diary, 28 July and 17 September 1903). He had better luck finding material on the early history of the metric system at the Foreign Office, after an intervention by Lord Salisbury (the Fourth Marquess) allowed him access to correspondence held there; (diary, 2 November 1903).

¹⁰⁰He regularly spoke or wrote about it to members of the Cecil and Balfour families. See, for example, his writing to some of the Cecils, diary, 8 July 1906.

¹⁰¹Diary, 15 September 1907; 2 March 1909; 12 March 1902.

¹⁰²He often went next door to the Linnean Society and regularly visited the Geological Society and the Geological Museum Library when working on geology listings. See for example, diary, 18–19 June 1901. The Anthropological Institute in Hanover Square was another stopping-off point.

¹⁰³See, for example, Larmor (diary, 5 March 1902), Meldola (diary, 22 May 1903), Church (diary, 20 January 1902). Earlier, McLeod often lunched at the Savile Club but had given up his membership when his financial situation changed. However, he still recorded the occasional lunch or dinner there in the early 20th century.

¹⁰⁴McLeod mentions cocoa breaks more often than tea breaks. He noted that tea was served before official Royal Society meetings, but cocoa seems to have been the drink of choice during informal work discussions.

¹⁰⁵Martha Whiteley, then a demonstrator (later a reader) in chemistry at the new Imperial College, sought McLeod's help in gaining full entry for women at the Chemical Society. He signed her petition, and spoke and wrote of it to others but, as at the Royal Society, the Council did not allow a vote. See diary, 2 February, 19 March, 1908 and 25 March, 1909. Full admission of women as fellows at the Chemical Society came in 1920 and at the Royal Society in 1945.

¹⁰⁶Joan Mason, ‘Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923) and the admission of women to the Royal Society of London’, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, 45 (1991), 201–20. It appears that McLeod was not asked to sign her certificate, and was surprised by the submission (diary, 1 March 1902); but he was supportive. The Ayrtons were both supporters of women's suffrage. McLeod expressed sympathy for the cause but was not active in promoting it. While conservative in many respects, he appears to have come to his position on votes for women during the 1890s after meeting and befriending women academics at the new Royal Holloway College, and listening to suffragists speak at various meetings in the Thames Valley. McLeod's wife, though not an active suffragist, organized some of the talks. See, for example, diary, 6–7 December 1892. In the first decade of the twentieth century, when a chemistry examiner at Cambridge, McLeod met staff and students at Girton College and Newnham College. He appears to have supported women scientists, some of whom may have further influenced his views on the suffrage. In other respects McLeod was more conservative. His diary suggests that his attendance at church was less frequent than it had been in his youth, though he was still a regular church goer. He often worshipped two or three times a week and, during the Easter week, did so almost every day. For McLeod and religion see James (1987) and Gay (2003, 2007 and 2008), op. cit. (18).

¹⁰⁷See, for example, diary, 7 June 1904. There was the occasional exhibit of the catalogue and its progress at the soirées; see, for example, diary, 25 May 1906.

¹⁰⁸Minutes of the catalogue committee, 18 March 1905.

¹⁰⁹Some of those working on the catalogue, and some of McLeod's other friends, lost sons and/or grandsons during the war. McLeod records many personal tragedies, but daily routines continued.

¹¹⁰McLeod continued to serve on the catalogue committee. There is much about McLeod's own health and that of his colleagues in the diary. McLeod suffered from high blood pressure and prostate cancer. When his doctor told him that his [systolic] blood pressure was 220 the only advice he appears to have been given was to eat less meat. Curiously McLeod's friend, the chemist E. J. Mills, told him to take more salt! McLeod also suffered from arthritis. J. N. Lockyer told him that he had cured his own arthritis by drinking two glasses of port a day and that McLeod should do the same. Sir John Rose Bradford, who was Michael Foster's physician, appears to have given McLeod some medical advice, though not the above mentioned advice on hypertension. Bradford helped also several of the women staff who could ill afford good doctors. For example, he attended Mary Earthy who had serious eye problems and found an eye specialist who agreed to treat her without fee. Bradford also treated Ellen Chapman. See, for example, diary, 19 February 1914.

¹¹¹Halliburton remained chairman of the catalogue committee until 1924.

¹¹² The Royal Society catalogue of scientific papers, Fourth Series, volumes XIII - XIX (1914–1925). The three subject indexes published were in pure mathematics (1908), mechanics (1909), physics: part one, heat, light and sound (1912) and part two, electricity and magnetism (1914). As McLeod noted in his preface to the index for pure mathematics, ‘the extent of the work for the period 1884–1900 proved to be so great that the resources of the Royal Society would have been inadequate for completion [of the other subject indexes]’.

¹¹³McLeod's diary includes a record of letters received and sent, as well as monthly household accounts. I have contacted two of his descendants to ask about the correspondence. It appears to have been largely lost though McLeod's granddaughter, Elizabeth Rogers, has deposited a few items in the Imperial College archives. McLeod's correspondence with the Third Marquess of Salisbury is held in the archives at Hatfield House.

¹¹⁴For example, Chemical abstracts was first published by the American Chemical Society in 1907. This, too, was at first a largely volunteer effort. The last of the volunteers disappeared only in the 1990s.

¹¹⁵In 1910 McLeod became chairman of the international catalogue's British committee. Work on that catalogue was suspended at the outbreak of war, and the work was terminated in 1920. By then the Royal Society had incurred a major loss since it had taken out a bank loan in anticipation of collecting promised subscriptions, and had failed to collect many of the subscriptions before forwarding the money to the catalogue. In 1935 the Council decided to write off the loss which amounted to £12 725. See Lyons, op. cit. (30), 310.

¹¹⁶A study of the American content concluded that the Royal Society catalogue provided good coverage, and that most nineteenth-century U. S. scientists were included even though not all of their papers were listed. See Clark A. Elliott, ‘The Royal Society Catalogue as an index to nineteenth-century American Science’, Journal of the American Society for information science 21 (1970), 396–401.

¹¹⁷Many titles were listed and sent in by students at Newnham College and Girton College. See, for example, diary, 26 May 1903. McLeod recruited some students when an examiner at Cambridge.

¹¹⁸For example, much voluntary effort has gone into Wikipedia, a more democratically produced and far broader source of knowledge than the catalogue.

¹¹⁹See note 17.

¹²⁰This occurred after McLeod had resigned due to ill health and Silvanus Thompson was in charge. Thompson's ideas on how to proceed were challenged, albeit politely, by two long-term women members of staff, Miss Barnard and Marie Vagner. The diary leaves one with the impression that McLeod agreed with the women. See diary, 10 March 1915.

¹²¹The wives and daughters of fellows, as well as other women, often attended such events as guests, but very few women were invited in their own right.