Charles Lyell and Principles of Geology

From the Stores #2: Gideon Mantell | Through Lyell’s Eyes (ed.ac.uk)

Gideon Mantell was a frequent correspondent of Charles Lyell a fellow early english geologist. Their life-long relationship started with a bang in 1821, when Lyell casually called on Mantell while visiting his old school at Midhurst. Having heard tell of the doctor from some workmen in the nearby quarry, Lyell rode the 25 miles over the South Downs and knocked on Mantell’s door nearly at dusk. Presumably they might have known each other’s names from the Geological Society, but one would imagine the visit would still have come as surprise at best. However, common interest prevailed, a well-stocked fossil cabinet provided great amount of conversation, and the two reportedly gossiped until morning. (Bailey, p. 48) Their published letters cover all from scientific theories, discoveries, to the latest gossip and accounts from the GeolSoc and Royal Society, of which they were both members. This extract comes from a recent blog by the archivist of the Charles Lyell collection at the University of Edinburgh library see above.

The library holds the collection of Lyell’s papers, correspondence, 150 geological specimens and also, since 2019, his many notebooks. These notebooks, which are in the process of being digitised, set out the progression of his thinking that helped him form the theories in his key work the Principles of Geology published 1830-33. Lyell travelled widely and described, and illustrated in detail, volcanos, earthquakes, stratography, glaciers and how the geology of the earth evolved over what he called “deep time”. His views on evolution chimed with those of Darwin and Russell Wallace https://www.ed.ac.uk/giving/save-lyell-notebooks

An analysis of the correspondence between Lyell and Mantell was published Alan Wennerbom in 1999 for his D Phil thesis entitled Charles Lyell and Gideon Mantell, 1821-1852: Their Quest for Elite Status in English Geology. Supplementary Volume: The Correspondence between Charles Lyell and his family and Gideon Algernon Mantell: 1821-1852. https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/380

Life and times of Thomas Mantell

Lewes Archaeological Group talk on Fri 19 Feb 2021 7.30pm  The Life  & Times of Thomas Mantell (1750-1807): a true Lewes maverick.

Thomas (1750-1807), father to Gideon Mantell, exists very much in the shadow of his famous son. This talk on zoom will aim to enlighten people to this key Lewes character living during highly exciting political times the 1790s. Organised by LAG it is put on to mark the birth day of Thomas’ third son Gideon born on 3 Feb 1790 in St Mary’s Lane (now Station Street) in Lewes. One of a series of annual Gideon Mantell birthday commoration talks.

The talk will be free, but is limited to 100 people by Zoom subscription. Please click on the link below to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtc-ygqzgoHNB-C1eEh_cTvcoQF2M4hhUA

Not just the Iguanodon

… but seven dinosaurs in total.

The extract is taken from the 16 page booklet Gideon Mantell: a remarkable life produced for the Lewes Fossil Festival in 2016. Second edition April 2017.  Text written by writer and journalist John May.

The extract references Dennis R Dean, author of two key text on Mantell see below*and explains how Mantell found and identified various different dinosaurs for the first time. 

It is not commonly appreciated that he (Mantell)  devoted some thirty years to his increasingly accurate reconstructions of Iguanodon, while discovering other dinosaurs as well. 

These were: the carnivorous Megalosaurus – discovered  independently by Mantell and others – the first dinosaur of any kind to be described; Iguanodon, the first herbivorous dinosaur; Hylaeosaurus, the first armored dinosaur; the huge remains of a Cetiosaurus (‘whale lizard’), identified by Mantell as a land-based reptilian, wrongly named by its earlier discoverer, arch-rival Richard Owen, who’d assumed it was a marine crocodile; Pelorosaurus, a gigantic species of sauropod (‘lizard foot’) dinosaurs; Regnosaurus (meaning “Sussex lizard”), a genus of herbivorous dinosaurs; and Hypsilophodon, a small agile dinosaur, which Mantell thought was a very young iguanodon.

Mantell discovered also several dozen other prehistoric creatures including prehistoric crocodiles and turtles, molluscs, fishes, insects, sponges and plants. With this broader view, he was able to visualise the primeval landscape the dinosaurs inhabited.

Dean also claims that Mantell ‘was the first person to collect dinosaur bones systematically and over a period of time with the specific intention of restoring the animals’ original appearance’. Mantell’s natural gifts as a public speaker and writer, combined with his remarkable and extensive fossil collection, with giant dinosaur bones as the centrepiece, thrilled and enlightened scholars, scientist, writers, artists and the inquisitive general public of his day. Dean writes: ’…far more than anyone else, he impressed the Age of Reptiles upon contemporary minds’.

A hard-working doctor, often on night calls, Mantell survived on little sleep and did most of his scientific work around midnight. As if these demands were not enough, Dean writes that Mantell was also ‘a local and family historian; a productive archaeologist and microscopist; a political activist and social climber; a minor poet and artist; and, in his valuable journal and extensive correspondence, an outspoken critic and chronicler of his times’

Further reading

Gideon Algernon Mantell: A Bibliography With Supplementary Essays, by Dennis R. Dean and David Norman, published 1 December 1998 (279 pp., Scholars Facsimiles, ISBN-10: 0820115193 & ISBN-13: 9780820115191)

Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs, by Dennis R. Dean, published 1999 (xix + 290 pp., Cambridge University Press, ISBN-13: 9780521420488)

The Mantellian Museum in Brighton

Against the counsel of his family but with the encouragement of the Earl of Egremont Gideon moved all of his fossil and other artefacts from the High Street in Lewes to 20 Old Steyne Brighton in 1833. He set up his Mantellian Museum there.

The “Mantell Piece” found in a quarry in Maidstone in 1834 contained a jumble of bones that provided evidence of an early gigantic creature. This along with many others from the collection are now in Natural History Museum in London. The collection was sold by Mantell to the British Museum for £4,000 when he moved to London in 1838.

 

Once in Brighton however things didn’t go as well as hoped. He arrived as a celebrated scientist and lecturer but left a few short years later with his family circumstances, his finances and reputation reduced. He was forced to sell off his collection to the British Museum. So what went wrong?

John Cooper writes “The discovery of fossil evidence for the previous existence of huge, extinct creatures in Sussex was extremely unsettling for many people. Mantell braved people’s attitudes and religious beliefs, and pursued the need for scientific progress. Brighton then didn’t always value his efforts, and even now we don’t always value his important role in the national and international setting.”

To read more see John Cooper’s article Gideon Mantell and the Brighton Press 1834- 1838 in Journal of West Sussex History No 77 2008-9 p33-46. This forms part of a series of essays entitled “What on Earth is under Sussex?

 

Smallpox outbreak in St Mary’s Lane 1794

When young Gideon would have been three years old (he was born in 1790) an outbreak of the dreaded smallpox occurred in Lewes on 4 January 1794. The following report was recorded in the Town Book of 1794 describing how the town and its people requested affected people to remain in their homes and not to spread the illness. The people identified in the account lived two doors from the Mantell family house on St Mary’s Lane.

Gideon’s father Thomas Mantell was a local tradesman a cordwainer, and a well known Dissenter. He was elected one of the two Headboroughs in 1792 and served on the council known as The Twelve who, elected annually, managed the town’s finances and oversaw law and order and general town improvements. He would have been involved in the town meetings called to discuss the outbreak and what to do about it.

The town eventually decided upon the use of inoculation, a new development available in the town from its local doctor Dr Frewin who had premises on School Hill. It was  agreed by the town that  “general inoculation being an evil much less to be dreaded than infection in the natural way”.

After being injected with some “infected matter” taken from cow pox pustules they were required to rest indoors for two weeks.  Nevertheless it was not without its dangers and out of 2,290 town inhabitants and 600 strangers inoculated forty six died. Those who died were of all ages from eight hours to eighty years and there many ulcerated arms experienced and 25 women miscarried.

Dr Thomas Frewin (1704-91) from Northiam was a pioneer and advocate of inoculating, having written it up for his Master’s. He was however cited as a “common Nuisance” in the Lewes Quarter sessions of 1750 for injecting patients near a busy highway in Northiam, by 1772 it was becoming more accepted a practice. However in 1794 it was still a novel approach with many people fearful.

From the Town Book of Lewes 1702 – 1837 ed by Verena Smith. Sussex Records Society; Lewes Vol 69 pages 94-96

Smallpox was declared as “eradicated” by World Health Organisation in 1980 through programmes of vaccination carried out across the world.   

Introducing Mantellisaurus; the 2020 Mantell Birthday Memorial Lecture

When Gideon Mantell and wife Mary Ann described fossils they had found in the Wealden clays north of Lewes in the 1820s they realised they had come across something totally new; the original tooth so resembled that of an iguana’s the creature was named Iguanodon. Over the next 100 years more bones were discovered and a whole set of dinosaur skeletons under the name of Iguanodontids were identified and placed in museums around Europe. More recently however the family tree of this creature has been questioned…

The 2020 Gideon Mantell birthday memorial lecture was on 3^rd February 2020 at Lewes Town Hall Council Chamber. Joe Bonsor (@palaeojoe) PhD student at the Natural History Museum in London shared his work on the skeleton that is exhibited in the museum’s Hintze Hall, now named Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis after Lewes’ own Gideon Mantell.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/search-for-the-real-iguanodon.html

The Write up of the talk is from John Cooper of the Booth Museum in Brighton is published in the Brighton and Hove Geological Society Newsletter Issue 137 March 2020 p4-6

Geology conference

The quarry at Cuckfield where various items were found

For those interested in Geology/Earth Science in Southeast England the inaugural Wealden Geological Assembly was on Saturday 30 November 2019 in the Exhibition Hall of Worthing College Highlights of the programme included:

• Wealden Dinosaurs, based on Mantell’s discoveries: Joe Bonsor  (PhD student at the NHM)  ‘Iguanodon and other Wealden iguanodontids’
• Tom Raven  (PhD Student at the NHM) Hylaeosaurus and other Wealden anklyosaurs’

The SERC Nov 2020 conference is planned for Saturday 14 November 2020 in Clair Hall, Haywards Heath on Conserving the Heritage of Southeast England.  

The organiser is Anthony Brook, 15, Cambourne Court, Shelley Road, Worthing BN11 4BQ anthony.brook27@btinternet.com

Mantell’s birthplace

Gideon Algernon Mantell was born on 3 Feb 1790 in St Mary’s Lane in Lewes, now Station Street. His early life and training as a doctor  are well documented. His father Thomas Mantell was a well respected local cordwainer who sat on the local Council of Twelve who managed the affairs of the town. You can read more about this enigmatic man, of whom not a lot is known, in the Think Tank lecture notes here.

Gideon told a friend “although my parents and their immediate predecessors were in comparatively humble stations being only trades people in a country town yet they were descendants of one of the most ancient families in England” The family could in fact trace itself back to the Conquest, and their coat of arms is shown on the Mantell plaque in St Michael’s Church

You can visit the house as part of 2019 Heritage Open Days. Please note this is a private home so not normally open to the public.

A Look at Lewes through the Eyes of Gideon Mantell

An evening walk will be led by Debby Matthews looking at the town in the early 19th century based on Mantell’s diaries and writings on Friday 16 August 2019 at 7pm.

Gideon Mantell was not just a local doctor and a famous geologist and palaeontologist, credited with the discovery of the existence of dinosaurs, he was also an antiquarian and interested in the history of Lewes. Join Debby Matthews on an evening walk, starting at his birthplace in Station Street* and ending at his house on the High Street, taking in the Priory and streets of Lewes viewed as they were in Mantell’s time; the early 19th century.

This is the fourth in the summer series of Lewes Archaeological Group’s 50th Anniversary walks

*If you are interested in Mantell’s life you can also visit the house separately as part of Heritage Open Days in September

Dinomania – a review

Reviewed by Anthony Brook

Dinomania is a most unusual and powerful theatrical performance. It begins with a flourish and remains relentlessly fast-paced for the next 80 minutes, without a pause, to a grand finale. You are transfixed by the drama unfolding before you, enacted by a small cast, in the manner and style of Ancient Greece; you are transported back in time to a time when the world was so much simpler to explain, by religious orthodoxy, until geologists came along to cause major controversies. It is a powerful dramatisation of the personalities and ideas battling for supremacy in the first half of the 19th century, a time of iconoclastic ideas and elephantine egos. In that chaotic situation, someone was going to get hurt!

Although this piece of theatre portrays the tumult caused by palaeontological discoveries of the time, it focuses on just one man, the great Sussex geological pioneer, Gideon Mantell (1790-1852), whose brave but ultimately futile effort to use his discovery of Iguanodon to join the scientific elite and Society came to nought in the end. Despite always proclaiming scientific priority over Iguanodon, and being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1825, he was still considered only ‘a country doctor and a cobbler’s son, who should leave such matters to the learned men of Society’. As is always the case, personal relationships matter enormously: although Mantell had the long-term friendship of Charles Lyell, he faced the bitter rivalry, frontal antagonism and societal dominance of Richard Owen, an oleaginous man with a razor-sharp mind, who discredited his discoveries and did his level best to appropriate his achievements. Owen coined the term dinosaur in 1841 and later established the Natural History Museum, so would seemed to have triumphed, but Mantell is still remembered as the man whose fossil discoveries in the Weald revealed fauna and flora from a Time far beyond the conceptualisation of contemporaries. ‘Deep Time’ gave plenty of time for the evolution and extinction of species, issues which had troubled ‘natural philosophers’ for many decades, leading in due course to Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859.

All the main personages of that period are portrayed, presenting evidence and arguing their case—-Ussher, Lamarck, Cuvier, Parkinson, Buckland and, of course, Owen, as well as those more directly involved in Mantell’s life—his father, Thomas, and his long-suffering wife, Mary Ann, who supports him admirably at first, but eventually finds his obsession with fossils too much to bear and walks out of the marital home, a very brave decision in those days. Mantell’s life bears all the hallmarks of a Shakespearian ‘Tragedy’–early success, reaching for the stars, downfall by bad decision-making and crushed by the turn of events.

Most of Dinomania is factually accurate, but ‘some of the scenes might not stand up to forensic historical scrutiny,’ admitted Lauren Mooney, co-writer/producer, ‘but it is intended as a creative adaptation, with a series of wider themes, such as who controls scientific progress.’ In that respect, it should be observed that Science, like History, is always open to re-interpretation as Time goes by; and that Geologists are only people with a particular ‘focussed curiosity’, subject to all the emotional frailties of humankind.

The acting was strong and powerful; the setting and props minimal; and the sound effects provided by a pianist on stage. The actors each played several roles in the course of the play, always in view and changing character by their language, voice, pose and actions: character changes were rapid, recognisable and yet convincing—a tribute the their thespian skills.  Foreknowledge of people, places and events helped but was not really necessary. It was a truly exciting theatrical experience, which left everyone in the audience overwhelmed.

Dinomania was performed at the New Diorama Theatre, Regent’s Place, London from 19 February until 23 March 2019:    A Show about scientific endeavour, bitter rivalry and terrible lizards, by the Kandinsky theatre company

More by Antony Brook on Mantell’s life and works here Momento Mori