By Dr. Rosario Rovira Guardiola, Combined Institute of Classical Studies and Hellenic and Roman Library.
The history of scholarship is filled with researchers who made valuable contributions during their careers but whose names have been forgotten. Caroline Amy Hutton is one of those names, even if during her lifetime her work was highly praised. She lived between 1860 and 1931, a challenging time in which women could not easily access academic education and jobs. Hutton’s own career attests to those inequalities as the only paid jobs that she held were her teaching jobs after she graduated from Girton College, Cambridge. Her work at the British Museum, the Hellenic Society and the British School at Athens was unpaid even if she fulfilled duties equal to those of her male colleagues.
Fig. 1. Caroline Amy Hutton (From the collection of photographs of scholars held in Hellenic and Roman Library, London).
Hutton’s career is not only a testimony of the challenges that female academics had at the time but also of the development of archaeology as a discipline. Hutton lived through a time in which archaeology moved from an artistic perspective towards the material culture of the past to a historical approach to the study of those remains, of ‘minor artifacts’ such as vases or terracottas, which aimed to fully understand Greek culture. Hutton’s work both as an academic and an administrator contributed to it.
Although from Hutton there might remain her academic work, her book on Greek terracottas, her articles on inscriptions and her inventories of amphora stamps at the British Museum (BM), it is not always easy to reconstruct her career and aspirations as barely any of her personal papers have survived. The main sources to study Hutton are her letters kept at the department of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum. An institution she was linked to for almost 40 years. In them we see Hutton change from a combative young scholar that combined teaching with academic research to a respected donor of funds to the department.
The [personal] counterpart to the BM letters is the Chamberlain sisters’ letters, held at the University of Birmingham. Hutton was the cousin of Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister and she had a close relationship with his sisters, particularly with Beatrice Chamberlain. Her letters are full of references to ‘cousin Amy’ and her career in archaeology as she visited Amy Hutton often, attended her lectures and even accompanied Hutton on a research trip to Berlin. From her we learn that not only was Hutton a passionate archaeologist but also an independent woman who loved cats and travelled with a kettle. We might not have Amy’s words, but we can sense what she expected as an archaeologist and the difficulties she faced.
Hutton as a Classics teacher
Having been born in New Zealand, Hutton studied Classics at Girton College between 1879 and 1882, even taking the option of studying Classics for a fourth year. She took both exams but due to the typos obtained a third; a low mark that was not uncommon for women who had not had access to the same type of education that their male counterparts had. After 1882 we lose sight of Hutton for a few years, until she re-appears in London in June 1890 requesting a ticket for the Round Reading Room of the British Museum. She requested access for the study of Philosophy and Archaeology and said that her occupation was a teacher, while giving an address at the University Club for Ladies (now called University Women’s Club), at 31 New Bond Street (BM Central Archive – Reader’s Applications to the Round Reading Room).
According to the Chamberlain correspondence, Hutton appears to have been a very busy teacher not only giving private classes in Chelsea and Hampstead but also teaching at Allenswood Boarding School. This school was founded in 1870 by Marie Souvestre and Paoline Samaia and was a revolutionary school where women were taught feminist ideals of social responsibility and independence.
The subject of these classes was varied; Chamberlain mentions Greek language, Greek vases, heroes and heroines and life in the Homeric period. These included visits to the British Museum to see the objects in person. These lessons might have prompted Hutton to expand her relationship with the BM and offer guided visits of the location. An initiative that seemed excellent to Beatrice ‘as people are grateful to be rescued from a helpless wandering through crowds of objects, which they know nothing about’ (BC/A/2/1/31-60 (56)).
Hutton at the British Museum
At the end of 1892 Hutton was working in the department of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum studying the pottery of Naukratis. It is not clear how this started, but it is possible that her friend Eugenie Sellers, also a former student at Girton, had introduced her to the staff of the department. Sellers had been encouraged by Charles Thomas Newton, archaeologist and former keeper of the department to lecture in the galleries of the BM and she was on good terms with the then current keeper, Alexander Stuart Murray.
The Chamberlain letters show what Hutton expected from the role, that would allow her to pursue a career in the archaeological field but also stated that it was an unpaid position, “for love” (BC/A/2/1/61-94 (68)). The comment suggests that perhaps it was expected that a position of this kind should be paid. The fact that it was an unpaid position has possibly contributed to the fact that the value of Hutton’s work has been underestimated. However, volunteers provide an invaluable service to institutions, in many cases of the same level as paid curatorial work. For many years, one of the best-selling books of the British Museum was Early Medieval Art, written by the art historian Ernst Kinzinger while he was a volunteer in the 1930s.
However, this was the start of the most academically fruitful period in Hutton’s career; with a series of research stays in Paris, Berlin and Athens that led to the publication of various articles. An academic interest that perhaps can be seen in her joining the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1890.
The voluntary work on the pottery of Naukratis led to Hutton’s first academic work, the article ‘Inscriptions on pottery from Naukratis’ published in the Classical Review (1893) where she published unknown fragments that came from the Ernest Arthur Gardner excavations in 1886.
In 1895 Hutton carried on her work at the British Museum by “copying and deciphering inscriptions on the handles of Rhodian wine jars, which inscriptions are to be sent to Berlin to a German, who is publishing Rhodian inscriptions” (BC/1/13/2/11-48 (18)). These texts were the ones published by Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen in Inscriptiones Graecae (XII / 1: 175) published in 1895. Murray himself had done a similar task helping Theodor Mommsen and his disciples in the preparation of the volumes of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Hutton would return to these amphora stamps later in life, in 1925 when she accessioned them. Other than carrying out research on inscriptions, Hutton also contributed to the visits to the museum that the staff of the department conducted for schools and private individuals.
Independently Hutton might have also been working on an English translation of Edmond Pottier’s Statuettes de terre cuite (1890), a groundbreaking work that highlighted the relevance of this type of object. Discrepancies between the French publisher, Hachette and the English one, Nutt made the publication of the translation impossible. Hutton wrote to Murray about her disappointment, but she carried on working on the subject and went to publish the first English monograph dedicated to Greek terracottas, Greek terracotta statuettes in 1900 (Letter to Murray in BM Greece & Rome Department Archive, Original Letters 1893, 569). Hutton’s book aimed to reach a wider audience with the terracottas organised by subject, instead of the chronological order more common in museum catalogues. It was the culmination of years of research in the museums of Paris, Berlin and even Athens, where she in fact held a scholarship at the British School at Athens (BSA) between 1896 and 1897.
The scholarship in Athens was not without hardship, as female students were not allowed to stay in the building. Instead, she stayed at the Hotel d’Anglaterre with her mother. Also access to the archaeological material she was interested in was difficult and it seems that it was only through the help of the archaeologist Paul Perdrizet that she accessed the stores of the archaeological ephorate (Letter to Murray in BM Greece & Rome Department Archive, Original Letters 1897, 277). While in Athens, Hutton also worked with Cecil Smith, an attendant at the British Museum who was having a sabbatical as a director of the British School at Athens, on the publication of the pottery that had been found in the excavation of Pylos in 1896. Hutton and Smith would carry on working together; they published the Annual of the British School of Athens and on cataloguing the Wyndham Francis Cook collection; a project that she abandoned because of disagreements with Cook’s wife (Letter to Smith in BM Greece & Rome Department Archive, Wyndham Francis Cook Papers).
Hutton at the Hellenic Society
While Hutton had joined the Hellenic Society in 1890 and became part of the Council in 1908, attending most of the meetings, she is not recorded as having contributed much to the discussions, but things changed when in 1911 she took over the role of acting secretary. John Baker Penoyre, the librarian and secretary of both the HS and the BSA suffered a nervous breakdown and requested a few months of absence from his role. Hutton stepped in and volunteered to cover his role; she would only be paid for the fare of the cab that would take her to Bloomsbury Square 3 days a week. Hutton did not waste her time and soon acknowledged the need for a new catalogue of slides; one of the main resources of the library. She also took care of the welfare of the staff by requesting that the assistant librarian F. Wise should get a pay rise, from £1.2 to £1.5 pounds monthly and that he should get a bonus of £5.00 (approximately a month’s salary) and an extra week of holiday for his work in keeping the library going while Penoyre was away). She would mediate between the Hellenic Society and the newly formed Roman Society and helped reach an agreement that would allow them to share the library and the premises. Hutton would also take on routine library work such as accessioning new books.
Fig. 2. Entry from a meeting of the council of the Hellenic Society held on 14 November 1911 where Hutton’s proposal of taking over Baker-Penoyre’s tasks while he is on sick leave, is approved (Hellenic Society Archives).
Eventually Penoyre came back to work, but Hutton continued working for the Hellenic Society by being in various subcommittees such as the Finance one and the one of Classics Materials for Schools. She was appointed as Honorary Secretary in 1919, an office from which she resigned in December 1930, due to ill health. It was then that the Council offered her the Vice-Presidency of the Hellenic Society. Her letter of resignation was then added to the Minute Book in what seems to have been a rare honour. The position was left vacant sine die, because at the time they could not find anyone to fill Hutton’s shoes.
Fig. 3. Entry, in Hutton’s handwriting, from a meeting of the council of the Hellenic Society held on the 12 November 1918 where Hutton proposed an increase in salary for Mr. Garnett , the assistant treasurer and Miss Powell, the attendant and cleaner (Hellenic Society Archives).
During these last years of her career, Hutton not only held administrative roles, but also carried on publishing. Her last article would be on the Wood Collection [add link below]. The Wood Collection is a series of notebooks, sketchbooks and other material relating to the journey that Robert Wood, James Dawkins and John Bouverie undertook to Syria, it was donated to the library in 1926 and is still today one of the most important archives held in the library (https://library.ics.sas.ac.uk/wood-collection).
The name of C. Amy Hutton might not be very familiar today but a brief look at her career shows her contribution to the development of Greek archaeology, from publishing previously unknown material and collaborating in the XIX century corpus of inscriptions to being part of the management of the Hellenic Society.
Biography
Dr Rosario Rovira Guardiola is an Ancient Historian and Archaeologist who works as an Assistant Librarian (Periodicals & Archives) at Combined Institute of Classical Studies and Hellenic and Roman Library. Rosario specialises in ancient trade and in the reception of antiquity in modern art and literature. She is the editor of Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts: Sailing in Troubled Waters (Bloomsbury 2017) and the author of several publications on subjects such as Oscar Wilde, Marguerite Yourcenar, Antinous. and Hadrian’s Villa. She is member of the research groups CEIPAC (University of Barcelona), Proyecto Palazzo (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville) and Imagines Project (https://www.imagines-project.org/).
Bibliography
Publications by Caroline Amy Hutton
“Inscriptions on Pottery from Naukratis”, The Classical Review, 7, No. 1/2 (Feb., 1893): 82-83.
“On two terracotta figurines”, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 15, 1895: 132-135.
“On three bronze statuettes”, The Annual of the British School at Athens, 3, 1896-97: 149 – 152 and 49.
“Votive reliefs in the Acropolis Museum”, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 17, 1897: 306-318.
Greek Terracotta Statuettes, London 1899 (with preface by Alexander Stuart Murray).
Catalogue of the antiquities in the collection of the late Wyndham Francis Cook (with Cecil Smith), London 1908.
“A Collection of Sketches by C. R. Cockerell, R. A.”, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 29 (1909): 53-59.
“The Greek inscriptions at Petworth House”, The Annual of the British School at Athens, 21, 1914-1915 and 1915-1916: 155-165.
“Two sepulchral inscriptions from Suvla bay”, The Annual of the British School at Athens, 21, 1914-1915 and 1915-1916: 166-168.
“The Travels of ‘Palmyra’ Wood in 1750-51″, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 47, Part 1 (1927): 102-128
British Museum Archives: BM Central Archive, Greece & Rome Department Archive – Original Letters and Wyndham Francis Cook Papers.
Chamberlain Family Letters (BC), University of Birmingham Archive, website: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/cadbury/rlt/subject-guides/chamberlain-family-guide [accessed 24 April 2024].
Gaertringen, von Hiller (1895), Inscriptiones Graecae , XII (1): 175
Hellenic Society Archives: (1911) Hellenic Society Minute Book 7 and (1918) Hellenic Society Minute Book 9.
This post is part of a series in which speakers of the session “(In)Visbile Women in History of Archaeology” of the Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists 2023 publish their presentations. The posts will be published simultaneously in German and English. The German version of this post can be found on the blog of the project AktArcha at https://aktarcha.hypotheses.org/5955.
