Town and Window Gardening including the structure, habits, and uses of Plants: A Course of Sixteen Lectures given out of school hours to pupil-teachers and children attending the Leeds Board Schools

Longmans, 1879. Hard Cover. Very Good. BUCKTON, Catherine M. Town and Window Gardening including the structure, habits, and uses of Plants: A Course of Sixteen Lectures given out of school hours to pupil-teachers and children attending the Leeds Board Schools. First edition. xx, 180pp., half-title., frontispiece, and 127 text illustrations. A very good copy in original blind stamped and gilt lettered dark green cloth. With the early names of D. Wilson of Leeds, and Mary Ward on the end-paper and inner front board, and of Laura M. Passavant on the half-title. A note on the end-paper reads: "I wish you gardeners would take a leaf of our Madam Buckton's book." Some slight rubbing to the head and tail of the spine. Very scarce. 8vo. Longmans, Green, and Co. 1879. ~ Catherine Buckton was the first woman elected to the Leeds School Board in 1873, and was appointed Secretary to the Leeds Women's Suffrage Society when it was formed in 1871. She also volunteered to provide classes "explanatory of the laws of health to working women" which were organised by Yorkshire Ladies Council of Education. She was invited to lecture in other towns; at Saltaire, there were audiences of 500 women. Her fame spread and Queen Victoria's daughter wrote from Germany for information. Laura M Passavant (died 1939) is recorded in the bibliography of women scientists, Ladies in the Laboratory. In 1878 she ran a course of object lessons in natural history at the Leeds Philosophical & Literary Society's Museum.