Date Thesis Awarded
4-2024
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
History
Advisor
Julie Richter
Committee Members
Nicholas Popper
Mary Kirsh
Abstract
From 1741-1756, experimental philosopher, Mr. Erasmus King, advertised scientific lectures from his home in Duke’s Court, London for both ladies and gentlemen. Sometime in those same years an anonymous mother won a place for her child through a lottery system at the London Foundling Hospital. When prompted by the orphanage to leave a token with her child, she produced a small piece of metal inscribed with the words “King’s Experimental Philosophy, Duke’s Court.” What that small material object reveals are connections between women, charity, science, and fashion in London’s social history. These connections point to larger eighteenth-century anxieties and acceptance of women’s place in the quickly changing scientific sphere of society. This project addresses the scientific culture of London by reassessing the events of experimental philosophy lectures from the perspective of female audiences, and the project presents new analysis of material culture and letters associated with the home and experiment room of Erasmus King and his wife Elizabeth. This analysis places the material, emotional, and spatial history of women at the forefront of the project. Scientific ideas inundated the eighteenth-century British urban consciousness, and the manifestations of that culture in London were unavoidable, regardless of gender. Therefore, while society did not often offer women a full and authoritative role in this culture, science could weave its way into crucial parts of women’s lives from mundanity to motherhood.
Recommended Citation
Hogue, Rachel, "“Experimental Philosophy, For Gentlemen and Ladies:” A Foundling Hospital Token History, 1741-1756" (2024). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 2167.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/2167
