The forgotten women who helped build Leeds’ museums - and meet the volunteer telling their story
When the story of Leeds’ museums is told, the spotlight has often fallen on the men who founded and ran them.
But volunteer historian Jane Luxton has been helping to broaden that picture.
Working with Leeds Museums and Galleries, she has spent years researching the women who contributed to the city’s early museum history and bringing their stories to a wider audience.
Jane has been volunteering with the service since 2012, contributing to several major heritage projects including work on Leeds during World War I, the organisation’s 200th anniversary celebrations and research into the city’s sporting heritage.
Always interested in history, particularly social history, Jane says what she enjoys most is working with like-minded people and uncovering the stories of individuals whose lives might otherwise be forgotten.
She said: “I like working with people and being part of a group.
“It’s very stimulating sharing an interest and finding things out together.”
Her interest in local history developed over many years through research projects and classes, including courses with Leeds Civic Trust and the Workers’ Educational Association, as well as family history classes with Leeds historian Jackie Depelle.
She is also a member of the Thoresby Society and the Friends of Leeds City Museums.
Before joining museum research projects, Jane also explored the names recorded on a memorial board at Headingley Methodist Church to mark the centenary of the First World War.
That interest led to an opportunity to join a volunteer research group examining the history of the Leeds Pals battalion.
Jane said: “I’m not a military historian. What interested me was Leeds at the time and the lives the soldiers led.”
The project explored the wider lives of the men recruited from the city, including their training at Colsterdale, family visits, lectures and sporting and musical activities.
Jane contributed research that later formed part of a handbook produced by the group.
Across each project she has carried out detailed research, but it was during the bicentenary of Leeds Museums and Galleries that Jane began to focus particularly on the women connected with the early museum.
Using records from the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, the organisation that founded the city’s first museum in the early 19th century, Jane began piecing together the lives of women whose contributions had received little attention.
She said: “It was a very male-dominated world. But women were involved from a very early stage, and some of them were quite influential.”
Among the figures she researched was Mariah Thorne, a Leeds mill owner and enthusiastic collector of fossils and minerals.
Jane explained that Thorne helped fund the purchase of a plesiosaur fossil that still forms part of the museum’s natural history collection today.
Another was Etheldred Bennett, a pioneering fossil collector sometimes described as Britain’s first female geologist.
Because her first name was unfamiliar to many people, some early readers of her work assumed she was a man - something that may have helped her research gain recognition in a field dominated by male scientists.
Jane also helped highlight the story of Violet Prather, who followed her father into museum work and later became a curator in her own right - the first woman to hold the role in Leeds.
Jane said: “They’re largely forgotten people. So it’s very satisfying to be able to bring them back into some kind of recognition and acknowledge what they did.”
Much of this research formed part of an exhibition marking the 200th anniversary of Leeds Museums and Galleries.
The project began during the Covid pandemic, meaning volunteers worked together remotely before eventually coming together to help shape the exhibition itself.
For Jane, seeing research transformed into displays for the public was a highlight.
She said: “It was fascinating learning how exhibitions come together, choosing the objects, writing the labels, thinking about how the story should be told.”
Jane also shared her findings through talks and an online presentation for the museum titled Three Women, a Plesiosaur, a Mistaken Identity and a Hat, and took part in the Luxembourg Public History Symposium, which explored how volunteers contribute to museum exhibitions around the world.
Before retiring, Jane worked as a secondary school teacher in Seacroft.
Although Jane had some experience in local and family history before volunteering, she believes curiosity and enthusiasm are the most important qualities for anyone interested in heritage work.
She said: “The best part is working with other people. Everyone brings different knowledge and interests.”
For Jane, uncovering the stories of overlooked figures - especially women - has become one of the most rewarding aspects of her work.