Late great engineers: Henrietta Vansittart - tragic trailblazer  for women engineers

During the nineteenth century it was rare to find women practising as engineers. When the subject is occasionally raised, the names of electrical engineer Hertha Ayrton and bridge designer Sarah Guppy are usually brought forward as the leading lights in a discipline almost totally dominated by men. But another, that of Henrietta Vansittart deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. For it was Vansittart who, as a Victorian marine engineer, contributed massively to the development of the screw propeller. 

As academic researcher Emily Rees explains in her extended essay Inventor, devoted daughter, or lover? Uncovering the life and work of Victorian naval engineer Henrietta Vansittart (1833–1883) ‘as a woman who held patents in several countries, who published on her engineering work and spoke publicly on the subject, Henrietta Vansittart is exceptional for her era.’ And yet, as B M E O’Mahoney notes in The Woman Engineer (Vol 13 No.4), due to the circumstances of her death she became ‘probably Britain’s first woman engineer to fade from memory’. The circumstances to which he refers are her admission to what was then called the Newcastle upon Tyne City Lunatic Asylum after ‘after being found wandering the streets in a manic state’ and shouting about ‘the devil, the Virgin and God.’

While it is tempting to assume that by operating in the public sphere of engineering, at a time when married women were expected to maintain a supporting role in the domestic environment, Vansittart’s motivation would be that of nurturing women’s involvement in science, that is not the case. In a speech she gave in 1880, Vansittart explained that in her view, while women have rights ‘their rights are in their homes’, and that she had stepped out of this orbit only ‘to vindicate a late father’s cause’.

Her father, James Lowe was the inventor of the screw propeller, whose work after his death in 1866 was taken up by his daughter Henrietta. A self-taught engineer, she continued his experiments and in 1868 took out the patent (GB patent 2877) on a device she called the Lowe-Vansittart propeller that, according to the German Patent and Trade Mark Office ‘is considered an important nautical invention of the 19th century’. What her father described as ‘the perpetual sculling machine’ would later find applications on British government ships, as well as the ill-fated ocean liner SS Lusitania.

Henrietta Vansittart (1833-1883)

Henrietta Lowe was born in Surrey in 1833, probably the fourth of at least ten children produced by the union of James Lowe and Marie (or Mary) Barnes. As O’Mahoney states in The Woman Engineer: ‘No record of her schooling or training in engineering exists but it is probable, in accordance with the custom of the time, that she was a pupil of her father’, whose legal defence of his own propeller patent and the expenses associated with his engineering inventions consumed his wife’s fortune of £3,000 (about £500,000 in today’s money), while reducing his family’s circumstances to near bankruptcy. In 1855 Henrietta married Frederick Vansittart, a lieutenant in the 14^th Dragoons recently returned from the Second Anglo-Sikh War, in an alliance that is speculated to have restored some sort of financial security to the family as their address was in the wealthy district of Mayfair.

It was Vansittart’s ‘deep attachment to her father… that caused her to become an expert on marine propellers and helped her gain acceptance in what was a man’s world’, continues O’Mahoney, who attributes Lowe’s interest in propellers to a stint as an 18-year-old on the whaler Amelia Wilson, where he was inspired by the way whales used their tales to propel themselves. He also notes how Vansittart ‘was aboard HMS Bullfinch with her father when trials of his patent propeller were carried out’. When Lowe died in 1866 – he was run over by a carriage in London – Vansittart continued his work for almost two decades, in the process becoming more successful and better known than her father. Lowe’s epitaph reads in part: ‘his life, though unobtrusive, was not without great benefit to his country.’

In 1868, she became one of the first women to receive a British patent in her own name, and in 1869 ‘Henrietta Vansittart, of Richmond, England’ received the US Letters Patent No. 89,712 for her ‘improved method of construction for screw-propellors’ in which she stated the ‘object of this invention is to economize the power required in driving steam-propellers for ships and other vessels’. The Lowe-Vansittart propeller would over the following years amass awards: a first-class diploma at the International Exhibition in Kensington 1871, followed by medals at the 1872 Dublin, 1875 Paris, 1876 Belgian, 1879 Sydney Exhibition, 1880 Melbourne and 1881 Adelaide Exhibitions. A wooded scale 1:4 model of the invention that was trialled on HMS Druid is now part of the Science Museum Group collection.

With these patents behind her, in 1876 Vansittart delivered a lecture – the first of its type by a woman – to the London Association of Foremen Engineers and Draughtsmen called The Screw Propellor of 1838, and subsequent improvements. This formed the basis of her short biographical book The History of the Lowe Vansittart Propeller and a short extract of the life of the late Mr James Lowe, the successful inventor of screw ships from their first introduction. Published in 1882, a year before her death, it is the most reliable source material for what is known about its author. As Emily Rees explains, one of the aims of the pamphlet ‘is to celebrate the work of her late father, showing her persistent dedication to him after his death’. But, it also has technical descriptions of the invention, while displaying ‘Vansittart’s writing ability and technical knowledge’. For all this, ‘she chooses to present her voice and expertise as a service to the work of a man, rather than claiming it in her own right… Nonetheless, her authority about propulsion methods is clear in the pamphlet.’

Little else is known with any certainty about Vansittart’s engineering career. In her private life, her correspondence reveals that from 1859 until his death in 1873 she conducted a long-term extra-marital affair with politician and writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which was according to some sources common knowledge in both the families involved and the House of Commons, of which Bulwer-Lytton was a member. However, Rees – the most thorough and plausible of commentators on Vansittart’s life – states that it is ‘not clear’ from where the supporting evidence for such a claim comes, and who also puts forward the idea that many of the online accounts about Vansittart ‘contain false or unverifiable information’. She attributes the acceptance of these ‘facts’ to the echo chamber effect of online publishing.

Perhaps the wildest of these is that of the blogger who assumes as gospel that Vansittart had only consented to marry Frederick to conceal his homosexuality; a deal struck in exchange for the restoration of the Lowe family fortune. Further compensation would be in the form of her entitlement to pursue an affair with Bulwer-Lytton as an open secret. There is no evidence for any of this, and yet it circulates. What is known for certain comes from 17 heartfelt letters held in the archives of Hertfordshire County Council which do little more than confirm the affair took place. Despite which, says Rees, ‘the general arc of her life has been reported correctly… we can surmise that her relationship with engineering was deeply personal, stemming from a desire to continue her father’s work and protect his legacy’.

Vansittart’s correspondence with Bulwer-Lytton hardly foretells the tragic end that awaited her. While she mentions persistent ill health, and we learn that her doctor had advised her against taking a trip to America to promote her patent in 1870, there is nothing to indicate the presence of the ‘acute mania and anthrax’ recorded in her medical case notes detailing her final illness. Her admission to the Newcastle upon Tyne City Lunatic Asylum, from where she would never be released, occurred following a visit to the Tynemouth Exhibition in late 1882. According to Rees, she was found by police wandering the streets in a state of confusion and exhibiting signs of mania and violent tendencies: ‘but there is little in the notes about how it began and its nature’.

Vansittart died on 8 February 1883. Her obituary in the Journal of the London Association of Foremen Engineers and Draughtsmen mourned her death of a woman ‘cheery and thoughtful for the happiness of others’ with the words: ‘she was a remarkable personage with a great knowledge of engineering matters and considerable versatility of talent’.