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.’