This week we celebrate 100 years of British Women being able to vote. Lydia was born 1827, she never went to school, she was educated at home (which was not unusual in those times) and very early on passionate about botany and astronomy. Lydia was a women advocate and founded the Ladies’ Literary Society in Manchester, to encourage intellectual curiosity in women. She asked Darwin to send one of his paper to her society, and from then on regularly corresponded with him, sending him sample of plants and contributing routinely to his work (I will do a post about women who helped Darwin later on). In 1962 Lydia won a gold medal for a paper on horticulture (the study of plants). Lydia campaigned tirelessly to allow women to vote, especially unmarried women (most agreed that if women could vote, then it would only be married women, because the husband could advise them). Sadly Lydia died long before women were allowed to vote (1918)