Cultivators: Helen Gwynne-Vaughan

Commandant Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan (1879-1967) was an acclaimed botanist who studied and published papers and textbooks on the reproduction of fungi. She also had a military career in both World Wars, and was appointed the first Chief Controller of the Auxiliary Territorial Service. 

For Further Reading: 

• Fungi and the forces: The pioneering life of Helen Gwynne-Vaughan
• Helen Gwynne-Vaughan: An extraordinary botanist whose problems of identity still confront female scientists today

This month, we’re talking about cultivators — women who nurtured, cross-pollinated, experimented, or went to great lengths to better understand and protect the natural world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello. I'm Carmenborca Courio, a senior producer at Wondermedia Network.
I'm so excited to be guest hosting this episode of Womanica.
This month, we're talking about cultivators, women who've nurtured, cross pollinated, experimented,
or went to great lengths to better understand and protect
the natural world. A woman stands in her laboratory. She

(00:25):
delicately places a sample of fungi on a glass slide,
leans down and squints through one eye. She zooms in
to see dozens of small circles clustered around each other,
grouped like tiny constellations. But this scientist isn't confined to
her lab. When needed, she slips off her lab coat

(00:46):
and buttons up a military jacket. From classrooms to army offices.
Today's Womaniquin defied expectations for women of her era and
took charge. Please welcome Helen Gwyn Vaughan, Helen Charlotte. Isabella
Fraser was born in London in eighteen seventy nine. Her

(01:07):
family were military aristocrats. When she was still young, her
father passed away and her mother remarried. Her new stepfather
was a diplomat, which meant that Helen mostly grew up
abroad and was educated by governesses. When she was seventeen,
she returned to England to complete her schooling at Cheltenham
Ladies College. Her days as a debutante were filled with dances,

(01:29):
tea parties, travel, charity work and rubbing elbows with the
upper class. But a life spent lounging in parlor rooms
with other socialites did not interest Helen. She convinced her
family to let her pursue higher education, and soon she
was off to King's College to become a scientist. She
wanted to study zoology, but was banned from entering the

(01:50):
field because it was quote unladylike, so she chose botany
instead and graduated with an honors degree in nineteen o four.
She got her first job in the field, assisting botanist
Margaret Benson at the All women's Royal Holloway College. During
her time there, she also helped organize the college's women's
suffrage society. In nineteen oh seven, she received her doctorate

(02:12):
with a focus on mycology, the study of fungi. She
applied for teaching posts and eventually landed a position in
nineteen oh nine at Birkbeck College in London as head
of the botany department. Being so young and the only woman,
she was a bit of a lone wolf. Colleagues perceived
her as aggressive and hyper focused on her career, which
was considered strange behavior for a woman at the time.

(02:35):
There was no denying she was an oddity in her field,
as unique as the fung guy she was studying. Despite
her aloof attitude on the job, her romantic relationship with
another science professor still bloomed. Helen fell in love with
David gwyn Vaughan, a specialist in plant anatomy and the
predecessor of her position, and they got married in nineteen eleven,

(02:58):
but their lives as newlyweds were unusual. David had a
position at the University of Belfast, but Helen chose not
to follow her new husband to Ireland. The couple decided
to be long distance so Helen could still pursue her
own career in London. The arrangement wasn't easy, but they
still managed to spend six months of the year together.

(03:20):
Helen sailed alone through the Irish Sea's choppy gray waters
to reunite with the man she loved, but just as
their marriage was taking root, tragedy struck in nineteen fifteen,
David caught tuberculosis and died. Keeping a stiff upper lip,
Helen buried herself in her work until an even bigger
disruption arrived at her doorstep. World War One marked the

(03:46):
first time Britain allowed women into its armed forces. Women
served as nurses, cooks, cleaners, and handled administrative tasks throughout
the war. In nineteen seventeen, Helen walked out of the
laboratory and into the army offices. Due to her family's
military connections, she was appointed Chief Controller of the Women's
Army Auxiliary Corps, or the Whack. Her first task was

(04:10):
to design the uniforms these women would wear. Helen wanted
a design that communicated respectability and discipline. Whack women marched
in lockstep in their simple black shoes. Helen designed their
coats without a breast pocket and with their skirts exactly
twelve inches from the ground. Their caps each had a
small black veil attached in the back. With ten thousand

(04:33):
women in the Whack under her leadership in France, Helen
ran a tight operation. Much of her work was managing
men's expectations for the women in her charge that they
were weak and only there to have relations with male soldiers. Instead,
she advocated for her ranks to have more responsibility. During
the four brutal years of the Great War, the WAX

(04:55):
membership swelled from ten thousand to forty thousand, much of
it credited to Helen's leadership. By the time Germany surrendered,
Helen had advanced in the ranks. First she was transferred
to the Women's Royal Air Force or the WRA, and
became one of the first women to wear the Military
Commander insignia for the British Empire. She also became the

(05:16):
first woman awarded military Dame Commander of the Order of
the British Empire. In nineteen nineteen, Air Vice Marshal Sir
William Sefton Branker was quoted saying the WRA was the
best disciplined and best turned out women's organization in the country.
This remarkable achievement was due to Dame Helen gwyn Vaughan.

(05:38):
Once the war ended, Helen marched right back into the
laboratory and continued her teaching and research. Helen got back
into the weeds of fungi reproduction. Hunched over in her
lab drawing samples and drafting sketches of what she saw.
She worked to understand the germination process of fungi and
how long microscopic filaments called haifi branched together to form

(06:00):
the bodies of fungi. In nineteen twenty two, she published
her first textbook. Helen's work zeroed in on how fungi
are structured, reproduce, and interact with other organisms. She continued
to publish numerous other articles and another textbook. In nineteen
twenty eight, she became president of the Mycological Society, and

(06:21):
a year later she was made a Dame again, this
time for her scientific research. Now a double dame and
an acclaimed author, Helen was ready when war came knocking
a second time. When World War II broke out in
nineteen thirty nine, Helen once again put down her tools
and dusted off her military code. This time she was

(06:43):
put in charge of the Auxiliary Territorial Service. Her new
rank basically made her a major general, overseeing over two
hundred thousand women. During this time, she advocated for female
volunteers to earn full military status just like men. Helen
went back back and forth between the quiet hum of
her lab and the roar of war until she returned

(07:04):
full time to Birkbeck College in nineteen forty one. Although
she was a respected teacher and brought in many other
experts for her students, Helen also had a very stern
persona in the workplace. She preferred to wear more austere
and masculine attire while at work, gray blazer, white shirt
and a black necktie. She ran her lab like a
military office, was impatient and demanded order and discipline from

(07:28):
her students and colleagues. That attitude didn't always translate well
to the classroom. Although she continued to win national honors,
her personal life seemed to get smaller and more isolated.
She retired from teaching in nineteen forty four and served
as an honorary secretary for the Soldiers, Sailors and Air
Force Association in London until nineteen sixty two. Helen died

(07:52):
in nineteen sixty seven at her home in Sussex. She
was eighty eight years old. Helen was a woman always
split between two contrasting worlds, but she made significant impact
and progress in both. Not only did she pave the
way for military careers for British women, her research on
mycology is still vital to today's scientists. She even had

(08:15):
a few species of fungi named after her. All month,
We're talking about cultivators. For more information, find us at
Facebook and Instagram at Wamanica Podcast special thanks to Jenny
and Liz Kaplan for letting me guest host today's show.
Talk to you Tomorrow.