📍Lyme Regis Museum, Bridge Street, Lyme Regis DT7 3QA, UK
1799 – 1847“I was born in a house on this spot in Lyme Regis, on the bridge over the River Lim, in 1799. My father, Richard, was a carpenter and cabinet-maker, and my mother, Molly, worked hard to keep us going; we were poor, and many of my brothers and sisters did not survive childhood. As a baby I survived a lightning strike that killed the woman holding me and two others under a tree on the town's field, and people in Lyme liked to say that it was what made me so lively and clever. My father taught my brother Joseph and me to walk the beaches and cliffs after storms, searching the crumbling blue lias for curiosities, the fossils that visitors would buy. We sold them from a table outside our house. When my father died in 1810, leaving us in debt, fossil hunting became our living. In 1811 Joseph found a strange skull, and over the following months I uncovered the rest of the skeleton: it was the first complete ichthyosaur known to science, and I was twelve. Later I found the first plesiosaur and the first British pterosaur. I had little schooling, but I taught myself geology and anatomy, copying scientific papers and dissecting fish to understand the creatures I found. Scientists came to our shop and walked the beach with me, though as a woman I was never admitted to their societies. With my dog Tray I went out in all weathers. Today the Lyme Regis Museum stands where our house and shop once were, and a statue of me, with a hammer and Tray at my side, looks out over the town and the Jurassic Coast where I found my monsters.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today