Rebecca Lowry née Delvalle

Rebecca Lowry was brought up in Featherstone Street, Finsbury. The Delvalle family were ‘small but prosperous’ snuff and tobacco merchants who had been living in London since the 1730s, if not earlier.

Rebecca married the engraver and geologist Wilson Lowry, a founding member of the Geological Society. The couple moved in a circle of artists and leading scientists. Rebecca, like her husband, achieved some distinction as an engraver, but according to her obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine was ‘celebrated chiefly for her acquirements in the sciences, but more especially mineralogy’.

This was at the time a field of growing importance in the range of scientific endeavour. She gave their daughter – Delvalle Elizabeth Rebecca Varley née Lowry, who succeeded her in distinction as a mineralogist – a home education in science which was denied to most women of her generation, and gave private instruction similarly to a generation of fortunate girls and women.