Map Worlds: A History of Women in Cartography

5. Cartography from the Margins: From the Early Twentieth Century to World War II

75 CHAPTER 5 Cartography from the Margins: From the Early Twentieth Century to World War II Aside from its exciting technological innovations, the nineteenth-century map world saw the early glimmerings of a new kind of cartography stimulated from the margins: namely, the rise of thematic, environmental, and Aboriginal maps in North America. Whether as engravers, geography teachers, colourists, or embroiderers, women offered their traditional talents to the field of cartography, which was finding its feet in a new map world as a consequence of new technologies and political aspirations echoing from efforts to colonize the world and from building the ideals of citizenship . A few women, however, stood outside this particular political ambit because of personal circumstances, opportunities, temperaments, and chances. This chapter recounts the narratives of five women (as well as the group of women cartographers employed during World War II) who worked on the margins of cartography in the United States, Canada, and Britain. Florence Kelley (1859–1932) was distressed by the experiences of immigrants in Chicago and channelled that distress into creating thematic maps that eventually became important tools in bringing about a sea change in policies . Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932), deeply influenced by German thought, took to creating maps that were among the first to document and show how the environment and humans interact. Her approach constituted CHAPTER 5 76 the first foray into a new field: human geography. Mina Hubbard (1870– 1956) became an accidental cartographer in Labrador after accompanying her husband, who died on his mapping expedition. She completed his work with brilliance. Mary Adela Blagg of Britain offers us a vision of life fully dedicated to standardizing the names of features on the moon that have withstood the test of time for a whole generation, despite the fact she was not formally trained in any relevant field, including cartography. Phyllis Pearsall, another untrained in cartography, devoted her life to creating the highly popular A–Z city maps along traditional cartographic ways. Finally, we will look at “Millie the Mapper,” the name for young women who joined the war effort as cartographers. There were no doubt other women of this time who made notable achievements in this field, but whose record of accomplishments has not yet surfaced or is permanently lost. THE THEMATIC MAPS OF FLORENCE KELLEY (1859–1932) The nineteenth century witnessed the birth of a particular map genre that would later obtain a strong niche in cartography: the thematic map. Meteorology , hydrography, geology, and natural history—all new sciences in the century—were celebrated and became the object of thematic maps. But there was another side to the nineteenth century that aroused concern and worry: the social ravages brought on by industrialization. This problem was left to a number of social reformers and activists, mainly women, who seized upon the idea of using maps to create reforms to assuage these ravages . In their minds, thematic maps would be ideal conveyors of knowledge and major sources for raising the consciousness of politicians and social decision makers. Mapping epidemics (resulting in, for example, the famed cholera map by John Snow in 1854), population dynamics, and urban slums became de rigueur agents of change and reform. Following Arthur H. Robinson’s description (1982: ix), the thematic map portrays the “geographical character of a great variety of physical, social, and economic phenomena.” The birth of the thematic map represents an “intellectual upheaval” (Robinson, 1982: x), because, as mentioned above, all kinds of new fields accompanied its birth. The thematic map “showed spatial distribution of one or several related characters or themes, usually of a physical, social, or economic nature” (Chancy, 1996: 75). The thematic map, according to Helen Wallis and M.H. Edney (2003: 1112), was invented in the latter part of the seventeenth century.1 FROM THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY TO WORLD WAR II 77 Florence Kelley was one of the most dedicated social activists of the “Progressive Era” in the United States (1890s to the 1920s), which sought political reform and the end of corruption.2 In her effort to end poverty, Kelley (along with others) produced an innovative series of Chicago maps that involved demographic and economic data presented in a fresh way. Justice Felix Frankfurter of the United States Supreme Court called her “A woman who had probably the largest single share in shaping the social history of the United States during the first thirty years of the...