Mary Caroline Hughes

She acted as a chaperone to Cambridge University undergraduate female students enabling them to go on geology field trips for the first time.

Her father was a cleric educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, who in the 1840s had travelled widely through Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, the Ottoman Empire and Egypt.

However, female students were not allowed to go into the field with men without a chaperone so Mary accompanied them so they could attend fieldwork, in addition to lectures and practical classes.

Mary attended International Geological Congress with her husband in Berlin (1885), London (1888), Washington (1891), Zurich (1894) and Russia (1897).

This collection contains personal correspondence and notes, diaries, and scrapbooks relating to tours and visits made abroad in the 1880s and 1890s including the International Geological Congress.