Elizabeth Catherine Thomas Carne

Elizabeth Catherine Thomas Carne (1817–1873), author, fifth daughter of Joseph Carne, F.R.S., was born at Rivière House, in the parish of Phillack, Cornwall, on 16 Dec. 1817, and baptised in Phillack church on 15 May 1820.cite web | last = Boase | first =G.C. | authorlink = | coauthors = | title =Carne, Elizabeth Catherine Thomas (1817–1873) | work = Dictionary of National Biography Vol. IX | publisher =Smith, Elder & Co. | date = 1886 | url = http://www.oxforddnb.com/templates/olddnb.jsp?articleid=4713 | format = HTML | doi = | accessdate = 2007-11-21]

Charitable works

On her father's death in 1858, having come into an ample fortune, she spent considerable sums in charitable purposes, gave the site for the Elizabeth or St. Paul's schools which were opened at Penzance on 2 Feb. 1876, founded schools at Wesley Rock, Carfury, and Bosullow, three thinly populated districts in the neighbourhood of Penzance, and built a museum in which to exhibit to the public a fine collection of minerals which she had inherited from her parent.

Geologist and author

She was the head of the Penzance bank from 1858 to her decease. She inherited her father's love of geology, and wrote four papers in the ‘Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall:’ ‘Cliff Boulders and the Former Condition of the Land and Sea in the Land's End district,’ ‘The Age of the Maritime Alps surrounding Mentone,’ ‘On the Transition and Metamorphosis of Rocks,’ and ‘On the Nature of the Forces that have acted on the Formation of the Land's End Granite.’ She was also, unusually for a woman at that time, elected a member of the RGSC. [Denise Crook, ‘Carne, Elizabeth Catherine Thomas (1817–1873)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4713 accessed 21 Nov 2007] ]

Many articles were contributed by her to the ‘London Quarterly Review,’ and she was the author of several books.

Death

She died at Penzance on 7 Sept. 1873, and was buried at Phillack on 12 Sept. Her funeral sermon was preached in St. Mary's Church, Penzance, by the Rev. Prebendary Hedgeland on 14 Sept.

Works

She was the author of:

‘Three Months' Rest at Pau in the Winter and Spring of 1859,’ brought out with the pseudonym of John Altrayd Wittitterly in 1860.

‘Country Towns and the place they fill in Modern Civilisation,’ 1868.

‘England's Three Wants,’ an anonymous book, 1871.

‘The Realm of Truth,’ 1873.

References

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