Irene Jean Curnow (active 1921–30)
/A Forgotten Internal Map Historian
In researching the single-volume, book-length narratives of the history of cartography, I encountered The World Mapped (1930) by one I. J. Curnow. I have dug around a bit to find out more about this author, discovering that she was a geographer who taught cartography. What follows is a brief account of her academic career, as far as I can reconstruct it through the wonders of the Internet, and an analysis of her book. Clearly, much more work would be needed in several archives to properly fill out this inadequate sketch. (The Royal Geographical Society archives contain SSC/29, “I J Curnow, Papers relating to cartography.”)
Irene Curnow
Traces of Curnow’s career are fragmentary:
She appears, for example, in several advertisements for the geography program at University College London [UCL]. In the first, she appears as just “Irene Curnow, Assistant” (Geography Teacher 10, no. 6 [1920]: end matter), but in later ones she is “Irene J. Curbow, B.A., Assistant in Cartography” (Geography Teacher 11, no. 5 (1922): 324; idem, 12, no. 1 [1923]: [41]; idem, 12, no. 2 [1923]: [113]).
She was elected to the Royal Geographical Society at its meeting of 4 June 1923 (Geographical Journal 62, no. 1 [1923]: 66).
Thereafter, she is twice identified in both The Victoria University of Manchester. Calendar, 1923–1924 (Manchester: University Press, 1923), 22 and 69, and again in the same for 1924–1925 (1924), 24 and 70: first, in an advertisement for “Ashburne Hall (Hall of Residence for Women Students)” which lists as resident, “Miss I. J. Curnow, B.A. (University Lecturer in Cartography)”; and, second, in the list of professors and lecturers is the entry for geography: “Reader, W. H. Barker, B.Sc. (London) | Assistant Lecturer, Irene J. Curnow, B.A. (London).”
From these references it seems that Curnow received her BA in Geography from UCL in 1920, and then stayed on as an instructor in cartography before moving to Manchester in 1923–25.
This corroborates a brief note by Hugh Clout in his biography of Prof. Lionel William Lyde in Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies 30 (2011): 15. Clout recorded that Lyde had trained several women at UCL, notably Margaret Shackleton, and then:
Less well known was Irene Jean Curnow, who researched aspects of modern cartography that led to a doctorate from the University of London in 1925 (Curnow 1930). After assisting Lyde she taught geography at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.
The University of London (“Senate House”) Library identifies Curnow’s dissertation as
I. J. Curnow, “Aspects of Modern Cartography (PhD thesis, University of London, 1925).
It is not certain that Clout was correct to think that this dissertation was the same work as the history of cartography published in 1930.
[On a personal note, I received my BSc from UCL, and worked in part with Hugh Clout.]
While in Manchester, Curnow published two essays on the contemporary mapping of Africa:
“Topographical Mapping in Africa,” Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society 41 (1925): 32–37.
“The Progress of Topographic Mapping in the Gold Coast.” Scottish Geographical Magazine 43, no. 2 (1927): 91–97.
Despite the PhD, Curnow continued to be called “Miss” when she then went to the USA as a visiting lecturer at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., and also at Wellesley College. Here the evidence is in part from the newsletter of the Clark geography students:
Monadnock Magazine 1, no. 1 (Jan. 1927): [4]: “Miss I. J. Curnow, (Ph.D., London) formerly lecturer in Geography, University College, London, and in the Victoria University, Manchester, has been special lecturer at Wellesley College this year. She is also assisting Dr. Atwood in his course on Regional Physiography. While at Clark she is auditing various courses.”
Given that this newsletter was issued in January 1927, “this year” would imply that she was resident in 1926–27. A later entry in the same newsletter, however, referred to her time at Clark as 1927–28. Perhaps she was there for two years.
Monadnock Magazine 21, no. 2 (May 1947), 7 (alumni news): “Irene J. Curnow (Mrs. C. Marsingall-Thomas) (’27–’28) at home, coaching or sometimes even lecturing. Northwood, Middx., England. WS [wartime services]: Section Officer, WAAF Intelligence. (Mrs. Massingall-Thomas wrote a very interesting letter, predicted the miserable winter which hit England. It is hoped that this summer will find some improvement!)”
Update 24 August 2022. I think that Irene’s husband was Cyril Marsingall-Thomas (1893–1965), an electrical engineer. She and her husband traveled to Singapore in 1930; the Monadnock Magazine 4, no. 2 “alumni number” (June 1930), [5], noted that before returning to London she had given a lecture to the Malayan Teachers’ Association on “As Seen On the Map.” The issue identified their address as 3 Grosvenor Place, London, in the very heart of the West End.
While in the USA, Curnow gave an historically inflected paper to the 23rd meeting of the Association of American Geographers, held in Philadelphia 28–30 December 1926. [n1] The Geographical Review 17, no. 2 (1927): 311, recorded that “Miss I. J. Curnow (introduced), a pupil of Professor Lyde of the University of London and now lecturing at Wellesley College, contrasted the standard topographic maps of Great Britain and the United States.” The Annals of the AAG 17, no. 1 (1927): 24–25, recorded the abstract:
I. J. CURNOW (Miss).—(Introduced by Chas. F. Brooks.)
A Contrast of the Standard Topographic Maps of Great Britain and the United States of America.
The standard maps of the Ordnance Survey and of the United States Geological Survey originated in different cartographic epochs. The first Ordnance Survey map dates from 1801, that is to say, the first sheets of the standard 1/63360 were published while methods of topographic surveying and mapping were still in an experimental stage. The U. S. Geological Survey was instituted in 1879. By this time the possibilities of topographic maps were more accurately known, more widely appreciated, and the American cartographic department was able to benefit by the experiences of others.
The incentives underlying the work of the two bureaus were different. In Great Britain military needs gave the first impetus to topographic mapping, and proved the dominating influence in the evolution of cartography. In the United States economic considerations were paramount.
Different geographic conditions have conduced to a different evolution and different results. Great Britain is a small area, long settled, with no great range of height.. Therefore it was feasible to attempt large scale accurate maps of the whole country. Such a policy was not warranted in the United States. The resultant differences between the standard maps of Great Britain and the United States are justifiable.
The Ordnance Survey presents the most varied, the most complete and the most accurate series of small scale topographic maps in the world: while the large scale issues are unique in their uniform excellence and accessibility. The U. S. Geological Survey presents a number of maps as special responses to the varied needs of a country in the making.
And Curnow soon published the paper under her married name—”Mrs. Thomas (Née Miss I. J. Curnow)" and still not recognized as holding a PhD—as “Some Contrasts in Standard Topographic Maps of Great Britain and the United States of America,” Geography 15, no. 4 (1929): 274–81.
[The Geographical Review report’s labeling of Curnow as “Miss” was in marked contrast to the reference to “Dr.” Helen Strong in the same passage. The difference perhaps related to age or fixity of career; see n1.]
In this period, Curnow also published a couple of reviews in Economic Geography 4 (1928): 209–10, 5 (1929): 207. Her last project, published in 1930 under her maiden name, was The World Mapped (1930). From the 1947 reference in the Monadnock Magazine, she seems to have settled into domestic middle/upper-class life in the UK, although she contributed to the war effort like so many other geographers.
Update 24 August 2022. Prof. Clout just sent me images of two entries from the RGS Minute Books which refer to Curnow.
14 March 1922: Curnow gave a lecture to the RGS on “Western China,” based on her childhood experiences in the region; her father was in the audience. Daughter of a missionary?
24 November 1927: Curnow addressed the RGS on “New England,” based on her experiences during her visit to the USA, “with numerous humourous touches.”
The World Mapped
Curnow’s approach to map history was that of the practicing or academic map maker. Whereas traditional map historians were interested in geographical and world maps and their depiction of geographical information up to about 1800, internal map historians like Curnow were especially interested in the practices of map making and in the development of finer resolution map making. She continued this interest in her 1930 book. Here’s the title page:
Curnow’s small book was published by Sifton Praed, not “S. Praed” as one unfortunately finds in library catalogs but the company founded 1907 by Alfred Sifton and Francis Praed, and which they were calling “The Map House” by the end of the 1920s. Although now claimed to be the “oldest specialist antiquarian map seller” in London, Sifton Praed were actually general publishers and sellers of maps and geographically related books. In 1975, the Map House was still primarily interested in modern maps and guidebooks, but the low profit margin and high labor costs then led the directors to refocus “The Map House” on antiquarian maps (Jonathan Potter in 2016 lecture).
Sifton Praed’s publishing of Curnow’s book places it within a still new drive to make early maps appealing to a more popular clientele. The aesthetics of interior design changed significantly after World War I, and early maps became very popular as decoration. A number of antiquarian dealers published small histories of cartography to inform and cultivate a map-collecting public. Perhaps the first were Louis A. Holman’s Old Maps and Their Makers Considered from the Historical and Decorative Standpoints: A Survey of a Huge Subject in a Small Space (Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed & Co., 1925; 2nd ed., 1926; 3rd ed., 1936), and Arthur L. Humphreys’ Old Decorative Maps and Charts (London: Halton & Truscott Smith, New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1926), which reproduced many maps sold by Henry N. Stevens to A. G. H. Macpherson, whose collection became the core of the map library in the National Maritime Museum. (Humphrey’s book was republished as Antique Maps and Charts [London: Bracken Books, New York: Dorset Press, 1989].)
But whereas those books were more about the kinds of maps that were deemed collectible—the printed maps produced in Renaissance and eighteenth-century Europe—Curnow offered a more academic take on the sweep of the history of cartography from Antiquity to the early twentieth century and she was especially concerned with the development of surveying. That is, she addressed the history of the kinds of maps that Sifton Praed published and sold. Curnow began with a chapter on “The ‘Common Problems’” of determining distance and direction, diverted into questions of geographical and world mapping in Antiquity and the medieval era (repeating the erroneous claim that medieval geographies believed the earth to be flat; pp. 41–42), and then settled into a more internal history of the making of maps from experience and observation: the route and detailed maps produced by the Crusades, medieval marine maps, the great discoveries, and then the mapping of nations and empires. (There was a penultimate chapter on “map-making as a business concern” that addressed generally collectible maps.)
It might surprise some people to know that Curnow’s history of map making techniques and surveying was really rather pioneering. There were essays that provided summary narratives of the history of cartography, such as that by E. G. Ravenstein, Charles F. Close, and Alexander Ross Clarke under “Map” in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 17: 629–63, 11th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), but a full-length study was still lacking. The common sentiment was expressed by one “A.D.” in a review of Curnow’s book:
There is urgent need of an adequate history of Cartography, for up till now one has had to refer to numerous pamphlets, articles, etc., in various publications. (Geography 17, no. 3 [1932]: 232)
Curnow did not herself claim to be fulfilling this need, but even so, her work must be acknowledged as the first step in that direction. Both A. D. and E. G. R. Taylor (Geographical Journal 77, no 5 [1931]: 485) appreciated the attempt yet found the popular approach and limited size led to oversimplification and some errors.
To end, here is Curnow’s reproduction of a part of the OS 1-inch map. This detail happens to cover part of my old stomping grounds as a kid (my mother’s primary school would be built just off the detail’s lower edge, across from the cross [chapel or church without spire or tower, which happens to be where George Vancouver is buried]):
Notes
n1. The account of the meeting in the Geographical Review indicates that this would have been an interesting meeting to attend, full of internal map history:
Three papers and the presidential address dealt with cartography. Professor Goode’s address, given at the evening dinner on December 29 in joint session with Section E of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and entitled "The Map as a Record of Progress in Geography," presented an admirable rapid survey of the whole development of cartography in all its phases. Mr. S. W. Boggs (introduced), geographer of the State Department, presented "A New Equal Area Projection for a Map of the World." This projection is an interrupted net outwardly similar to Professor Goode's sinusoidal projection (see Geogr. Rev., Vol. 14, 1924, p. 293), intermediate between it and the homolographic (Mollweide's). Dr. Helen M. Strong of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce dealt with "Maps and Business." After a brief survey of the development of cartography among the trading nations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries she dealt with the use of maps in modern business, with special reference to the activities of the Bureau of whose staff she is a member. Miss I. J. Curnow (introduced), a pupil of Professor Lyde of the University of London and now lecturing at Wellesley College, contrasted the standard topographic maps of Great Britain and the United States.
