Abstract During the first half of the 20th century, over a third of British palaeobotanists working on Carboniferous plants were women; neither before nor after this period have women played such a prominent role in this field. Few of these women were able to develop significant careers within the subject. They nevertheless produced some of the most innovative work in the field, pioneering work in plant phylogeny, cuticle studies, biostratigraphy, morphological variation, and anatomical thin sectioning. Two factors were critical for allowing this work to develop: the support of a small number of male colleagues, notably F. W. Oliver, W. H. Lang and D. H. Scott; and the existence of colleges that specifically supported women's education, including Newnham College (Cambridge), and Bedford, Royal Holloway, Westfield and University Colleges (London).

Abstract James Lomax was born in Radcliffe, near Bury, Lancashire, the son of a colliery manager. After a meagre formal education he too began work in the mines. There his interest in geology was aroused by the abundant fossil plant remains in the Coal Measure rocks. He became particularly keen on the applications of the microscope to geological science and developed some skill in the production of the thin sections necessary for geological microscopy. Lomax was initially encouraged by W.C. Williamson of Owens College, for whom he began to prepare fossil plant thin sections around 1885. Ultimately, Lomax gave up his job as a collier and became a full-time commercial manufacturer of geological thin sections. James Lomax was aided by his son Joseph in a business that produced sections from the complete range of geological materials; however, he became especially noted for his fossil plant preparations. From 1906 the business was rather more formally constituted as the Lomax Palaeobotanical Company Limited, and received sponsorship from a group of academic palaeobotanists for whom Lomax collected and prepared fossil plant sections. The output from the Lomax workshops was a significant component of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of palaeobotany and the evidence for that is still present in the collections of many museums and academic institutions. The business model under which Lomax operated, however, did not always serve the best interests of academic research.