Caroline Pellew (b. 1882): JIHI Student; Geneticist

Caroline Pellew was a Horticultural Associate of University College, Reading (from 1907). This meant that she had completed a 2-year Diploma course in Horticulture and had satisfied the examiners of the Oxford and Reading joint committee. At Reading she worked with botany professor Frederick Keeble investigating the genetics and chemistry of flower colour. In 1910 she was appointed to JIHI as a Minor Student (at £50 p.a.) and worked as an assistant to Bateson, especially on Pisum (peas). Bateson had brought a collection of peas from Cambridge that had been used for early tests of Mendelism, and also a smaller collection of unusual forms (not cultivated varieties) from the Vilmorin family to study linkage. From 1911 Pellew worked with Bateson on coupling and repulsion and the nature of rogues in peas. In 1919 a report of this work was communicated to the Royal Society. By 1920 Bateson and Caroline were using Pisum material to test T. H. Morgan’s chromosome theory. Caroline collaborated with Bateson from 1910-1926 and afterwards with the Institution’s cytologist W C F Newton. In 1917 she was promoted to Student (at £200) and in 1929 she was described as ‘Pomologist to the Institution’. Caroline also acted as Secretary and Librarian of the Institution, and when the Genetical Society was founded in 1919 she became the Society’s secretary. C. D. Darlington later described her as ‘Professor Bateson’s right-hand man’. She was from 1913 to 1940 the author of numerous papers on the genetics of Pisum and Primula. In her last 10 years at JIHI she worked mainly on the genetics and cytology of peas. Caroline’s appointment was terminated in 1941 owing to a reduction in income at JIHI and she moved to Cambridge.