Beatrice Blackwood

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Beatrice Blackwood (1889-1975)

Alison Petch
160-204 minutos
Frances Larson
This document was written during the ESRC funded Relational

Museum project between 2002 and 2006 by Frances Larson (one
of the researchers on the project). The project looked at the
networkers of collectors and museum staff who had formed the
collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum up to 1945 and the history of
the Museum up to 1945. This document reflects those interests.
1998.356.1 Beatrice Blackwood
This document contains:
chronological account of Blackwood’s career
very brief notes on her friendships with other notable

anthropologists
notes on some people’s memories of Blackwood
bibliography for books and articles on Blackwood
list of Blackwood’s main publications
1889-1907
Beatrice Mary Blackwood was born on 3 May 1889 at her parents’

home, 3 Marlborough Hill, Marylebone, London. She was the eldest
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of three children of James Blackwood (1822-1911), a publisher and

descendant (although not a direct descendant – see entry for 1953,
below) from the founder of Blackwell’s Magazine, and his wife,
Mary (1859-1953), who was a nurse. Beatrice had one sister, Mary,
and one brother, James. She was educated in London at Wycombe
House School, and Paddington and Maida Vale High School
(Knowles 2004; PRM biogs). The family holidayed on the Isle of
Wight, and Blackwood remembered seeing Queen Victoria there
every year as a child (Penniman 1976a: 321). Blackwood was sent
to finishing school in Germany. She became fluent in German and
studied Greek and Latin while there (Penniman 1976a: 321). Years
later, while in Bougainville in 1930, and faced with the problem of
transforming one of her skirts into a more practical pair of breeches,
she regretted her ‘mis-spent youth, when I ran away and hid, in
order to read ‘Robinson Crusoe’ or ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’,
instead of attending the dressmaking lessons my mother was so
anxious to give me’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 2,
letter 23, 8 June 1930).
1908
Blackwood won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford, in

1908 and read the Honours School of English, including the
etymology of the Scandinavian and German languages. (Some of
her notes on European linguistics survive in PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 17.)
1912
She was awarded a second-class honours degree in English

language and literature in 1912. She also met Marya Czaplicka
during the academic year 1911-12. Czaplicka was at Somerville
College working on her Diploma in Anthropology at the time. She
was mentored by R.R. Marett, and she was to prove instrumental in
opening Blackwood’s eyes to anthropological research (see below;
PRM ms collections Blackwood papers, box 33, letter to Antoni
Kuczynskiy, 15 March 1971)
1915-16
Blackwood met Czaplicka again, at the house of a mutual friend,

shortly after the Polish woman’s return from a year’s
anthropological fieldwork in Siberia in 1915. Blackwood later
remembered: ‘In course of conversation I learned that she was
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having difficulty in preparing her material for publication. I offered to

help her in my spare time, and we worked in London until the
Autumn of 1916 when she took up the post of Mary Ewart Lecturer
in Ethnology at Oxford, with residence at Lady Margaret Hall. She
persuaded me to come to Oxford, which I was the more willing to
do as it gave me the opportunity of taking a course in anthropology,
in which I had become interested while working with her. Our
collaboration continued until she left for the U.S.A. in 1919.’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers, box 33, letter to Antoni
Kuczynskiy, 15 March 1971)
1916-18
Blackwood had enrolled on Oxford’s Diploma in Anthropology in

Michaelmas Term 1916, as a member of Somerville College. She
received her Certificate in Cultural Anthropology in 1917 and
gained distinction in her Diploma in 1918. As a Diploma student,
Blackwood was taught by Arthur Thomson, Robert Ranulph Marett
and Henry Balfour. Some of her lecture notes survive (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers, box 1 and box 1A), including notes
on Balfour’s lectures on aesthetic arts, industrial arts and
prehistory; Marett’s seminars on social origins, world-wide
ethnology and prehistoric Europe; Thomson’s lessons on human
anatomy; and Dudley-Buxton’s lectures on geographic conditions
and racial types.
While working on the diploma course, Blackwood spent her

vacations excavating in France, and knew the Abbé Breuil and
other prominent French prehistorians. From this time onwards, ‘For
over ten years, she spent all available time in excavating, often just
ahead of the bull-dozer, sites wanted for building in Oxford and in
places within ten miles from it in every direction, working for the
Department of Anatomy and for the Ashmolean Museum, and
collected antiquities from the Late Iron Age, Saxon and Romano-
British periods.’ (Penniman 1976a: 321) Apparently, being small
and adventurous, she would often be the first to explore difficult or
narrow caves and would make sure that it was safe for the others to
follow (ibid).
In 1918, having graduated with distinction from the Diploma course,

Blackwood started work as a research assistant to Arthur Thomson
in the Department of Human Anatomy, in the University Museum
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(Penniman 1976b: 235). She also continued to work with Czaplicka

during this period.
1919
Arthur Thomson became Dr Lees Professor of Anatomy at Oxford

in 1919 (he had joined the Department in 1885 as Lecturer in
Human Anatomy, and had become Extraordinary Professor in 1893,
and Reader in 1901).
1920
Blackwood was promoted to Departmental Demonstrator in the

Human Anatomy Department in 1920 (Knowles 2004). She took her
B.A. and her M.A. on the same day, in 1920, the first year that
women were allowed to graduate from Oxford (Penniman 1976a:
321). In January 1920 she visited Germany, because there are
notes in PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 21 on ‘Talk
with Professor von Luschan at the Völkerkunde Museum, Berlin.
Jan 11 1920’. She studied the Berlin Museum’s cranial collections –
containing over 15,000 skulls – and various casts of skulls made by
von Luschan. He promised to send Blackwood some hair from
Tasmania, and they also discussed the possibility of an exchange
of photographs (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box
21).
1921-22
Blackwood was first listed as Demonstrator in Physical

Anthropology in the Department’s Annual Report for 1921
(University Gazette,14 June 1922), alongside Dudley-Buxton.
Together they ran the Diploma students’ practical classes and
lectures. Dudley-Buxton left in September for a world tour, as Albert
Kahn Travelling Fellow for 1921-22, and Blackwood undertook his
duties in his absence, as Lecturer in Physical Anthropology. During
this period, Blackwood was doing anthropometric work on women
in Oxfordshire villages (University Gazette 13 June 1923, p668).
In May 1921, Blackwood’s friend Marya Czaplicka killed herself, at

the age of 36, while living and lecturing in Bristol. The two women
had worked together in London and then Oxford between 1915 and
1919. Years later, Blackwood remembered hearing about the
incident: ‘I heard of her death, and the manner of it, at the time from
a friend, although I did not know any details of the circumstances
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which led to it. I was, of course, deeply grieved, but not greatly
surprised as I knew from experience that she was a very
temperamental person, and was apt to become depressed when
things went wrong. If no one was at hand to help her through some
difficult period, she would see no other way out.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers, box 33, letter to Antoni Kuczynskiy, 7
April 1971)
Blackwood was made Fellow of the Anthropological Institute of

Great Britain and Ireland on 15 November 1921 (PRM biogs). She
also made her first donation to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1922: a
small selection of 28 emergency banknotes, mostly from Germany,
but also from France, Denmark and Belgium.
1923
Dudley-Buxton resumed his work as Lecturer in Physical

Anthropology when he got back to Oxford from his world tour, with
Blackwood as his assistant. Blackwood continued her research on
women in Oxfordshire villages and on women students. She also
did research on ‘The Grosser Histological Changes occurring in
Normal Tissues after Death’ (University Gazette 13 June 1924, p
700). This work focussed on rabbits (see PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers General Correspondence M-S, letter to Sir
Bernard Spilsbury, 8 March 1928). Blackwood took her B.Sc. in
Anatomy in 1923, with a thesis on embryology (Penniman 1976a:
321).
In the summer of 1923 she travelled to Turkey, and donated a small

group of amulets and currency she had collected there to the Pitt
Rivers Museum when she got back.
1924
In 1924 Blackwood was awarded a Laura Spelman Rockefeller

Fellowship and travelled to North America. She worked under the
guidance of Clark Wissler. Wissler was a psychologist who, under
the influence of Boas at Columbia in the early 1900s, had become
a leading anthropologist and authority on American Indians. He was
an expert in mental and sensory testing, and was therefore
interested in culture and personality. He became an important
mentor for Blackwood in the early part of her career, and he also
mentored Margaret Mead at the American Museum of Natural
History, where he was a curator from 1902-1942. In 1924 (the year
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Blackwood arrived in America) he started doing psychological

research at Yale University, and he became a Professor of
Anthropology there in 1931 (see http://www.indiana.edu/~intell
/wissler.shtml). He developed the notion of the ‘culture area’, as a
way of exploring the regional distribution of culture, which he
applied to Native American groups. Blackwood later used this work
as a key text in her lectures at the PRM on North American
cultures.
According to Schuyler Jones, Marett had put her in touch with

Wissler initially (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
uncatalogued correspondence and memories of Blackwood,
Beatrice Blackwood Lecture, 20 May 1998). While in America she
worked gathering anthropometric data from African-American,
Native American, Asian and white communities. Her work
contributed to a survey being carried out by the National Research
Council, and was to be correlated with mental and sensory tests
also under way. Although she was interested in mental testing,
Blackwood preferred to concentrate on taking physical
measurements because she knew that the mental tests were
constantly being reviewed and changed and she was unsure how
useful they would be. She worked in schools, universities and
training institutions for African-American and Native American
communities.
-----000-----
Race Relations: In the American South in particular Blackwood was

confronted with an extremely segregated and racially prejudiced
society, which at best made her uncomfortable and at worst made
her passionately angry. On 7 April 1925, while based in Nashville,
she noted in her diary,
‘The Ku Klux Klan was out last night – they took a negro woman
out + beat her till she fell unconscious - + not a doctor in the place
dared go near her – just because when out walking with her dog
she met a white woman with her dog + the two dogs fought + the
white woman beat the negro woman’s dog + the negro woman tried
to stop her. This is the Southern United States in the Twentieth
Century. And nothing will be done about it.’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 12)
There was so much suspicion and fear on both sides that
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Blackwood found it very difficult to build up the confidence of the

African-American community, and on 5 June she celebrated the fact
that she had been able to visit a black woman in her home for the
first time and had even helped her to bath her baby. Her efforts to
build up a more intimate relationship with the black community were
met with disbelief and incomprehension by whites. When she told
the choir mistress at Tuskegee Institute, Mrs Lee, about her
friendship with the young mother, Blackwood found her temper
tested:
‘Told her how I had at last obtained the entry I had been wanting
into the homes of the community - + how difficult it had been. She
said that in the first place people couldn’t believe I really would
come - + in the second they were afraid – if the white people of the
district knew that I was being received socially they might come +
burn down the buildings. I said they needn’t know everything that
went on in the campus but she said they always did. The South
makes me want to go out + scream. If I were here on my own
responsibility I’d like to start a row just for the sake of saying ‘I am
from England + I don’t care a damn for your conventions. You
daren’t touch me, + if you touch my friends I’ll make such a row as
there hasn’t been since the Revolution.’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 12)
Her experiences made her aware of the complexities of social,

racial and class divisions, and this may also have made her wary of
mental testing. ‘The question of the mentality of the Negro is a most
difficult one. On the surface one is tempted to say that they are
really intellectually inferior to the white, but one has to remember
that they have only had sixty years of freedom, with every bar to
their progress all the time, their schools are badly equipped and
have no funds to pay first class teachers, their homes are poor, and
most of them can only attend school part of the year because they
have to earn. They have no tradition of culture as the white child
has. Of course there are rich Negroes, most of them students at
Fisk, for example, probably come from fairly well-to-do homes, but
even they have all the barriers of race prejudice against them;
socially and professionally their opportunities are strictly limited.’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 28, letter to Thomson,
6 April 1925)
Blackwood struggled with these questions, but they did not prevent
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her from believing in her anthropometric research as a physical

anthropologist. Her lecture notes – she was responsible, later in
life, for giving ‘ethnographic survey’ lectures that gave basic
information on cultural groups throughout the world – reveal that
she continued to think in terms of classifying people into cultural
and racial groups throughout her career, using features such as
language, skin colour, physical type, material culture and
subsistence traditions to group large sets of people together or set
them apart. At one point she explained in her (undated) lectures,
that ethnography was concerned with the description of groups of
people ‘considered as units, without reference to their possible
relations with other units, making, in fact, a kind of map of
humanity.’ In fact, her work was fuelled by the comparative method.
She defined ethnology as ‘the application of any or all of the
methods of Anthropology to the comparative study of races or
peoples’, after Penniman in One Hundred Years of Anthropology
(see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 21, ‘What is
Anthropology?’ lecture).
In her teaching work, she was quick to point out that ‘race’ had a
purely physical meaning, as ‘a group or people having the majority
of their physical characteristics in common and transmitting them to
their descendants. Moreover, race is the expression of the average
of a population, not the description of any one individual in that
group.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 21, Survey
Course, Lecture I) She quoted G.M. Morant, saying, ‘to the
anthropologist distinctions between races mean no more than very
small differences between averages’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 20, notes on Europe for General Ethnology
lectures).
She warned against political uses of the term ‘race’. Race was a
physical trait, not a cultural or linguistic one: ‘We cannot stress too
often or too strongly the fact…that classifications suggested by
language or other kinds of purely cultural evidence may be entirely
misleading if they are accepted as a guide to racial distinctions. It is
a great pity that so much of the earlier work did not take sufficient
account of this distinction – partly owing to lack of knowledge, and
to the fact that linguistic data is so much more easily collected than
physical data.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 21,
Survey Course, Lecture I) And again, with specific reference to
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Europe: ‘There is no population in Europe to-day which can be

supposed to be sharply divided from neighbouring populations on
account of racial distinctions. All national propaganda based on
presumed racial differences and boundaries is therefore entirely
without any scientific foundation.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers box 20, notes on Europe for General Ethnology lectures).
And, even more specifically, ‘race’ should not be confused with
‘nationality’ which was the product of particular historical and
political events: ‘There is no such thing as an English race or a
German race’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 21.
Survey Course I).
Blackwood spent much of her time issuing cautions and

qualifications during these lectures, because she talked in terms of
racial groups, but was fully aware of the conceptual problems this
kind of classificatory approach fostered. While on the one hand
listing the different traits that could be used to classify groups into
different races – skin colour, hair type, facial type – she was careful
to make the point that there were no hard and fast lines, and
different groups ‘graded’ into each other. ‘All these classifications
are based upon the presence of similarities in a certain group of
physical characters which, however carefully they may be chosen,
are nevertheless arbitrary, and what is put into any group in any
method of classification depends upon which characters are
selected and upon the degree of similarity arbitrarily selected by the
classifier as sufficient to justify inclusion in one class or another.’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 21, Survey Course,
Lecture II). She pointed out that biological research was moving
towards the study of individual traits and genetic inheritance rather
than groups of traits defining cultural units, and noted that
differences did not proceed through ‘jumps’ but graded into each
other (ibid, see also PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 21
‘What is Anthropology?’ lecture). ‘Race’ did not refer to static,
immutable, fixed differences or hard and fast genetic boundaries
between groups, but variations in the relative frequencies of genes
in different parts of the population. Ultimately, mankind shared a
common genetic unity (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
box 21 Survey Course, Lecture II).
And yet, broader classifications were still integral to her teaching: ‘It
is convenient, however, for purposes of study, to make the material
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easier to handle, to divide up the population of Europe on certain

broad lines, and it is permissible, provided that we realize that
these are artificial, and are not established on a solid biological, i.e.
genetical basis.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 20,
notes on Europe for General Ethnology lectures) What was true of
Europe, was also true of Africa, America, Asia, the Pacific, and
Arctic communities; indeed, for the sake of convenience, the whole
world was divided and sub-divided into racial and cultural groups.
What Blackwood’s lectures actually reveal is the fact that the

classification of races, cultures, tribes and regions changed
constantly depending on what criterion was chosen to classify
them. She often talked through the linguistic classification, before
turning to the physical classification, then the technological one,
and so on. It is not altogether surprising that she spent a
considerable amount of time discussing the pros and cons of these
different methods of analysis. And yet, the question of what defined
Melanesians as opposed to Polynesians, or Melanesians as
opposed to Malays and Indonesians, or Malaysians as opposed to
people living in Madagascar, centred and defined her work. Her
lectures were focussed on defining certain groups in relation to
each other. She knew that such classifications were essentially
descriptive, and the real question was how such differences were
caused, ‘how such groups came to be as we find them now’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers box 21, Survey Course, Lecture
II). Such questions were far less easy to answer. How far were
traits the result of culture contact? How far were they due to the
environmental and social conditions? To what extent were they
inherited genetically? What was the best means to use when
defining a certain group in contrast to another? These were issues
Blackwood couldn’t escape and she continued to wrestle with them
throughout her career. No doubt her work amongst the racially
segregated communities of North America in 1924-27 sowed the
seeds for some of these intellectual struggles. It was a political and
social segregation she resisted, but a physical segregation she
worked to uphold. What the physical differences meant, and how all
the different elements – politics, culture, appearance and
economics – worked together was less easy to quantify and
measure.
-----000-----
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Her trip to North America began in September 1924. She left

Liverpool on 13 September and arrived in New York on 23
September. She met with Clark Wissler (1870-1947) two days later
and began to plan her work and travels. Blackwood spent the first
few weeks of her stay based in New York, but also visited friends
near Boston. On 6 October she moved to Princeton and was given
lab space in the Psychology Department under Professor Brigham.
While based in Princeton she worked at the Vineland Training
School in New Jersey (a residential school for ‘feeble-minded’
‘children’ (aged 6 to 60 years), which had become an international
centre for research into mental illness and psychology, see
http://www.vineland.org/history/trainingschool/). She occasionally
visited New York and Boston. She spent Christmas in Atlantic City
with friends, and then travelled to Washington D.C. on 27
December for the American Association for the Advancement of
Science Meetings.
1925
In early January 1925 Blackwood attended the National Research

Council Committee on Human Migration in Washington D.C. From
7 January she was based back in Princeton, although she visited
New York and Boston from there. On 31 January she travelled to
Nashville, Tennessee, where she was to be based until mid-April,
apart from a brief trip to Cleveland, Ohio, to attend the meetings of
the American Association of Anatomists and to meet Dr Wingate
Todd, between 7 and 14 April. In Nashville, she took measurements
at various institutions, including the ‘Agricultural and Industrial State
Normal School for Negroes’ (later, Tennessee State University),
and Fisk University, another black college. On 17 April she travelled
from Nashville to Birmingham, Alabama, where she worked at the
Tuskegee Institute (full name: Tuskegee Negro Normal Institute)
until the end of May. She travelled to New Orleans on 29 May and
explored the area until 3 June before returning to Tuskegee. On 10
June she arrived in Atlanta, Georgia and worked at the Atlanta
University. She visited Rome, Georgia, on 13 June, and then
travelled back to Nashville on 16 June.
From Nashville she travelled up to Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada)

via Chicago on 23 June, arriving in Winnipeg on 25 June. From
here she continued northwards, across Lake Winnipeg, to Norway
House where she worked on the Indian Reserve. From Norway
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House she undertook a trip to Oxford House between 6 and 16

July. On 24 July she arrived back in Winnipeg. She went to the
Regina Annual Exhibition and Fair in Saskatchewan at the end of
July, before moving on to Calgary, Alberta and the Sarcee Reserve
on 29 July, and the Cardston Reserve on 1 August. Between 5 and
11 August she travelled around Lake Louise, Victoria Glacier and
Emerald Lake, west of Calgary, before departing for Vancouver on
11 August. On 18 August she travelled to Queen Charlotte Sound,
British Columbia, then on to Prince Rupert on the following day.
From here she travelled on to Kitwanga, where she worked for
about 5 days, before moving on to Kispoix, where she spent about
a week. On 2 September she travelled to Hazelton, then travelled
back to Prince Rupert four days later. From here, she went to Alert
Bay, where she worked for about a week before going back to
Vancouver.
-----000-----
Cultures in transition: Blackwood became interested in the

possibility of studying cultures in terms of their responses and
adaptations to western influences, as opposed to trying to research
‘original’, pre-contact societies. The northwest coast of Canada
struck her as ripe for this kind of study. She was fully aware of the
contradictory policies practiced in Canada, where people were
forbidden from making new totem poles, while existing ones were
being re-erected, repaired and re-painted for tourism along the
route of the Canadian Pacific Railway. She noticed that
communities were putting up gravestones with totemic designs
because of the ban on constructing totem poles.
‘…while these gravestones are no longer representative of native

art, it seems to me that they are interesting as examples of the
adaptation of old customs to new conditions. I cannot help thinking
that it would make a very interesting contribution to anthropology if
someone made a study of the present-day American Indians simply
with a view to describing the transition from their culture to our own.
We give a great deal of attention to the few really primitive peoples
that remain on the earth, and are inclined to think that when natives
have come into contact with the white man, their interest for
anthropology is past. But the transition stages offer problems not
only of academic but also of practical value, and they ought to be
recorded before they pass away. This is nowhere more strikingly
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illustrated than among these tribes of the north-west coast.’ (PRM

ms collections Blackwood papers box 13, undated lecture on ‘The
Totem Poles of British Columbia’)
-----000-----
On 21 September she set out from Vancouver, arriving in

Minneapolis, Minnesota on 24 September. She was given lab
space at the Anatomy Department in Minneapolis, where she was
based for the next month. On 29 October she travelled to Duluth,
Minnesota and worked at the village of Net Lake, then went on to
the Red Lake Indian Reservation on 6 November. On 20 November
she returned to Winnipeg, and visited the Ogema White Earth
Reservation and the Pipestone Indian Boarding School over the
next ten days, before travelling on to Handrean on 30 November.
On 6 December she went back to Minneapolis, then to Chicago on
14 December. On 17 she left for Hindman, Kentucky, where she
stayed until going on to Washington D.C. and Boston, arriving there
on 31 December.
1926
There is a gap in Blackwood’s diary at the beginning of January. It

resumes on 21 January when she leaves Wellesley, west of
Boston, Massachusetts, where she had friends, and travelled to
Hindman, where she was based and worked in the area until 9
March. On 10 March she arrived in Berea, Kentucky, and worked
there until 24 March when she arrived in Johnson City, Tennessee.
At the end of March she journeyed to Philadelphia, and spent 2-6
April in Atlantic City, before going to Wellesley, Massachusetts, and
staying there until 13 April. From 14 April until 9 May she was
based in Cleveland, Ohio, working at the Western Reserve
University. On 12 May she arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
working at the U.S. Indian School and the Museum. She was based
in Santa Fe for about a month, although she visited Albuquerque
from 21 May until 4 June.
On 13 June she arrived in Phoenix, Arizona. From here she visited

Tucson for a few days. On 13 July she left Phoenix for the Grand
Canyon. She worked at the village of Supai, Cataract Canyon,
Utah, between 17 and 24 July before moving on to Holbrook,
Arizona. From Holbrook she went to Polacca, Arizona, and on to
the Acoma mesa on 31 July, where she met people who had
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worked with Barbara Freire Marecco during her fieldwork in the

Southwest in 1910 and 1913.
Sixty miles west of Albuquerque, the Acoma pueblo claims to be

the oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States (see
http://www.nmmagazine.com/NMGUIDE/acoma.html). Following in
Freire-Marecco’s footsteps, Blackwood visited the pueblo a number
of times during 1926 and 1927. Although visitors were not generally
welcomed, she had the support of Mr Reuter, who worked for the
Society for the Preservation of the Ancient Churches of the South-
West, and who had already been accepted by the community, and
she also made friends with the Governor and his second in
command. The villagers gave Blackwood an Indian name –
Shamuts-henati – ‘White Cloud’ ‘whether on account of my skin or
my clothing I never could find out’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers box 13, undated evening lecture on ‘Acoma’). While there,
she managed to collect various things for the Pitt Rivers Museum,
including examples of selenite windows that were being replaced
by glass, one of the stones used for cooking ‘paper bread’
(Blackwood spent some time looking into the making of paper
bread and her notes are kept in PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers box 13), and some of the pottery, which Blackwood judged
to be ‘the most elaborate and the finest of all the Pueblo pottery’
(ibid). She became good friends with Maria Chino, who was
considered to be the best Acoma potter, and Blackwood stayed
with her sometimes. When she left, Maria gave her some
particularly find pieces of pottery, which were later given to the Pitt
Rivers Museum (see ‘The Blackwood Collection’ document). She
greatly enjoyed her visits to Acoma, remembering afterwards,
‘I never saw Acoma without a feeling of excitement or left it without

looking back. I do not think even the most hard-boiled traveller
could fail to be thrilled by it. I cannot begin to give you any idea of
the atmosphere of age-old mystery that pervades it.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 13, undated evening lecture on
‘Acoma’)
On 3 August she arrived back in Santa Fe where she enjoyed a

Fiesta which started on 4 August. Between 16 and 27 August she
joined a group of 24 people and toured Mesa Verde (Colorado),
Chaco Canyon, Gallup and Zuni, New Mexico (basically the area
spanning the Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona borders). On 28
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August she went with some of the party to Fort Defiance, Arizona,
and from there she went on to Chinlee (also in Arizona) and
explored Canyon de Chelley, Canyon del Mueito and worked on the
reservation. On 12 September she returned to Fort Defiance where
she worked for a fortnight before arriving back in Phoenix on 27
September.
From Phoenix she visited Fort Apache on 18 October. And on 27

October she left for Acoma, then Albuquerque. At this point her
diary entries become sporadic, however she went to Acoma on 5
December, was in Santa Fe on 7 December and in Chicago by 19
December.
Meanwhile, the annual report for the Department of Human

Anatomy in Oxford for 1926 reported that, ‘As the American Council
of National Research has approached Miss B. Blackwood, B.Sc.,
M.A., of Somerville College, to undertake ethnological research in
the islands of the Pacific, it is uncertain as yet whether she will
return to resume her work in this Department.’ (University Gazette,
22 June 1927, p723)
1927
Blackwood’s diary does not resume fully until May, but during
January she spent one week in New York and some weekends in
Boston. On 15 May she visited Niagara Falls, then on to Chicago
on 17 May, Denver and Colorado Springs on 19 May, and Salt Lake
City on 21 May. She went to Sacramento Valley, California, on 23
May and took the ferry to San Francisco from there. She spent the
next month based in the San Francisco area. She visited Stanford
and Berkeley, went sight seeing in the area, and worked around
Orick and Weitclipe, in Humboldt, northwest California, as well as at
Mills College in San Francisco. On 23 June she travelled to Los
Angeles, and on to San Diego the following day. A few days later,
on 28 June, she travelled to Laguna and Acoma, where she spent
about ten days before moving on to Bernalillo via Albuquerque on 9
July. On 15 July she travelled to Santa Clara, New Mexico, where
she worked. Between 23 and 28 July she visited the area around
Pecos and excavated there. On 28 July she went back to Santa Fe
and Albuquerque, then on to Casa Blanca (Acoma region) three
days later. On 8 August she went to Langua and from there on to
Oraibi, Arizona, arriving on 11 August, where she was based until
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30 August. On 4 September she was back in Holbrook, in Gallup on

9 September, in Fort Defiance on 11 September, and in
Albuquerque on 12 September, from where she continued her
journey eastwards and home, to England.
Back in Oxford, Dudley-Buxton became Reader in Physical

Anthropology under new University Statutes and Blackwood
resumed her duties as Assistant Demonstrator for Ethnology and
continued to work on the cranial collections from Michaelmas Term
1927. (University Gazette, 13 June 1928, p653) In November,
Arthur Thomson wrote to Herschel Margoliouth (Secretary of
Faculties, 1925-1947), asserting that, having spent 6 years as
Department Demonstrator, Blackwood must be nominated for a
University Demonstratorship otherwise she would miss her chance
(OU Archives, file FA/9/2/90, 15 Nov 1927). He added that she was
skilled in microscope technique, had an intimate knowledge of the
details of physical anthropology (particularly using psychological
methods to investigate racial groups), had helped to collect material
for the department’s collections (including photographs illustrating
racial types, modes of life and geographical environments), and
was an experienced fieldworker.
1928
Following Thomson’s letter to Margoliouth in November 1927,

Blackwood was promoted to University Demonstrator in Physical
Anthropology in 1928. The Department’s Annual Report for 1928
recorded that: ‘She has all but completed the cataloguing and
arrangement of the collection of over 2,000 skulls, which now
occupies the small museum erected for that purpose in the new
extension.’ During the year, Blackwood lectured on ‘Human
Hybridization’ (Trinity Term) and on ‘The Value of Mental Testing in
Ethnological Work’ (Michaelmas Term) (University Gazette, 12 June
1929, p688). In October, she requested leave of absence from the
University to undertake a National Research Council funded trip to
the Pacific (OU Archives, file FA/9/2/90, 22 October 1928)
1929
In Trinity Term 1929 Blackwood was granted one year’s leave of

absence by the University, to take up funding from the Research
Committee of the Rockefeller Fund to work in Melanesia. Before
leaving, she completed cataloguing the cranial collections at the
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Department of Human Anatomy; she also lectured in ‘Human

Heredity’ in Trinity Term. In 1929, Tom Penniman was given a room
in the Department of Human Anatomy to work on material
excavated at Kish in 1928-29 (University Gazette, 12 June 1930,
p661). One letter in the Blackwood manuscript collections recounts
the memories of Mr Hambridge, who had worked the lantern at
meetings of the Oxford Anthropological Society, and recalled that
‘Professor Thomson believed that his young team of Buxton, Miss
Blackwood, and Penniman were going to make revolutionary
discoveries in evolutionary history’, which is rather interesting given
that two of them went on to run the Pitt Rivers Museum through the
1940s, 50s and early 60s (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
General Correspondence M-S, letter from J.M. Edmonds to Mr
Hambridge, 25 September 1967, enclosed in letter from K.P.
Oakley to Blackwood)
Blackwood’s fieldwork was funded by the Committee for Research

on the Problems of Sex, set up by the National Research Council
based in Washington, D.C. The scheme had been brought to her
attention by J. Wingate Todd, who she had first met in Cleveland,
Ohio, in 1925, and she had been helped and guided during the
application and planning process by Clark Wissler, who had
overseen her North American research. She had chosen to work on
one of the smaller islands of the Bismarck Archipelago; she was to
decide on the exact location once she had arrived in New Guinea
and discussed the options with the Government Anthropologist,
E.W. Pearson Chinnery. She chose this area of the Pacific after
consulting with various experts (presumably people like Wissler,
Marett, Charles and Brenda Seligman, Thomson and Balfour, all of
whom she thanked in her book Both Sides of Buka Passage
although there is no direct evidence for their role in helping her
chose her field site) (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
General Correspondence T-Z, letter to J. Wingate Todd, 27 May
1929; preface to Both Sides of Buka Passage) She later
remembered that the instructions given to her amounted to nothing
more than, ‘Find an island somewhere in the Pacific with the least
possible amount of contact with white people, and go and live in it.’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers, uncatalogued
correspondence, undated lecture on ‘Field Studies’)
Blackwood probably left England for Australia in early July (her
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diary starts on 21 July, while in Colombo, and it took about 3 weeks

to get to Sri Lanka from England at that time). She arrived in
Australia in early August, and travelled to Melbourne, arriving there
on 3 August. On 9 August she arrived in Sydney, where she stayed
for a week, during which time she met Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-
Brown, Camilla Wedgewood, Raymond Firth and Margaret Mead.
She began her trip doubting her own abilities as a field

anthropologist. On 18 August she wrote to Thomson in Oxford,
‘Talking with this girl [a missionary nurse sharing her cabin on the
S.S. Montoro to Rabaul] and with Margaret Mead has left me
terribly depressed about my fitness to cope with this job. I’ve bitten
off more than I can chew this time – and no mistake…’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 1, 18 August 1929). She
later admitted that Mead ‘made me feel very small in Sydney’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 9, 24 November
1929), and even that she had disliked her ‘intensely’, ‘a feeling I
discovered to be shared by Dr Powdermaker + others. For one
thing – a person who spends six months in a place (during one
month of which I afterwards discovered she lived with a white
woman nursing a sprained ankle) - + then says she speaks the
language perfectly + knows all about the natives – always makes
my hair stand on end.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box
2, letter 20, 17 April 1930). However, she was grateful for Firth’s
help; she reported that Radcliffe-Brown had been kind and given
her a letter of introduction to the Governor; and she reassured by
the fact that Chinnery (Government Anthropologist, New Guinea,
1924-32) was meeting her in Rabaul. But she wished she had
brought more books with her, including Malinowski’s Argonauts, to
help prepare her for the field. And she seems to have hesitated
from the start when it came to taking Chinnery’s advice: ‘I suppose I
shall have to agree to his suggestion that I should work at Buka,
though I am disappointed about Tauga [?] and the Feni Islands.’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 1)
She had left Sydney on 17 August and reached Samarai on 24

(where she met Mr Lyons, the Resident Magistrate, who had helped
Haddon when he was there but had since passed a law preventing
antiquities from leaving New Guinea (ibid, letter 2)). She arrived in
Rabaul on 26 August, where she was met by Chinnery. ‘Mr
Chinnery met me on the wharf and has been most awfully good to
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me – spends a lot of time discussing methods and work and

introduces me to nice people…’ (ibid). She enjoyed herself while in
Rabaul, and busied herself learning pidgin. Chinnery had a plan to
send her to Mortock Islands because it was ‘more urgent than Buka
which is going on all right’, but this required confirmation from the
Governor General and Blackwood was waiting for further transport
anyway, so in the meantime she visited Hortense Powdermaker. On
29 August she travelled along the south coast of New Ireland. She
arrived in Kavieng the next day, and met Powdermaker the day
after that. She stayed with Powdermaker until 11 September.
Powdermaker had been doing fieldwork amongst the Lesu, on the
coast of New Ireland, for four months thanks to a grant from the
Australian National Research Council and the backing of
Malinowski. While staying, Blackwood continued to learn pidgin.
She clearly admired Powdermaker: ‘I wish I may be as successful.
I’m eager to get to work on my own little bit but as I have to wait for
transport anyway I’m lucky to have this chance of seeing it done
and of getting away into the bush’ (ibid, letter 4). Having left
Powdermaker, Blackwood arrived in Karu on 12 September, in
Muliawa on 15 September, and was back in Rabaul on 17
September.
On 21 September, Blackwood left Rabaul for Buka (a boat travelled

between the two places once every six weeks). On 23 September
she visited Archer (this was probably F.P. Archer, b. 1890 in
Melbourne, a plantation owner on Yame Island, on the west coast
of Buka, Buka Passage), then travelled on via Soraken to Portau
the following day, where she was met by the Haddens (Mrs Hadden
was the daughter of the anthropologist R. Parkinson (Blackwood
1935: xix)). On 25 September she arrived at the District Officer,
MacMillan’s, office, who was to help her pick out a ‘good village’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 3, 21
September 1929) and on 29 September she departed for Petats, a
coral island off the west coast of Buka, where she initially stayed in
the House Kiap (government patrol house) until the villagers could
build her a house of her own. During this early phase of her
fieldwork, Blackwood appears to have thoroughly enjoyed herself.
She mentioned in her letters to Thomson her disbelief at being in
such beautiful surroundings, which gave her the impression of
being ‘in the pictures’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box
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2, letter 5, 22 September 1929). She also enjoyed Petats initially,

and was eager to make a good impression, learning the language
and strolling round the village so that the villagers would get used
to her presence (ibid, letter 6, 20 October 1929).
However, she was also concerned about the influence of the

mission, which was positioned across the lagoon from Petats. ‘It is
distinctly disconcerting to find these blighters going to church every
evening and twice on Sunday!’ (ibid). Still, she hoped to get
information about old customs from the older residents. The Rev.
Allan H. Cropp, the Methodist missionary, had lent her his work on
local languages, and although she intended to keep herself to
herself she was aware that she had to keep on the right side of the
mission, as it was so close by. She tried to weigh up the pros and
cons of working alongside a mission station: ‘I think on the whole,
so far, the pros have it, but it isn’t quite what I expected to find here.
I am a little afraid that when I come to enquire after their magic etc
they won’t tell me because they will think I shall tell the mission
people.’ There was also Archer, the planter, and Mr and Mr Huson
who owned a plantation on the other side of the mission. ‘The less I
have to do with any of these white folk the better I shall be pleased
– but I can’t afford to offend them…The one saving circumstance is
that there are no white people on this island – (if there were I
should pack up + go elsewhere).’ (ibid)
However, Blackwood’s unease increased rapidly as she realised

that no traditional ceremonies seemed to have survived at Petats –
‘I would rather have less help and more material’ – and by 26
October she was considering looking around Buka for ‘a place
where there is more left. I want my natives to myself – I can’t help
feeling a bit resentful when the mission people come over’ (ibid,
letter 7, 26 October 1929). By early November she was telling
Thomson that she had ‘made a great mistake in settling here – I
should have looked round a bit first…I am bitterly disappointed in
Petats’ (ibid, letter 8, 7 November 1929). Blackwood’s frustration at
being surrounded by the expatriate community stemmed from her
aversion to socializing simply for the sake of it while in the field.
This probably set her apart from most of her white companions:
‘I do not hanker after the society of people of my own colour. If

there were a chance of a talk with someone of congenial tastes it
would be different. But there is not a single white person in the
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whole Mandated Territory with whom I have any desire to exchange

a single word, though I am on friendly terms with all of them –
Government officials, planters and missionaries, and could get any
help I wanted from them at any time. I should be well content not to
see a white man for the rest of my residence in the Territory. I can
generally manage to avoid them by not going down to meet the
steamer, which I do only when there is some business which
cannot be transacted by letter. The rare visit of any of them to this
village always leaves me with a feeling of irritation.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 5, ‘Observations on climate etc’)
Before too long, her disillusionment was levelled at Chinnery too:

‘The policy of the Government seems to be to fob one off with a soft
safe place where one can’t get into mischief – without caring
whether one can do good work there or not. Chinnery is in with
them – he should have known better than to send me here.’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 9, 24 November
1929) Furthermore, she felt that the work of the mission was
undermining her ability to gather ethnographic information,
particularly as she was meant to be studying sexual practices.
‘The women giggle when spoken to + it is hard to get them to talk

at all. The men are not very ready to talk of sexual matters – there
is evidently an artificial sense of shame springing up among them.
They never make any sexual reference in my presence unless
directly asked. For a long time I got no stories with sexual
references – the first was apologised for – ‘e make em talk no
good’ - + only told to me after a consultation with the group as to
whether it was the right thing to do.’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 6, ‘Petats Review of Results in Three
Months’)
She does not explain how she knew that the villagers’ sense of
shame was ‘artificial’. All in all, she was faced with a difficult
decision, having already invested a three months of her limited time
in Petats, and learned the language, she was worried about starting
all over again elsewhere and not leaving herself enough scope to
do a good job second time round. Her concerns that her work
would never reach the standards set by Mead and Powdermaker
began to surface again (ibid).
The material culture was interesting and much of it had ‘survived’
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the recent changes wrought by the mission, but Blackwood found

the ceremonial and ritual life at Petats wanting. She spent a few
days at another village to see a feast in honour of a new house and
concluded that she had collected more information from there in a
week than she could get in six weeks at Petats. And yet, if she
moved, she still feared making a mess of both jobs by not giving
herself enough time for thorough research in either place (ibid,
letter 10, 8 December 1929). ‘The essence of this job is that I
should stay put + get to know the people individually. If I start on
another place + another language I’ll hardly have time to do that
before it’s time to come home.’ (ibid). Her determination to work at
one field site, in the Malinowskian tradition, is striking. Nonetheless,
by mid-December she had decided to prospect for a new place to
work (ibid).
1930
On 30 December 1929, Blackwood had had a visit from Mrs

Hadden, who had offered to take Blackwood back and settle her in
a village on the north of Bougainville, where there had only been a
native mission teacher for a few weeks, and there were no white
people at all other than the Haddens. So, at Mrs Hadden’s
suggestion Blackwood went to the House Kiap at Gomen on 1
January 1930 and visited the neighbouring village of Kurtachi (on
the north coast of Bougainville) from there. She only took enough
supplies for a month or so initially, until she could gauge how the
two places compared. (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box
2, letter 11, 25 December 1929, and Blackwood’s diary) As it was,
after 4 days at Gomen, she wrote to Thomson and announced that
she already had nearly as much material as she had collected
during 3 months at Petats (ibid, letter 12, 5 January 1930). Kurtachi
became her primary field site, and she went back to Petats briefly
on 26/27 January to organize and collect her things. From Petats,
before returning to Kurtachi, she made a journey round the northern
half of Buka, to the village of Lemanmanu on the northern tip of the
island, where she stayed at the House Kiap. On the way back, she
stayed the night at Hanahan on the north east of the island. By 9
February she was back at Petats, but she took the boat back to
Gomen on 11 February, this time with her possessions.
She did not wholly regret her time at Petats, particularly as the
material culture was richer there than at Kurtachi, and the two
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languages turned out to have a similar structure (PRM ms

collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 12, 5 January 1930).
She later reasoned that, at the time, she had already been
travelling for three months and wanted to get to work, and she had
liked the sound of the place ‘they have fishing kites etc and no
white people on the island’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
box 2, letter 17, 14 March 1930). She was glad that she had been
able to send Balfour a fishing kite ‘which he particularly wanted’
(ibid). She also kept in touch with Cropp, the Methodist missionary,
despite her resentment of his influence over the villagers. He was
an expert on languages and Blackwood had spent much of her time
collecting vocabularies and linguistic data from the villages she
visited. They both liaised with Sydney Ray, as did J.H.L.
Waterhouse (who was also a linguist), about the relationships
between these Melanesian languages, and Blackwood and Cropp
corresponded about this work later (PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers box 9, Cropp to Blackwood, 29 May 1933).
Interestingly, around this same time (new year 1930) in Oxford,

Buxton was considering applying for a Registrar job at the
University, and Blackwood asked Thomson whether he thought she
would have any chance of succeeding him as Reader in Physical
Anthropology. ‘In a way, I would rather remain without the teaching
responsibilities involved, which would of course entail my remaining
in Oxford + forgoing a possible second year of field work later on…
But I know that my present position in Oxford is likely to become
precarious, + to be quite frank – while I do not yearn to step into
Buxton’s shoes – I should hate anyone else to have them!’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 12, 5 January 1930)
This comment is interesting because it illustrates her preference for
fieldwork over teaching, and shows that she was concerned about
– or at least aware of – the impermanence of her position in Oxford.
In a later letter she expressed her wishes that things should stay as
they were at the Department, but she also acknowledged that this
was impossible given Thomson’s imminent retirement: ‘it isn’t fair to
expect you to carry the job on indefinitely – but I feel that there’ll be
‘nae luck about the hoose when oor gind man’s awa!’ - + I hate the
thought of the Department without its chief.’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 2, letter 21, 25 April 1930)
From 11 February until 1 October 1930 Blackwood was based at
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Kurtachi (her house there was finished in early March), but she
undertook a number of trips around the area. From 22-25 February
she travelled to see an upi ceremony (upi is the hat worn by
adolescent boys) on the other side of the bay with Mr Hadden and
Mr Swanston. As she settled in to work in this second village she
began to realize how much information there was to gather and
process, and how little time she had. ‘Ten months is not enough for
this job’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 15, 26
February 1930). She frequently compared herself to Malinowski,
whose books plunged her ‘into fits of the deepest depression’ and
she despaired of ever getting the quality or quantity of material that
he had published. She exclaimed more than once that he had three
years in the field, while she had less than one, and that he was ‘a
perfect genius at languages’ while she had ‘some facility for picking
up enough of the language to carry on a casual conversation’ (ibid,
and letter16, 10 March 1930). She also worried that she was
unable to see the bigger picture in the way that Malinowski could,
and she feared that he could ‘theorise about things which to me
remain facts’ (letter 17, 14 March 1930).
In early April, Blackwood learned that the initiation ceremony –

involving the upi or ‘hats’ – that she was hoping to see, would not
take place until July at the time she was due to be travelling back to
England. She was bitterly disappointed, especially as she
suspected it might be the last of these ceremonies, since no new
upi were to be given out and the boys were now against wearing
them. She wrote to Thomson and wondered whether she dare ask
for another term’s leave to enable her to extend her stay. She
claimed that she did not particularly want to stay, but the
opportunity for seeing the ceremony was too good to miss (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 19, 6 April 1930).
The possibility of extending her trip was complicated by the
situation in Oxford, because she realised that if there was any
chance of her getting Buxton’s job should he move on, she would
want to be back in time for Michaelmas Term (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 2, letter 21, 25 April 1930). As it was, she
heard in late May that Buxton had not got the job, and so she
extended her stay in the field for an extra three months.
On 11 April she visited Ruri, a village along the coast to the east of
Kurtachi. On 21 April she visited Saposa, an island off the west
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coast of Bougainville, where she met J.H.L. Waterhouse, who was

collecting plants for Kew and gave her advice concerning her plant
collection (I have written elsewhere about this collection). She
arrived back in Kurtachi on 27 April following this trip. On 9 May she
visited Riaso for another upi ceremony, and on 27 May she visited a
sick woman at Ruri. By this time she was even more scared at the
thought of only having six weeks left in the field. ‘I simply can’t write
a book – or even a decent report – about these people – I don’t
know the first thing about them. It’s all very well for people like
Margaret Mead to say ‘a trained student can master the
fundamental structure of a primitive society in a few months.’ I don’t
know how she does it. I can’t. I’ve worked hard + conscientiously
here for 8 months + I have hardly scratched the surface. The idea
of having to ‘write it up’ after another two months or so is awful.
After as many years one might perhaps be gratified to do so.’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 22, 4 May 1930).
On 23 June she travelled to Malasang to see pottery-making (she

collected some pots and the tools that were used to make them for
Balfour (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 23, 29
June 1930) see ‘The Blackwood Collection’ document), returning
two days later. By this stage she was beginning to wonder whether
the ceremony, promised for July, would take place in time for her to
see it, despite her extended leave (ibid, 21 June 1930). She soon
resorted to ‘bribing and threatening’ in an effort to get the villagers
to schedule it in time for her to see (letter 25, 10 August 1930).
Meanwhile, in July, she went ‘on top’, to Konua (or Kunua), in the
‘uncontrolled area’ on the western coast. She initially intended to
take this trip with Felix Spieser, but ended up going alone – or at
least, only with the local villagers, who agreed to take her because
she was a woman, making this ‘the first time in my life that my sex
has been anything but a disadvantage to me’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 2, letter 24, 27 July 1930). She visited
several villages where the inhabitants had never seen a white
person before. She wanted to see whether it would be possible,
and profitable, to work there in the future.
‘The villages I visited were at that time still ‘uncontrolled’ and not
very easy to work with, and my visit was merely an exploratory trip
with a native who had affiliations there and agreed to take me with
him. I hoped at that time to be able to go back and make a long
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stay in the Kunua country, but on my next expedition I was asked to

go to New Guinea to get some things that were especially required
by the Pitt Rivers Museum, and have never been back to
Bougainville.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers Box 5, letter
to Dr Oliver, 20 April 1939)
She met Speiser again by chance afterwards and on hearing where

she had been he decided to follow in her footsteps, which worried
her terribly, as she thought it would jeopardize her own relationship
with the people she had met. However, she concluded that they
probably would not have allowed her to stay for a longer period
anyway, and the settlements were too small for her to observe daily
life effectively (ibid).
On 3 September she records going ‘on top’ to visit villagers again in

her diary. Towards the end of her time, in mid-September, she
began taking measurements of the villagers in the neighbouring
villages of Tabut, Kurtachi and Ruri. By this time she had all but
given up hope of seeing the initiation ceremony, which, in the end,
must have taken place after her departure. She had heard from Mr
Cook that the timing of the ceremonies was run from a village up in
the mountains and the chief responsible was determined not to
have the ceremony until Blackwood had left. Her friends in the
village denied that the ceremonies were run by another village
chief, but Blackwood was left wondering about the truth of the
situation (letter 23, 8 June 1930). On 1 October she left Kurtachi
and returned to Petats, where she continued to take measurements
of the villagers. On 4 and 5 October she moved on to Pororan (an
island off the west coast of Buka) where she took measurements.
On 6 October she returned to Petats briefly before leaving via the
island of Matsungon (off the west coast of Buka, south of Petats),
and through Buka Passage, south to Kieta, on the east coast of
Bougainville.
Blackwood was now heading to New Zealand, en route for home.

She travelled via Tulagi (on 12 October), Norfolk Island (on 16
October), and arriving in Sydney on 22 October, where she stayed
with the Swanstons. She did not enjoy Sydney, nor was she left
with a favourable impression of Radcliffe-Brown, who she met there
for the second time:
‘Australia is wet and cold and miserable and crowded and noisy
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and I feel like the wild man from Borneo. Here with my friends it is
not so bad but Sydney was awful. Radcliffe Brown was sniffy and
indicated that he didn’t see how I could possibly have done any
decent work up there because I had had no training in social
anthropology. He asked who did the social anthropology at Oxford,
when I told him Marett, he said: ‘The unfortunate thing about Marett
is that he has never seen a savage.’ Then he wanted to know
about the Tropical African students, I said Buxton had to deal with
them, he enquired with an air of superiority: ‘But Buxton has never
been in Africa, has he?’ Altogether he succeeded in putting my
back up properly but I couldn’t very well be rude to him in his own
office. He’s too damn superior for anything.’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 2, letter 27, 28 October 1930)
On 25 October she travelled on to Melbourne, where she boarded

the Makeno for New Zealand on 30 October. She arrived in
Dunedin on 3 November, where she was met by Henry Devenish
Skinner (who became director of the Otago Museum that year,
having been an assistant curator and lecturer). Blackwood stayed
with Skinners – ‘a most delightful couple’ – for a week before she
travelled north via Christchurch (10 November), Wellington and
New Plymouth (11 November), Rotarua (16 November) and
Auckland (17 November). On 18 November she boarded R.M.S.
Magaia at Auckland, and travelled east to Hawaii, where she
arrived on 28 November and was met by Sir Peter Buck,
ethnologist at (later Director of) the Bishop Museum, Honolulu
(Buck and his wife were also deemed to be ‘a delightful couple’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 30, 19
November 1930)). By 4 December she had docked at Victoria, on
the west coast of Canada, and her diary ends with her arrival in
Vancouver on 5 December. From here, I assume she travelled
eastwards through North America on her journey home. She
certainly planned to see Clark Wissler, and was nervous about his
reactions to a report she had sent him (it is unclear what the report
was on) (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 2, letter 29, 27
November 1930). But by the time she was due into Honolulu she
was already tired of socializing. In her last remaining letter to
Thomson, she writes, ‘I just want to have tea and cherry cake with
you beside a cozy fire in the Department + talk shop. And you will
ask me lots of questions I can’t answer + I shall wish I could go
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back again + find out.’ (ibid).
-----000-----
Intensive fieldwork: Blackwood clearly modelled this 1929-30 field

trip on the work of Malinowski and others who were doing
‘intensive’ research in the field at that time. In one of his letters to
Blackwood, Thomson had cautioned her not to be ‘too diffuse’ in
her work. Blackwood was forthright in her response, and clearly
summed up why it was impossible to single out any specific strand
of cultural activity for study:
‘[It] is very difficult [not to be diffuse], especially in view of the

nature of my programme. I am supposed to be investigating ‘the
sex life of a primitive people’. But if I ignored their material culture I
should lose a lot of sex taboos e.g. while fishing, hunting etc. If I
don’t bother about their medicines I lose a lot of charms for making
people fall in love with you, to say nothing of contraceptives etc. If I
omit astronomy, I lose e.g. an interesting connection between
certain appearances of the moon + menstruation. If I omitted their
genealogies – a job which takes endless time + patience – I could
never understand their society + should never have heard of a
number of anomalous marriages which throw light on the problems
with which I am immediately concerned. And so on through all the
range of human activities.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
box 2, letter 22, 4 May 1930)
She was also keen to have her own house built in the village of
Kurtachi, rather than stay at the Government’s House Kiap on the
outskirts. She believed that it was much better for anthropologists
to organize their own accommodation, which enabled them to
secure a ‘strategic position’ in the village. In later lectures she gave
of field methods, she remembered that this went contrary to the
advice she had been given as a student:
‘In some lectures which I once attended before going on a field trip,
the lecturer laid great stress on getting a house well away from the
village. He was thinking of the advantages thus obtained in the way
of quiet, cleanliness, sanitation, and so on. But for an
anthropologist, these are far outweighed by the immense
advantage of having a house in full view of what is going on in the
village. You will often find that while the people have no objection
whatever to your watching some ceremony or piece of work which
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may be in progress, it will yet never occur to them to come and tell
you that it is going on.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
uncatalogued correspondence, undated lecture on ‘Field Studies’)
She ensured that rules were set up to protect her privacy. In the
evenings, she would turn on a light on her veranda to signal that it
was all right for people to come and socialize and tell stories. At
first Blackwood did not realize that the villagers were too polite to
leave until she turned them out in the evenings, but soon she
began to do this. The villagers did not visit her at her house when
she was eating meals because they considered it rude to do so
(see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 27, ‘My Daily
Round’ typescript). I think there was also a rule that people were
not allowed into the house, only on the veranda.
When going on journeys, she usually only took a rucksack and

stayed with locals in their houses when visited. She strongly
disagreed with the practice of ‘going on field trips even of short
duration, accompanied by a string of porters carrying furniture,
tucker boxes and such paraphernalia of civlisation’, because she
realized that these things established a barrier between the
anthropologist and their subjects (PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers uncatalogued correspondence, undated lecture on ‘Field
Studies’). She advocated making friends with local children, which
was often a good way of getting to know their parents, and she took
balloons, little bells, small mirrors and tinsel into the field to charm
them. She quickly realized that finding out about technology and
material culture was a good way of starting relationships. And she
also found that reading books by other anthropologists not only
stimulated her own research, but provided a starting point for
discussions with the villagers who were interested in hearing about
people in other parts of the world (ibid). She believed it was vital to
learn the language, and criticized the practice of using interpreters
which increased the likelihood of errors, and was slow and
frustrating.
-----000-----
Physical Anthropology: This was an area she had previously

focused on almost exclusively, for example, during her travels in
North America, where she spent the whole of her time measuring
people and taking samples of hair etc. And she had intended to
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carry out similar kinds of research in the Solomon Islands: she

wrote to Dr Keynes, of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, before she left,
enquiring about taking blood samples to test for blood groups and
other information ‘which can be used for the study of human
heredity along genetic lines’. She was concerned as to whether the
serum needed to carry out this kind of research would keep in the
tropical climate, particularly as it would take her a while to win the
confidence of the locals before undertaking the work (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence J-M, letter
to Dr Keynes, 13 May 1929). However, once there, she found the
realities of collecting physical and medical data less appealing.
While in Kurtachi, she argued that the group of people was too
small for the measurements to be statistically significant.
Furthermore, she was sure the women would ‘fight shy of it’ while
the men – whom she never touched – would be provoked, and she
didn’t want to jeopardize her relationship with the villagers in any
way (Box 2, letter 22, 28 May 1930). She admitted, ‘I fear the
physical side is the weakest in my work so far – I have hesitated to
take measurements for fear of upsetting the natives with whom I
have to go on living. If I measured anyone + he or she happened to
die shortly after – it would be exceedingly awkward for me - + there
are also other considerations.’ (ibid, letter 24, 27 July 1930). A
month later, in late August, she knew she would have to get on with
taking measurements, but was still reluctant: ‘I suppose I must
make an effort to take some physical measurements – seeing that I
profess to be a physical anthropologist – but I frankly admit that the
prospect is not inviting – to be honest – I feel nearly sick at the idea
of doing it, quite apart from the mental effort involved in persuading
them, + the weariness of writing figures down without help, with
nothing for them to sit on + nowhere to lay one’s instruments.’
(letter 26, 28 August 1930)
As it was, she did take measurements, and with comparative ease,

but only in the final few days of her stay. Her final comment
suggests that the experience, which was ‘the filthiest and most
disgustingly repulsive job’ she had ever done, did not ignite any
renewed passion for physical anthropology. ‘I’ve been flunking this
job for months, + wishing I hadn’t to keep up my reputation as a
physical anthropologist. But now I’ll be able to give the desired
flavour to the lectures you want from me in Hilary Term – though I
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suppose Buxton will say the numbers are too few to be any good. I
can’t help it – I just can’t chase around to any more villages in
search of victims…It was only the feeling that I couldn’t face you
without having done any measuring, that forced me to go through
with it.’ (ibid, 21 September 1930). Years later, she concluded that
the trip had not been designed for physical anthropology research,
which would have necessitated moving through a larger
geographical area: ‘Physical anthropology was not one of the main
objects of my expedition, which called for a long stay in one district
rather than for survey work.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers Box 5, letter to Dr Oliver, 20 April 1939)
-----000-----
On her return to Oxford, she moved into a house in Walton Street,

No. 45, with two other ladies, an arrangement that had been
confirmed while she was still in Bougainville (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 2, letter 22, 4 May 1930). (She was still
living there in 1935, see letter from Blackwood to LHDB, PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers Box 4, 25 August 1935, and possibly
lived there until 1963, see below)
1931
In early 1931 Blackwood wrote to Chinnery and reflected on her

time in Melanesia and life since she had arrived back in Oxford:
‘…since I left Soraken on my homeward journey life has been one

continual rush, in which efforts at letter-writing have been in vain. I
have hardly settled down again even yet, but am still engaged in
picking up the threads of my job here.’
‘I spent a most strenuous and interesting year and kept in excellent

health the whole time. The powers-that-be have expressed
themselves as much pleased with the preliminary report I sent
them, and the people here are delighted with the things I have
brought home, and also with my photographs, which have turned
out much better than I dared to hope they would. So I feel that my
efforts have been worth while. I hope very much to be able to come
back again at some future time and learn a little more – a year is a
lamentably short time in which to pick up even a superficial
knowledge of a primitive community, though of course previous
training and experience helped me to make the most of it.’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence A-D, 17
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February 1931)
Blackwood lectured in Trinity Term on ‘Heredity and Racial

Crossing’ and in Michaelmas Term on ‘Field Methods in Ethnology’
[see her notes for the latter lectures]. She continued to work on the
cranial collections at the Department of Human Anatomy and
began a card catalogue of skulls in the Williamson Collection,
recently transferred to Oxford from the Royal Army Medical College
at Millbank. She also began writing up her research in the New
Guinea, and read a paper on ‘Puberty Rites and Initiation
Ceremonies in the Northern Solomons’ at the BAAS Centenary
Meeting in London in September 1931. (University Gazette, 15
June 1932)
She also gave a paper on her research at the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, which led to a spate of sensational
headlines in the press: ‘Oxford Girl’s Adventure. Present at Native
Mock Battle. First Witness of Strange Rite. Boys who always wear
hats’ Daily Telegraph 25 Sept 1931; ‘First Woman to see Native
Rites’ Morning Post 25 Sept 1931; ‘Woman lives for year with
savages. Never felt in danger, even on fringe of cannibal land.
Ready to Return’ no date or publication; ‘Girl Risks Life at
Forbidden Rites. Dressed as Man for Mock Battle’ Daily Herald, 25
Sept 1931 (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
uncatalogued box ‘Music’).
1932
Thomson was sick with the ‘flu for much of Hilary Term 1932 (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence M-S,
letter to H.D. Skinner, 22 April 1932). Blackwood continued to
lecture and give demonstrations in the Human Anatomy
Department, and completed her cataloguing of the Williamson
Collection of human crania, while also working on her research in
the Solomon Islands (University Gazette, 8 December 1933, p206).
She was already thinking about returning to Bougainville, but she
was aware that she needed to produce some sort of report on her
1929-30 fieldwork before she could contemplate returning. At the
same time, she wanted to go back to try and answer some of the
inevitable questions that arose during the writing-up process.
‘Unfortunately, I am expected to produce some sort of a report on
the last trip before I can possibly dream of another, and the more I
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work on my material the more essential it seems to go back and fill

some of the more glaring gaps before committing myself to print at
all. So it’s a vicious circle!’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
General Correspondence M-S, letter to H.D. Skinner, 22 April
1932). Initially, she had not intended to write a full monograph:
‘I did not at first intend doing a book of anything like so

comprehensive a character, and meant to make a separate paper
or papers out of the material culture, which I should have been only
too pleased to let you have. But Professor Thomson and Mr Balfour
urged me to put all my material into one volume, as being more
useful for reference, so I am following their advice. It means, of
course, that I have got to get it all done before any of it can be
published, which is delaying publication considerably.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence M-S, letter
to H.D. Skinner, 21 March 1933)
Blackwood had her own reservations about producing one,

comprehensive document, rather than dividing up the material into
specialist areas for publication, which she thought her funding body,
the Committee for Sex Research at Washington, might prefer.
However, since the book was to be published in England, she
thought it better to follow the advice of those who were based in the
UK and so worked under Thomson and Balfour’s guidance. She
lacked confidence when writing about material culture in particular.
She wrote of Peter Buck’s Samoan Material Culture, which
published as a Bishop Museum bulletin in 1930, ‘To look at that
book makes me despair of ever writing anything worthwhile on
material culture.’ (ibid)
1933-34
Blackwood continued to lecture, and give demonstrations in the

Human Anatomy Department. She continued to work on the cranial
collections there, and assisted in excavations.
Blackwood continued to work on writing up her work in New Guinea

for publication. She found it tough going at times, and wrote to
Gordon Thomas in early 1933 explaining how she longed to be able
to go back into the field to fill in some of the gaps in her work: ‘It’s a
vicious circle, I can’t write my book till I have been back again, and I
can’t go back till I have written my book! …I wish very much that I
could come back again, but that seems extremely problematical at
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present, America has no more cash to spare for such trips, and we
certainly haven’t here.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box
19, letter to Thomas, 17 January 1933)
By July 1934 (the end of the period covered by the Annual Report
for the Department) her report on the Solomon Islands fieldwork
was ready for publication (University Gazette, 5 December 1934,
p202). Arthur Thomson resigned as Dr Lees Professor of Anatomy
in 1933, and left his post in 1934 to be replaced by Wilfred Edward
Le Gros Clark.
By early November 1934 Le Gros Clark was in negotiations with

Herschel Margoliouth (Secretary of Faculties) about restructuring
the staffing in the Department, and specifically about Blackwood’s
position as University Demonstrator. Le Gros Clark found her
position in his Department ‘quite anomalous. As well might a
Reader in Modern History be appointed in the Department of
Physiology!’ (OU Archives, file FA/9/2/90, 7 November 1934). He
proposed that she either stay in his department, but be demoted in
some way so that he could fill the two Departmental
Demonstratorships with qualified anatomists (trained biologists –
unlike Blackwood - who could teach medical students as well as
physical anthropology courses), or she be moved out of the
department and become Demonstrator in Anthropology. This
second option was impossible because University Demonstrators
could only be appointed on the recommendation of a Head of
Department, and there was no Department of Anthropology at the
time. Thus, Blackwood could easily have lost her post. Le Gros
Clark, however, was emphatic. He suggested that Blackwood could
be taken on by the Geography Department.
Blackwood also wrote to Margoliouth in November 1934, referring

to ‘the extreme seriousness of my position, and [I] would be glad to
do anything in my power to meet the situation, if I did but know
what ought to be done.’ (ibid, 20 November 1934) Margoliouth
expressed to her ‘a little uneasiness on my part in case I should
have led you to underestimate the magnitude of the difficulties of
the existence of which you are aware. I have known cases of
people who have neglected opportunities of undertaking other
employment because they relied too much on assurances from
other people in whom they had unwisely placed excessive
confidence, and I do not want there to be any danger so far as I am
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concerned of that happening to you.’ (17 November 1934).
A few days later, the Committee for Anthropology wrote to the

Board of Faculty of Biological Sciences to put on the record its high
opinion of Blackwood’s ‘capacity and services to the study of
Anthropology in Oxford for sixteen years’ and its view that the
School of Anthropology should have a Demonstrator in Ethnology.
They formally recommended that Blackwood continue as a teacher
in Ethnology under the direction of the Committee for Anthropology,
with her present salary of £450 and that she be given a room (ibid,
30 November 1934). This was deemed unworkable. It was unclear
where Blackwood would be based under this arrangement, and Le
Gros Clark was concerned that she would still be working on the
collections in the Human Anatomy Department but would no longer
be under his direction.
1935
Arthur Thomson died on 7 February 1935. Balfour wrote to

Margoliouth in January 1935 giving his formal support to the
statement issued by the Committee for Anthropology in November
1934 regarding Blackwood. He added that, ‘I hope that it may,
perhaps, be possible for the Committee for Anthropology to be
added to the list of ‘Departments’, so that Miss Blackwood be
‘attached’ to the Committee on reappointment…if the University
machinery will admit of the inclusion of a new ‘Department’, several
benefits would result from the change’ (OU Archives, file FA/9/2/90,
29 January 1935). As it was, Blackwood was reappointed as
Demonstrator in the Faculty of Biological Sciences for one more
year in early 1935. In Trinity Term 1935 the Board of the Faculty of
Biological Sciences met to consider ‘certain proposals’ which would
enable her to transfer to Anthropology with the status of University
Demonstrator the following year (ibid).
Apart from a list of her publications, Blackwood’s work was not

mentioned in the Department of Human Anatomy’s annual report
for this year, for the first time, and she was never mentioned again
in that Report. In November 1935 Le Gros Clark repeated his
statement to Margoliouth, that Blackwood’s position in the
Department was anomalous and suggested that she be ‘attached to
the Pitt Rivers Museum under Mr Balfour’, however he adding that
‘such work as I have been able to give her in this department during
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the past year she has done quite efficiently’ (ibid, 15 November
1935). Margoliouth wrote to Balfour requesting a letter from him to
confirm his willingness to have Blackwood reappointed under him
(‘as you are no longer a member of the Board of Biological
Sciences’). He also asked Balfour to outline her duties and her
stipend. Balfour’s response does not seem to have survived, but
Margoliouth wrote to Blackwood in December 1935 to confirm that
she would be reappointed under Balfour. Blackwood was grateful,
but concerned about the future of the cranial collections that she
had spent so much of her time working on in the Department of
Human Anatomy during the preceding decade (ibid, 13 December
1935).
Amidst all this uncertainty and change Blackwood’s book Both

Sides of Buka Passage: an ethnographic study of social, sexual,
and economic questions in the north-western Solomon Islands was
published by the Clarendon Press in 1935. She had been working
on it for many years, and remembered later that ‘it was an awful
sweat to write and I got very bored with it long before it was
finished’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence T-Z, letter to F.E. Williams, 26 October 1939). By
March 1933, she was complaining to Sydney Ray (who helped her
with her linguistic research) that she was anxious to get the book
finished because ‘it has already dragged on far too long’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence M-S, 17
March 1933). Given that her work had been funded by the
Committee for Research on the Problems of Sex, it is not surprising
that most of the first half of the book deals with marriage, sex
relations, pregnancy and childbirth, and male and female
adolescence. However, there are two sizeable chapters on material
culture: ‘Useful Arts’ and ‘Aesthetic Arts’, which she included at
Balfour and Thomson’s suggestion, as described above. She
included a final chapter on dreams at the encouragement of
Seligman, who had suggested her research in that area and
advised her during the writing of the chapter (see PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence, M-S).
The book was very well received and Blackwood received many
letters of congratulation from leading anthropologists. A.M. Hocart,
writing in Nature, attributed the high standard of the book to
Blackwood’s scientific training.
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‘Miss Blackwood has medical traditions. The effect is at once

apparent in her work on Bougainville, the largest of the Solomon
Islands. She has learned mental discipline and a subordination of
personality to the subject. In technical parlance, she has objectivity.
We must be all the more thankful as the facts are worth knowing. It
is not that there is anything sensational about them (the sensational
is rarely the most valuable): their value lies in their being presented
with such thoroughness and integrity that they form a solid basis for
theoretical construction. The book is a mine of facts presented in
their proper setting as parts of a social system.’ (Nature January
199 1936 pp 46)
However, some of the more popular reviews were published with

rather sensationalist titles, like ‘Woman lived among primitive
people for more than year’ (St John’s Evening Telegram,
Newfoundland 17 January 1936, Montreal Daily Star 4 January
1936), ‘A woman among the Solomon Islanders’ (Times Literary
Supplement 2 November 1935), and ‘A woman’s adventures’
(Manchester Guardian, n.d.) (see PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers General Correspondence T-Z).
As she wrote to her mentor in America, Clark Wissler, she was

hoping to return to Melanesia to continue her research in the area,
‘You will know of the retirement and death of my Chief, Professor

Arthur Thomson. His successor is a man of very different interests,
who has made drastic changes in the policy and programme of this
Department. My position has in consequence become extremely
difficult and uncertain, but I am to continue as at present at least for
the academic year now beginning. Meantime, I am considering
ways and means of making another trip to the Solomon Islands, as
I should much like to continue my work in the interior of
Bougainville, which I hear is now being opened up by the
missionaries, and will therefore probably soon have lost much of its
original character.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence T-Z, letter to Clark Wissler, 29 September 1935)
She told Chinnery that she would now ‘very much like to tackle
another group on similar lines, and feel sure that I could make a
better job of it after my first experience. I am ‘exploring every
avenue’ with a view to getting a grant for the purpose.’ But
Thomson’s death and Le Gros Clark’s disinterest had left her
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without a strong mentor who could present her case within the
University (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence T-Z, letter to Chinnery, 29 September 1935).
Marett, who told her that her book was ‘a magnum opus indeed’
and reassured her that her scientific fame was now secure, was
hoping to get her funding through the Rockefeller Grant for Social
Studies, but he knew that there was little on offer for
anthropologists (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
General Correspondence T-Z, letter from Marett, 11 October 1935).
1936
In March 1936 Blackwood wrote to Margoliouth seeking leave of

absence from the University to undertake research in Mount
Hagen, New Guinea (OU Archives, file FA/9/2/90).
In November 1936, Balfour wrote to Margoliouth in order to secure

an increase in Blackwood’s salary from £450 to £550 in accordance
with the salary scale for University Demonstrators (OU Archives,
file FA/9/2/90).
In 1936, Blackwood undertook a second fieldtrip to Melanesia. This

time she was travelling under the auspices of the Pitt Rivers
Museum, to collect material for Balfour. ‘I was sent out specifically
to visit Mt. Hagen, in which area my Chief, Professor Henry Balfour,
Curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, is especially interested.’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Rev. Mr. Vicedon,
c. May 1937). Balfour also wanted her to visit New Britain,
particularly to collect barkcloth and head-bound skulls. He wrote to
her, ‘Amongst other things I am extremely anxious to obtain
artificially deformed skulls from New Britain, + patterned bark cloth
(this is incidentally used for binding infants’ heads to produce
deformation)…They are important for my series.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, Balfour to Blackwood, 26
August 1936)
On 3 April 1936 Blackwood set out on her ‘2nd Voyage to Sydney’.

She arrived in Freemantle on 5 May, and a few days later, on 9
May, docked at Adelaide. On the 11 May she was in Melbourne,
and on 14 May in Sydney. She spent the last week of May, from 23
– to 1 June, back in Melbourne. On 13 June she boarded the S.S.
Nellore in Sydney and docked in Brisbane on 15 June, from there
she travelled on to Rabaul, where she was met by Chinnery,
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arriving on 22 June. While in Rabaul she discussed her plans with

Chinnery and decided to work in the Otibanda country, ‘on top’,
rather than along the north coast of New Britain as Chinnery had
suggested (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 19,
letter to Balfour, 23 June 1936). While in Sydney, she had heard
from a group of Cadets studying at the University that a small area
around Manki village had remained open, in an area that was
largely designated as ‘uncontrolled’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Balfour, 18 May 1936). ‘I chose
them [the Kukukukus] as the only mountain people available for
study at present, as the Mt. Hagen area has been closed to whites
owing to trouble caused by mishandling of natives by recruiters and
missionaries…As far as I can find out, no one has worked among
the Kukukukus, so I hope it will be worth while.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Haddon, 20 August
1936)
On 2 July she arrived in Kavieng, on 4 July she was at Salamaua,

where she learned that the Assistant District Officer, Mr Bridge, was
on patrol for three weeks and she would have to wait until he
returned to proceed with her work. After some delay and waiting
around, on 22 July she flew to Wau. From Wau she went to Bulolo
for a couple of days and explored Kunai country (25/26 July). On 29
July she flew to the Upper Watut aerodrome, and went to Otibanda
for the day from there, where she met the ADO, Ken Bridge, and
they agreed that she would work at Manki village (‘Manki’ was
sometimes spelt with an ‘i’ and sometimes with an ‘e’, I have used
the former for the sake of consistency). Manki was the only village
(itself consisting of two hamlets) in a group of Manki villages that
was not in the ‘uncontrolled’ area and was therefore open to
Blackwood. The Manki were one of three groups of people – along
with the Nauti, and the Ekuti – who made up the Kukukuku, a name
given to the bigger group by their enemies and picked up by the
Government (they themselves did not recognise it). The groups
were similar culturally, but were hereditary enemies, although the
Manki were now on friendly terms with a section of the Nauti.
Blackwood was able to visit those villages from each of the three
groups that were not in the ‘uncontrolled’ area during her stay
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 11 ‘Preliminary outline
of the material culture of the Kukukuku people’).
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On 4 August she visited the village of Manki (with a population of

about 130) for the first time, and she was bitterly disappointed with
the appearance of the village, which she felt had been affected by
contact with the white community, and was, ‘not at all ‘belong
before’’. She returned to Otibanda the next day, before establishing
herself at the House Kiap in Manki on 7 August. The House Kiap
was situated between the two hamlets of Manki, which had been
induced to come together by the Kiap and the Lutheran mission, for
their greater convenience (ibid). The inhabitants of each hamlet
spoke different dialects, although some people understood both.
For the next four months, until 11 December, Blackwood was based
in Manki, although she went on patrol with L.C. Noakes through the
Upper Watut country from 13-27 September. Less than two weeks
into her stay she wrote to Balfour, ‘Probably I shall not be able to
get as much material here as I might have done from a coast
village, but anything I do get should be useful as it will be quite new.
I hope I have done the right thing in coming up here.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Balfour, 18 August
1936).
Work in the uncontrolled area would have been extremely difficult,

not only because of the people’s hostility to strangers and regular
fighting, but also because the settlements were small and
scattered. Blackwood had to be content working with those who
had come under the influence of the government and had ceased
to fight (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 11, ‘round
robin’ letter, October 1936). This was an aspect of Blackwood’s trip
that she found perpetually frustrating (and the sentiment echoed
her experiences with the missions and government infrastructures
during her 1929-30 fieldwork in New Guinea). It was something she
also had to deal with when it came to the possibility of working in
Hagen. ‘The trouble in this country from my point of view is that any
village in which it is possible to live has had contact with whites and
some of its life has been altered, while the untouched natives are
interesting but one cannot work with them as it is impossible to get
Government permission to enter the ‘uncontrolled area’.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Mallard, 10 October
1936)
The languages of the Kukukuku were of Papuan stock and were

much more difficult than those she had learned in 1929-30, so she
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had to start her work in pidgin and use interpreters. As time went
by, she found the culture lacking in ritual or ceremony, the people
were reluctant to give her information – gathering genealogies was
difficult because there were strict taboos on saying the names of
anyone who was dead – and her work was slow (see PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Haddon, 20 August
1936). She was also worried by the fact that there was very little in
the way of decorative arts, writing to Balfour, ‘I am afraid you will
think I have struck a very dull place with so many things absent.’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Balfour, 8
November 1936). In October she concluded that ‘nothing especially
interesting has happened during the three months I have been
here’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 11, ‘round robin’
letter, October 1936).
On 11 December she travelled to Andarora, arriving at the Mission

House and House Kiap on 13 December. She had been invited to
go to Andarora with Andatei’s father and various others nearly eight
weeks earlier, while in Manki. She believed Andarora to be less
affected by contact with the white community. She wrote to Balfour
in early 1937, ‘I now feel that I was justified in coming inland, in
spite of all the expenses + difficulties I might have avoided by
settling on the coast. This really is a Stone Age culture – the few
plane irons + knives they now have made no appreciable difference
to their mode of life except to speed up a few operations. They haft
and use the plane irons exactly as they do stone adzes.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Balfour, 1 February
1937).
1937
Blackwood stayed at Andarora for about ten weeks, until 20

February 1937, apart from a few days in January (20-25 January)
when she went back to Otibanda, and to Manki to check on her
house and her belongings there. While in Andarora she undertook
a few trips to Padarua, to see singsings, and also went on a short
trip to Keda at the beginning of January with Ken Bridge (the ADO).
On 20 February she returned to Otibanda, and from there to Manki
on 23 February. However, she did not stay in Manki for long. Over
the next few days she organized a trip to Ekua, leaving for
Otibanda on 8 March, and on to Ekua on 9 March. She wrote to
Balfour that same day, ‘The District Officer was anxious for me to
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visit a village belonging to the Ekuti tribe, to ascertain the relations

existing between them and the other groups. So I am now
anchored in the village of Ekua, but as I have only just arrived, I do
not know how good working conditions will be.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Balfour, 9 March
1937) She added that her stay in Andarora had been very
profitable, and, ‘I would have remained there for the rest of my time,
but for this special request of the District Officer for information
which will be useful to him.’ She stayed in Ekua until 4 April, but in
that time she spent a day or two in Waiganda (31 March-2 April).
On 5 April she was back in Manki, but only for a few days to
organize herself before leaving on 12 April en route for New Britain,
to collect things specifically for Balfour.
Later, she wrote to Chinnery, ‘I was very sorry to leave the

Kukukuku, the time has been much too short, but as Balfour is very
keen on this Gasmata work I have no choice but to go.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Chinnery, 15 May
1937) Overall, she had found working amongst the Kukukuku
difficult, because the people were reticent and ‘their two main –
almost only – interests are food and fighting’. As she had written to
Penniman, in January 1937, ‘These folk are the most exasperating
on earth – the Bougainville crowd were flowing founts of eloquence
and wisdom compared to them! Getting a single small fact is like
extracting a grain of gold from a mountain of quartz with a pickaxe.’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Penniman,
7 January 1937). But she was reassured by the fact that the District
Officer had been impressed with her work and the information she
had gathered (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter
to Haddon, 9 May 1937). She always wanted to stay longer, and
had hinted at this in a letter to Balfour in November 1936, after only
a few months in the area, when she warned that spending the last
few months of her time in New Britain would come at a cost.
‘It would involve leaving much work on other aspects of Kukukuku

life unfinished. To make even a fair study of the social anthropology
of these folk would take all the time one could give to it, the
language is quite difficult, there are no adequate interpreters, and
any quantity of taboos on saying names etc. makes the collection
of concrete data a matter of much time and more patience, and in
this kind of work the last few months are much the most profitable.’
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November 1936).
There is a gap in her diary after she left Manki, between 15 April
and 5 May, but the notes she made in her diary reveal that during
this time she travelled to Port Moresby by plane, then went on to
Orokolo on the steamer to see Mr and Mrs F.E. Williams, who took
her on a canoe trip to Iari village on the Purari Delta. She explained
this trip with the Williams’s to Balfour in a letter:
‘I felt I needed a break and a mental stimulant before tackling the

Gasmata job, so I accepted a very cordial invitation from F.E.
Williams to visit him and his wife at Orokolo where he has been
working for some time. He had arranged a canoe trip for us up the
Purari River, and during my stay I was able, with his help, to gather
things very rapidly, as I could never have done alone. I hope this
culture is not already fully represented in the Museum, even if
some of the more spectacular things may have been brought back
by others, and that you will not grudge the space occupied by two
dance masks, which I should not have collected had Williams not
recommended them as particularly fine specimens of their kind.’
May 1937)
Following this three-week trip, she went back to Port Moresby and
from there on to Wau by plane. Between 6 and 17 May she was at
Salamaua, trying to negotiate a permit to work in Mount Hagen.
Blackwood found out, when she had first arrived in Sydney in 1936,
that the Mount Hagen district was closed to visitors, as it had been
declared an ‘uncontrolled’ region after recent fighting in the area.
However, in May 1937 she heard that applications for permits were
being accepted again as a Government Station was to be
established in the region. She quickly wrote letters to various
missionaries, officials and persons of influence to try and secure a
permit, and on 11 May she radioed Balfour to see whether he could
get her a six-month extension from Oxford to go to Hagen after her
trip to New Britain (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 19
and PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 8, diary II).
(Earlier on, when she first arrived in Australia in 1936, she had
discussed the possibility of leaving New Britain a month earlier than
planned in order to travel home through Japan or China, and she
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had written to Balfour about this possibility in November 1936,

although she acknowledged that he might prefer her to stay in New
Britain, especially if she found it productive there (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Balfour, 8 November
1936).)
By late June she was beginning to realize that the efforts to get a
permit for Hagen were hopeless. The plans for a new Government
Station had been postponed indefinitely and Chinnery did not think
that any women would be allowed into the area (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 19, Blackwood to Balfour, 28
June 1937). As a result, Blackwood had to decide where to spend
her remaining months, now that her leave from Oxford had been
extended. Chinnery suggested a survey of the material culture
along the coast of New Britain or New Guinea, and she wrote to
Balfour to ask whether he wanted her to go anywhere in particular
(ibid). One of her letters to Chinnery at this time illustrates the fact
that she felt her personal aspirations as an anthropologist were
sometimes constrained by Balfour’s expectations of her as a
museum collector:
‘I would like to go back to the Kukukukus, but as I am now working

for the Pitt-Rivers Museum I think Balfour would rather I went
somewhere more profitable from the point of view of material
culture. I have covered that side of Kukukuku life – the easiest to
study – pretty thoroughly, I think, including the technique of making
stone implements which Balfour particularly wanted, so from his
point of view it would not be worth while going back. He does not
care about social anthropology.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers box 19, letter to Chinnery, 27 June 1937)
While these decisions were being made, she travelled on to New

Britain. On 18 May she left Salamaua for Gasmata, arriving on
Rook Island on 20 May. She spent ten days stuck here because of
high winds, and stayed at ‘Money’s plantation’. While on Rook
Island she visited the four villages of Barang, Gom, Gassam Island
and Barim. ‘I collected a good bunch of stuff from villages there so
the time wasn’t completely wasted.’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Mr Williams, 27 June 1937) At
the same time, ‘[i]t was impossible to do systematic intensive work
as we thought every day we should be going on’ (ibid, letter to
Balfour, 28 June 1937). On 30 May she passed the Siassi island
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group and anchored at Aromot Island, the following day she passed
the end of Rook Island and entered into the strait separating it from
New Britain. On 1 June she visited Harold Koch’s plantation, Aliwo,
and the following day established her headquarters at the House
Kiap at Passismanua Patrol Station.
Blackwood spent the next two months in New Britain, amongst the
Arawe. From her base she visited No. 1 Island (Eglep) and No. 2
Island (Apui), Alomos, Aliwa and Lapalam. Her stay was incredibly
efficient in terms of collecting the material Balfour had requested:
by 14 June, just two weeks into her stay, she noted, ‘Have actually
got everything Balfour wants from here now!’ At the same time, she
was not planning to stay in the area long, because the collection
was her main priority, so it was difficult to settle into any in depth
anthropological work. The area had also been studied recently by
John Alexander Todd. Blackwood had not realized this until after
she arrived and as a result she felt that an anthropological research
she might do there would be largely redundant. She did not want to
publish anything about the Arawe that Todd might be intending to
put into print, so she felt that her visit was ‘for the benefit of the Pitt
Rivers Museum only’. ‘I couldn’t have obtained the specimens
Balfour wants without coming, so it doesn’t matter, except that it
makes things rather less interesting for me, as I can’t publish any of
it. If only I had made a better job of the Kukukukus, on whom I
suppose I am expected to publish something!’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Williams, 27 June 1937). All in
all this part of her trip was not particularly fulfilling.
After her two month stay in the Arawe district, on 4 August she
travelled back east along the south coast of New Britain to
Gasmata but got stuck there: there were no boats to Rabaul
because of the devastation wrought by eruption of the Tavurvur and
Vulcan volcanoes between 29 May and 2 June. Blackwood was
forced to stay at Gasmata, waiting for a boat, for a month, until 4
September. From Gasmata, she visited outlying villages like Akur
and Avato (8 August), Lalagen and Anato (12 August), and the area
around Lindenhafen where she stayed with the Munros (17
August), but she could not travel far because she never knew when
a boat might arrive for Rabaul, and she spent most of her time
sitting and working at her typewriter (see PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers General Correspondence T-Z, letter to F.E.
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Williams, 23 September 1937).
On the whole, she found her stay in New Britain a little dull and
rather frustrating. The collecting work had almost been too easy;
she felt any anthropological work was largely redundant given
Todd’s previous research; she had wanted to travel inland, but the
weather prevented her; and her stay in Gasmata was restricted
because she never knew when a boat for Rabaul might arrive:
‘I am sorry that the weather conditions during the latter part of my

stay [amongst the Arawe] prevented me from making another trip
into the interior, which might have been productive. I am very
conscious that I have lamentably little to show for three months’
work, but the last month was, perforce, spent partly at the District
Office, Gasmata, and partly at Lindenhafen Plantation, and though I
visited such villages as could be easily reached from both places, I
could not go far afield even on the few days when the weather was
fine enough, as several boats were long over due and I did not
want to risk missing a chance to get to Rabaul.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 10, letter to Balfour, 19
September 1937)
The nearest village to her camp at Gasmata was on an island,

which meant that she had to take a canoe to get there and was
unable to observe anything from her house, which was a ‘serious
disadvantage’. She had to content herself with seeking out the
‘special information’ Balfour was interested in. In one letter from
Gasmata she wrote ‘I only want specimens and certain special
information. I’m bored and fed up and don’t want…’ before thinking
better of it and crossing the phrase out (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 10, undated ‘round robin’ letter).
Eventually, on 3 September the Mangola arrived and Blackwood

secured a berth. The next day she was at Salamaua, on the 6
September she passed through Lae, and on 9 September she
finally reached Rabaul. She found the town almost unbearable
because of the heat and the destruction wrought by the eruption
which had left pumice dust everywhere. While there she, ‘was
reduced to the semblance of a bit of chewed string and did nothing
that wasn’t absolutely essential’ (see PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers General Correspondence T-Z, letter to
Constance William, 23 September 1937).
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Over the next ten days in Rabaul she tried to decide how to spend
her remaining few months, since her leave from Oxford had been
extended until the end of March 1938, initially to allow her to travel
to Mount Hagen, but, failing this, to enable her collect more things
for the Museum. She had intended to work in Mount Hagen, but
after weeks of negotiations, she reluctantly acknowledged that she
would be unable to get a permit to work in an area that was officially
deemed ‘uncontrolled’. An exchange by radio with Balfour
confirmed that he was happy to leave her to decide where she
should base herself for more collecting work. After discussions with
Chinnery, she decided to go to Madang and find a suitable place to
work in that district after consulting the District Officer and local
plantation manager.
‘Chinnery thinks I should get some good museum material from

that area, it would be an offshoot of the Sepik culture probably and
should provide carving etc. I have purposely avoided the Sepik
itself as so many anthropologists have been there. Did you get from
Lord Moyne any things from the Aiome pygmies? If not, I would
make a special effort to get in touch with them, perhaps you would
send me an air mail letter on receipt of this if you want this done…I
have made numerous enquiries about the possibilities of the north
coast of New Britain, but it seems to be all missionised and to have
lost much if not all of its native culture. Good for the study of culture
contact, but probably disappointing from the standpoint of museum
collecting and studying material culture.’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 19, letter to Balfour, 14 September 1937)
She clearly based her decision on the perceived richness of the

material culture in the Madang area and the fact that it had been
little visited by anthropologists (‘while I don’t want to be a mere
snapper up of museum specimens, I must think of that side of the
question seeing that is what Balfour sent me out for to do.’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence T-Z,
letter to F.E. Williams, 23 September 1937)). She may well have
been somewhat disappointed in the end. She wrote to Todd, ‘As the
last lap of eighteen months’ work, I am now doing what I am sorry
to say amounts to little more than a collecting trip in the Madang
area…’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to
Todd, 31 October 1937).
On 21 September she left Rabaul and sailed back to Lae, and on to
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Madang (1 October) and Sek (3 October), from where she visited

the villages of Ruwo and Siar. On 6 October she boarded the
Muliawa, which left the following day for Bogeia and Awar. From
here, Blackwood made preparations to study the Bosmun group of
villages on the Ramu River. She departed for Bosmun on 18
October, and settled herself at the House Kiap. By this stage in her
journey, Blackwood was exhausted and demoralized. She was
plagued with indecision about where to spend her remaining few
months, and was uncertain that Bosmun was the best place for her
to work. She found the living conditions uncomfortable, because it
was very hot and full of mosquitoes, and she knew that she only
had a matter of weeks to try and make something of her stay, which
was not enough time to get meaningful data. She became
increasingly depressed and unsure whether to stay or move
elsewhere with time running out. She eventually decided to move
on, and go to Wewak, but by the time she reached Awar with her
things, on 18 November, she had missed the boat to Wewak.
Plunged into further indecision and depression, she decided not to
board the Muliawa which was leaving for Kavieng on 21 November
either, and instead stayed at Awar.
Regretting every decision she had made so far, on 26 November

she went up to the Aerodrome to see if she could depart on the
next plane, leaving two days later on the 28 November. On 27, she
packed but decided to leave for the Aerodrome early the next
morning instead of spending the night there, a decision she
immediately regretted, even though she was still uncertain whether
leaving at all was the best course of action. Her assistant, Moi,
failed to turn up the next morning and she missed the flight. The
following excerpt hints at her state of mind, and is just one example
of a number of similar entries. Sometimes she could not even leave
the house, and stayed in reading newspapers and magazines
because she could not bring herself to work.
‘Have condemned myself to stay here till early Jan now – don’t
know how I’m going to stand it. Have got myself into the worst
mess yet – if only I’d pulled myself together on Sat aft. + spent the
night at t[he] drome I cd have been sitting comfortably on t[he]
‘Maedhui’ now + got out of this hole…They say a plane did come
yesterday – DAMN. Nothing for it but to make what I can of this
now – keep on realising more + more how crazily I’ve acted.
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Suppose I’ll be the laughing stock of Madang if not all New Guinea
now. Why did I push myself too far + let myself get into this state of
nerves.’
The diary ends abruptly on 13 December. Blackwood is still at Awar

and thinks she will have to stay there at least until Boxing Day. She
is still depressed and uncertain, and in the middle of negotiating for
her helper, Moi, to stay with her despite the fact that his father has
just died in Bosmun and he want to return there.
1938
Blackwood arrived back in Oxford in April 1938. She had left Oxford
at the beginning of April 1936, only a few months after hearing that
she would be transferred to the Pitt Rivers Museum to work as
Demonstrator in Ethnology under Henry Balfour. In effect, then, she
did not start working in the Pitt Rivers until early 1938, on her return
from the field. A year earlier, while in the Melanesia, she had written
to Penniman about her new job. He had recently applied for the
new Professorship in Anthropology at Oxford but had lost out to
Radcliffe-Brown. She commiserated with him, and went on to
express a little of her own feelings at the thought of returning to
work at the Pitt Rivers Museum rather than in the Anatomy
Department, where she had been based for nearly twenty years,
since 1918.
‘I do hope something will turn up for you. I quite understand how

you feel about the Pitt-Rivers job, but of course for my own sake I
wish you would take it. Between you and me, work there is not
exactly in my line of interest either, but I suppose I shall come back
and settle down to sticking on labels till I get too restless to stand it
any longer…I hope Captain Musgrave is still working and keeping
the skulls in some sort of order. How I shall hate not to work with
them when I get back!’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box
19, letter to Penniman, 7 January 1937)
(Captain Musgrave was probably Christopher Musgrave, an

archaeologist who graduated from the Diploma in 1935.) Balfour’s
health deteriorated significantly in 1938, and he and Blackwood
spent very little time working together under the same roof. By early
May 1938 he was ‘far from well’ and undergoing treatment at
Droitwich Spa (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence M-S, letter to F. Speiser, 7 May 1938). He was
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forced to leave work at some point in the early summer of 1938,

and in the event he was not able to return before his death in
February 1939. This left Blackwood trying to hold the fort as soon
as she arrived back in Oxford.
‘On my return to Oxford in April 1938 I found Professor Balfour in

very poor health. He asked me to lecture for him until he could
resume work. I continued to do this until the appointment of Mr. T.K.
Penniman as Deputy Curator in Hilary Term, 1939. During the
same period I was also responsible, in Professor Balfour’s absence
but under his direction, for the supervision of the routine work of the
Pitt Rivers Museum.’ (Report of the Demonstrator in Ethnology for
the Period 1936-40, OU Archives, file FA 4/2/2/1 Anthropology and
Geography Reports 1932-46)
On a more personal level, she was extremely busy.
‘I have had a very busy year. Professor Balfour was never able to
come back to the Museum since the summer…and I had to carry
on his lectures and as much of the administrative and other work of
the Museum as he could delegate to me, until Mr T.K. Penniman
was appointed Acting Curator at Balfour’s death in February [1939].
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 19, letter to
Herskovits, 9 May 1939)
One of the things Balfour asked her to do in his absence was

attend the International Congress in Copenhagen in August 1938,
and give a paper on head deformation amongst the Arawe. Balfour
had been hoping to go himself, but was unable to because of his
health (in July, he wrote to her and mentioned that he was suffering
from malaria and acute leg pain, presumably due to rheumatoid
arthritis). Balfour read a draft of Blackwood’s paper from his sickbed
in July, and in response he asked her to state that her research in
New Britain had been undertaken at his own request on behalf of
the Pitt Rivers Museum. He also gave her the names of people who
would be attending the Congress and whom he hoped would give
him specific objects for the collections in exchanges (adding
sketches of the various artefacts in his letter with a very unsteady
hand). The letter suggests that Balfour was finding his enforced
absence difficult – it is interesting that he wanted to be mentioned in
association with Blackwood’s research at the Congress – and relied
on Blackwood to carry out his explicit wishes while he was sick (see
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PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence

A-D, letter from Balfour, 27 July 1938).
Meanwhile, Blackwood admitted that she was more interested in

the subject of head deformation from an anatomical, rather than a
cultural, point of view. She wrote to John Todd explaining that there
seemed to be little cultural significance – or at least, ceremonial
significance – attached to the practice of head-binding, and while
she was intrigued as to why people found the elongated head
shape beautiful, her main interest was in finding out whether the
changes to the bone affected people’s intelligence or mentality. She
had had some of her specimens sectioned vertically and found that
the pattern of bone growth had been affected by the binding
process (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence T-Z, letter to J.A. Todd, 28 July 1938). It is
interesting, although perhaps not altogether surprising, that despite
her wide-ranging fieldwork experiences and her recent professional
move to the Pitt Rivers, Blackwood was still drawn to biological and
anatomical research questions rather than cultural and social ones.
As an ‘add-on’ to the Conference, Blackwood visited museums in

Copenhagen, Goteburg, Stockholm, Oslo and Bergen collecting
data for lectures and arranging exchanges of specimens at
Balfour’s request in August and September 1938 (Report of the
Demonstrator in Ethnology for the Period 1936-40, OU Archives,
file FA 4/2/2/1)
Blackwood also began teaching, in Balfour’s stead, at the Oxford

University Summer School of Colonial Administration in 1938,
which was organized by the Social Studies Research Committee at
the University. It was attended by officers of the Colonial Service,
the Sudan Civil Service and the Burma Civil Services. ‘The object
of the School [in 1938] was to enable officers to review and discuss
problems of colonial administration.’ The lectures surveyed the
position of the colonial empire, specific aspects of administration,
anthropological approaches to administration, and explored various
comparative cases. Blackwood joined Le Gros Clark, Radcliffe-
Brown, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, and Fortes in contributing
lectures to the course (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
uncatalogued letters and memories of Blackwood).
1939
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Blackwood continued to shoulder extra responsibilities at the

Museum after Balfour’s death in February 1939. She mentioned the
strain she was under that year as a result of Balfour’s death in a
number of letters she wrote to friends and colleagues (see PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence). Her
workload was increased even further by the sudden and
unexpected death of Dudley-Buxton on 5 March, only a few weeks
after Balfour passed away. Buxton was just 49 years old and died
from pneumonia after only four days’ illness (Blackwood June 1939,
Folklore vol 50 no 2). Blackwood had now lost two of her long-term
mentors in the space of a few weeks, only a year after her return to
England and her move to the Pitt Rivers Museum and four years
after the death of her closest counsellor, Arthur Thomson. Oxford
must have seemed like a very different place to her by mid-1939.
H.D. Skinner wrote her a sympathetic letter on hearing the news of

Balfour’s death, and was insightful enough to realise that the
situation left Blackwood in a very different position, since she
automatically assumed greater responsibility for running the
Museum, at least in the short term. ‘How much it all must have
upset your life and plans’ he commented, and went on to ask
whether there was any chance of her succeeding Balfour as curator
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence
M-S, letter from H.D. Skinner, 27 June 1939). Blackwood was firm
on this point. She never wanted to take on the more high-status
position, preferring to keep herself free for more fieldwork.
‘I did not apply [for the curatorship], though several people

suggested that I should, partly because I did not want to stand in
Penniman’s way, but chiefly because I really prefer my own
subordinate job which leaves me free for expeditions. I like
collecting things and seeing them used, but I don’t care to be
responsible for their safe-keeping in a Museum, nor do I care much
about the administrative work which is so large and important a part
of a Curator’s job.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence M-S, letter to H.D. Skinner, 16 November 1939)
However, she was glad when Penniman was elected Curator.

There was a feeling that, since Penniman had been taught by
Balfour and had been associated with the Museum for a number of
years, he understood the ethos of the place and would continue to
run things in much the same way as Balfour had, while also getting
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systems in order again after Balfour’s long and debilitating illness:
‘You will have heard, I expect, that Mr. T.K. Penniman has been
appointed Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum. We are all very
pleased about it. He will carry on the Museum in the Balfour
tradition without being hidebound. I retain my position as
Demonstrator and Lecturer, which leaves me free to go off for
further field work when opportunity offers – not very soon I fear, in
the present state of Europe.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers General Correspondence E-H, letter to Herskovits, 18
October 1939)
Before her 1936-7 field trip she had hoped to return to Bougainville,
now she wondered whether she would be able to publish her work
amongst the Kukukuku and arouse enough interest to allow her to
go back and continue her work there (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers General Correspondence T-Z, letter to F.E.
Williams, 23 September 1937). Her hopes were initially confounded
by the outbreak of war, and, as it turned out, Blackwood never
undertook another field expedition.
In Oxford, Blackwood and Penniman continued Balfour and Dudley-

Buxton’s resistance to Radcliffe-Brown, whose arrival as Professor
of Anthropology had huge implications for the future of the Diploma
Course. Radcliffe-Brown argued that the exisiting Diploma was too
broad and wide-ranging, and students graduated with a superficial
understanding of a number of different disciplines making the
qualification practically useless. He advocated three separate
diplomas, which in effect spelled the end for teaching in the
Museum, since most students would opt to study Social
Anthropology, while Physical Anthropology would become
subsumed into the Biological Sciences. Not surprisingly, given her
own training, Blackwood continued to believe that Anthropology
was necessarily a subject of three equal parts, and she greatly
disliked Radcliffe-Brown, whom she had first met in Sydney in 1929
and quickly found to be arrogant and disparaging. She spent much
of her trip to America in 1939 (of which, more below) wondering
whether she should censor her opinions when it came to R-B
(everyone was interested to find out how he was getting on at
Oxford) and she nearly always found that it was unnecessary
because everyone was of the same opinion when it came to
assessing his character. She and Penniman argued strongly to
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keep the current diploma while working on establishing a Final

Honour School in the long term.
‘He hates both Penniman and myself because we are fighting to

keep the present Diploma till we can get an Honour School, and
takes every opportunity to be sneeringly obnoxious. He is a major
disaster to anthropology in Oxford. The death of Buxton was a sad
weakening of our forces, as he could have stood up to R-B and
could turn on a tongue as cutting as R-B’s own. No appointment
has been made to the Readership in Physical Anthropology, and
possibly won’t be till after the war. R.B tried to have it degraded to a
minor lectureship, but has been overruled on that point. He is losing
for us all the ground we have gained for anthropology in Oxford for
the last forty years. I did Buxton’s teaching last term, and at present
there are no diploma students doing physical anthropology.’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence M-S,
letter to H.D. Skinner, 16 November 1939)
Radcliffe-Brown’s ambitions for Oxford were ultimately defeated by

University bureaucracy, the Second World War and his own
retirement. It is doubtful that he missed his colleagues at the Pitt
Rivers Museum very much after he left. In October, Blackwood
wrote that he was ‘becoming abusive about the present system’,
adding that he was ‘a major disaster’ and ‘doesn’t fight fair’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence T-Z,
letter to F.E. Williams, 26 October 1939).
Blackwood travelled to the United States later that year for the Sixth
Pacific Sciences Congress in San Francisco, which ran from 24
July to 12 August 1939. She left Oxford on 30 June and boarded
the Empress of Britain the following day. She was in Quebec by 6
July, but travelled on to Ottawa, via Montreal, the next day. She was
met in Ottawa by Diamond Jenness who was working at the
National Museum of Canada, and she stayed with him on the
Gatineau River. She spent a couple of days at the National
Museum and socializing before taking the train to Toronto on 11
July. While in Toronto, she visited the Royal Ontario Museum,
studied the collections and discussed possible exchanges with the
Pitt Rivers. On 13 July she took the overnight train to Chicago.
Here, she met Henry Field, W.B. Hambly, and studied the pacific
collections with A.B. Lewis, who ‘would willingly exchange but says
there is little that he wants except Central New Guinea stuff’ (PRM
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ms collections Blackwood papers box 12, 14 July 1939). On 16 July

she travelled to Minneapolis, where she stayed with Wilson Wallis
and his (second) wife. Wallis gave her a copy of the photo of
Thomson, Balfour and Marett with three of their diploma students,
Wallis, Jenness and Barbeau, taken in 1910. ‘The original was
faded so Allen Wallis [Wilson’s son] copied it. Begged for a copy +
as the negative was available this was possible.’ (ibid, 18 July
1939). She visited the Anthropology Department with Wallis and
again discussed exchanges: ‘Dr Wallis wd. like some New Guinea
things but has nowhere to put them at present + nothing to offer in
exchange.’ (ibid, 19 July 1939)
On 20 July she travelled north west through Minnesota to Walker,

via the Onamia Trading Post, where she bought some beadwork, a
model cradle and a lacrosse stick from H.D. Ayer, a trader, who
also promised her some stencils and tooth work. At Walker she
visited the Occupational Therapy Dept. with Dr Burns, where Native
American patients were encouraged to do craft work. Blackwood
also bought some Chippewa things from Mr Fake, who ran a shop
at Park Rapids. On 21 July she took the night train from
Minneapolis to San Francisco, arriving on 24 July for the Congress.
First thing on arrival, she arranged her trip to Mexico with the travel
agent, Cook’s, and at the Embassy. She had dinner with Erna
Gunther, who ran the State Museum in Washington: ‘Sat talking
and arranging museum exchanges’ (ibid, 24 July). Over the
following days she attended the meetings of the Anthropological
Section, and visited the Golden Gate International Exposition. At
the Indian Exhibit in the Federal Building she ‘met an Indian girl
[?could be Miss Tautequidgeon] who works among the Soiux – her
women made good dolls in native dress – she will get some for us.’
(ibid, 26 July) On 28 July she gave a paper on the use of plants
among the Kukukuku, which was ‘well received’. She visited the
Anthropological Museum with Trever Thomas and arranged for
them to give the Pitt Rivers some Californian material in exchange
for west African artefacts, but ‘Dr. Kroeber won’t part with any
Californian material that is exactly located.’ (ibid, 28 July)
She continued to use the Congress as an opportunity for

networking and securing material for the Museum. She met a lady,
Miss Marriot, who worked for the Government with the Indians of
Oklahoma, and bought a number of things for the Pitt Rivers on
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Douglas Haring’s advice. She relied quite heavily on the advice of

others in deciding what to buy and finding out what to look for while
in Mexico.
‘Miss Beckwith’s friend Mrs Brown (Alice Kelsey) brought her

grandfather’s collection of Menomini things for me to see. Some
lovely beadwork. She is not sure she wants to sell any of it
separately, so I made a tentative choice of a few pieces in case,
these were selected for me as typical by Dr Douglas who with Mr
Heath came to see t. collection too. Then Mr Heath showed me
some things – bought a few wh. Douglas thought I shouldn’t miss.
Seem to be v. expensive. Wish I knew more. Douglas told me
earlier that Heath’s prices were O.K.’ (ibid, 30 July)
On 31 July she travelled on to Los Angeles, and from there took the
overnight train to Albuquerque. The next day she travelled across
Arizona and New Mexico – ‘Going through Williams and Gallup and
Holbrook roused many memories of 1925 + 6’ – and then took
another overnight train to El Paso. On 2 August she crossed the
Rio Grande into Mexico, and arrived in Mexico City on 4 August.
She visited the National Museum and the Palace of Fine Arts and
on 5 August the Congress [possibly the 27th International Congress
of Americanists, held in Mexico City that year] opened. Over the
coming days she attended the Congress meetings and socialized
with fellow delegates. This included a number of trips to Palacia,
and visits to historic sites and buildings in Acolman, Teotihuacan,
Ave de Madero, Tenayuca pyramid, the Monastery at Tepozotlan,
the Pedregal lava flow, the Copilco archaeological site, and
numerous other sites and places of interest. She found the itinerary
rather restrictive and resented going to places that she did not find
interesting (for example, she would have preferred to see more
archaeology rather than visiting the Monastery at Tepozotlan), she
was also frustrated by how much time was spent over ‘ritual meals’
rather than exploring the area.
On 14 August she, ‘met Dr Ralph Beals of the University of

California at Los Angeles – he wd. Like to exchange S.W.
archaeological material for African. Don’t believe we have enough
stuff for all the exchanges I’ve discussed!’ (ibid) On 16 August they
travelled to Tehuacan by bus, then on to Oaxaca, the following day
they visited Monte Alban. On 18 August she visited the market at
Oaxaca and ‘bought some attractive whistles and toys in black
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pottery’, then on, in cars, to Mitla where she ‘bought sample of

weaving and some figurines – vetted as genuine by Miss W[ardle] –
and a stone chisel which no one would trouble to fake even if they
could.’ (ibid) Later she bought more things at the local market. On
19 August they returned to Mexico City, where Blackwood bought
more things at the Theives Market, and the group went to a bull
fight. On 22 August she and Mrs Wardle visited the ruins at
Xochicalco, Cuernavaca and the Palace of Cortez, then, the next
day, they went to the village of San Anton, where they watched
potters at work. They went to see the ruins at Teopanzolco and up
to Taxco in the mountains. Blackwood continued to pick up objects
for the museum in shops and at markets. On 25 August she went
from Mexico City to Toluca, and the ruins at Calizllahuaca, and the
following day she went out to Xochimilco, stopping to buy things on
both days. On 27 August she visited Lueretaro and wandered
around the town and the markets. Meanwhile, the news from
Europe was getting worse, and Blackwood had to decide whether
to cut her trip short and return home.
On 29 August Blackwood took a train back to El Paso, and two

days later she passed through Albuquerque and on to Santa Fe (I
think she stayed with Dorothy Stewart), where, on 2 September she
enjoyed the beginning of a fiesta. Her diary ends abruptly on 2
September, but a letter kept in the diary and written to ‘Jennie’ the
day before reveals that, given the outbreak of war, she was
planning to return home as soon as possible, in a few days time.
The news meant that she had to give up plans to visit the Yucatan
peninsula (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence M-S, letter to H.D. Skinner, 16 November 1939).
1940
The onset of war led to a number of new accessions at the

Museum as people ‘turned out their attics’ and the small staff,
including Blackwood, were kept extremely busy trying to keep up
with the cataloguing work. They were helped by the fact that some
students decided to volunteer at the Museum while waiting to be
called up to serve in the armed forces (see PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers General Correspondence T-Z, letter to Mrs Van
Stone,15 August 1940). Beyond this voluntary help, the war meant
that it was impossible for them to increase the Museum’s staff more
permanently.
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Penniman had the idea of creating a complete card index for the
Museum’s collections in 1939 when he became Curator and
discovered that the accessions books were the only standard
record filled in for material entering the collections. He and
Blackwood discussed the issue and, ‘both of us set out on the
enormous task of putting on cards, in duplicate, all the entries from
the beginning in 1881 until 1939. Since then I have kept the cards
up to date as nearly as possible and have been solely responsible
for their arrangement in the appropriate places – but the original
idea was T.K.P.’s and the credit should go to him.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers uncatalogued N. American photos
and Kew, letter to ‘Jocelyn’, 6 May 1973)
On top of the routine cataloguing work, Blackwood, Penniman and

their colleagues tried to, ‘catch up with some of the work which has
got badly into arrears owing to Balfour’s long illness and his habit of
trying to do everything himself’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers General Correspondence T-Z, letter to Wilson Wallis, 16
May 1940). However, Blackwood wrote to Skinner,
‘I am very glad to tell you that Pitt Rivers is now happy in the hands
of Mr T.K. Penniman, who has its interest very much at heart. Of
course we have had to shelve all thoughts of expansion for the time
being, but otherwise we are going ahead with all sorts of work and
material keeps pouring in. The Ashmolean was lucky in that its
plans for building were passed and the grant allotted before war
broke out, ours were not so far advanced so now there is nothing
for it but to make the best of what accommodation we have for the
present.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence M-S, letter to H.D. Skinner, 22 May 1940)
Blackwood’s own appointment as Demonstrator was renewed for

four more years, which was the usual period. She had more
teaching, since the diploma syllabus had been revised and a
decision had been taken not to replace Buxton until after the war.
‘I should like to get back to the Pacific, but must content myself
here for the time being. R.B. continues to be a thorn in our flesh,
but so far we have managed to beat him over every thing of major
importance. He won’t cooperate but our sympathisers are in the
majority.’ (ibid)
One gets a definite impression that Penniman and Blackwood felt
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they were engaged in battle with Radcliffe-Brown, and the mentality

was very much ‘us’ against ‘them’.
1941
During 1940 and 1941 there were no candidates for the Diploma in
Anthropology, perhaps because they were usually graduates who
were now occupied with the War effort. However, a small group of
geography students took Anthropology as a special subject, so
Blackwood and Penniman continued to teach. Blackwood covered
Buxton’s lectures in physical anthropology, which she taught in the
Anatomy Department (her correspondence with Le Gros Clark
regarding these lectures in 1941 and 1942 – which is very cordial,
although there were still differences of opinion on the syllabus and
Clark seems to have given the course little priority within his
department – can be found in PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers uncatalogued correspondence and memories of Blackwood)
The Museum’s most precious specimens – those which were not
too fragile to move – were packed away, and the glass roof was
reinforced with strong wire netting. Blackwood used the long
vacation in 1941 to catch up on cataloguing and routine Museum
work, she also planned to prepare some lectures on primitive art,
designed to attract students at the Slade School of Art which had
been evacuated to Oxford from London during the war (see PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers box 32, letter to D. Jenness, 1
June 1941)
1943
In January 1943, Marett suffered a mild heart attack, but was soon
back to work as Rector of Exeter College. However, on 18 February
he was found dead in the Old Clarendon Building, waiting for a
meeting of the Indian Institute curators to begin (see Rivière DNB
entry 2004). Later that year, Blackwood wrote,
‘We miss him constantly, as though he was no longer officially a

teacher of anthropology, we could always talk things over with him
and be sure of his broad judgment and cheery sane outlook on life.
Penniman and I heartily agree with all you say about the lack of
recognition of him in England, which we have deeply regretted.’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence
E-H, letter to E.A. Hooton, 18 September 1943)
For his part, Marett wrote to Penniman, just days before he died,
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‘Miss Blackwood isn’t big enough for all the medals that ought to be
hung about her dainty person!’(PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers General Correspondence J-M, Marett to Penniman, 9
February 1943) He may well have been referring to the Rivers’
Memorial Medal, awarded to Blackwood in 1943 by the Royal
Anthropological Institute for her exemplary fieldwork.
Blackwood spent her summer looking after a close friend and her
friend’s 84 year old mother, who were both sick simultaneously, and
had no one else to rely on. ‘Nursing and doing household chores
and cooking etc. are not to my taste, but it was certainly a change
though not a rest.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence J-M, letter to Kidder, 17 September 1943, see
letter to T.F. McIlwraith, 18 September 1943) War work also had to
be added to Blackwood’s list of responsibilities, which left her little
time to write up her New Guinea research:
‘Teaching and Museum work take up so much of my time now-

a-days – to say nothing of fire-watching, digging an allotment and
driving for an Ambulance Unit – that I have not done any work on
the remainder of my New Guinea material for a long time. But
perhaps one of these days I shall ‘get around’ to it again.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence J-M, letter
to R.H. Lowie, 25 September 1943)
Blackwood found the petrol rationing more difficult than anything

else during the war. She was given a very small petrol allowance to
collect things for the Museum and to investigate archaeological
sites that were under threat during the conflict. She also used her
car for ARP work for a local ambulance unit. Her friends in America
sent her vegetables to grow at her allotment. (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers General Correspondence J-M, letter to G.G.
MacCurdy, 9 September).
1948
Blackwood was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in

February 1948 (as was Penniman – see PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 32, letter of congratulation from H.L.
Hildburgh, 5 February 1948). In the same year she began serving
as one of two National Secretaries for the United Kingdom on the
Permanent Council of the International Congress of Anthropological
and Ethnological Sciences. Meyer Fortes was the other National
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Secretary. Blackwood finally gave up her post in 1951 because,

having retired from her academic post, she was no longer eligible
(see PRM biogs, and papers in PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers box 32, ‘Royal Anthropological Institute’ folder).
Blackwood was also a founding member of the British Ethnography

Committee, set up by RAI council in 1948, under chairmanship of
Fleure, to consider ‘ways of promoting the ethnographical study of
Great Britain in the light of the present state of such studies in this
country and abroad.’ Blackwood, Bagshawe (dep. chairman) Digby,
W.L. Hildburgh, Braunholtz, Fortes, R.A. Salaman, Fagg, and
others, were on the committee. ‘At the Committee’s first meeting it
was agreed that the establishment of a national museum or
museums for the study of British culture was the initial and
essential step in any movement to place these studies upon a
sound footing, and subsequent meetings have been devoted to the
preparation of a scheme for such a museum.’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 34, RAI pamphlet, ‘A scheme for the
development of a Museum of English Life and Traditions’ British
Ethnography Committee 1949) This project seems to have been
powered by Thomas Bagshawe, an historian, folklorist and
collector, who was curator of the Luton Museum from 1927-1936,
and was much influenced by Scandinavian folk-life museums (see
here)
Blackwood commented on a memorandum drawn up by Bagshawe

and Fleure, submitted to the Committee regarding methods of
record-keeping for the Museum. The Committee also drew up a
‘Scheme for the development of a museum of English Life and
Traditions’, which outlined plans to co-ordinate and organize
collecting and storing material relating to English cultural traditions,
initially through regional museums, in the hope that, ‘some large
house of architectural and historic interest, within easy access of
London, with its surrounding land (a minimum of 200 acres) might
be made available or patriotically offered, as a permanent home for
the Museum of English Life and Traditions and its open-air section’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 34, ‘Scheme for the
development of a museum of English Life and Traditions’). The
paper also discussed the possibility of regional branches.
The scheme relied on curators siphoning off material in their

collections, or objects presented to them in the future, when they
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were deemed suitable for the national museum. Penniman wrote

that, as far as the Pitt Rivers Museum was concerned, while
deaccessioning could be problematic, ‘Should such a Museum be
established, it would be our policy when approached by donors or
vendors of suitable material, to accept objects which were required
for our own series, + put the donor or vendor in touch with the
National Museum of Folk-Lore for other material which he might
wish to place in a Museum.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers box 34, letter from Penniman, 6 December 1948). Circular
letters informing curators of the scheme were also drafted, but,
from surviving correspondence between Bagshawe and
Blackwood, it appears that the plans had been shelved by 1950,
and Blackwood sent papers relating to the proposed Museum to
Bagshawe in Cambridge to be archived. It is unclear from the
documents here why this happened (see PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers box 34).
Blackwood was also in discussions aimed at establishing an Oxford

Branch of the Folk-Lore Society in early 1948. This project was
driven by Miss [Christine?] Hole and Miss Ellen Ettlinger. At a
meeting of the Council of the Folk Lore Society in 2 June 1948 a
resolution was passed to establish an ‘Oxfordshire and District
Branch of the Folklore Society’: ‘Its objects shall be to collect,
record and study the folklore of Oxfordshire, and the neighbouring
counties, and to further the study of the international folklore of
these districts.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
uncatalogued correspondence and memories of Blackwood, folder
‘The Folklore Society 1948-49, agenda for the meeting). The
Oxfordshire Branch was set up partly because of the difficulty of
getting into London for Society meetings, partly to enable courses
of lectures in the winter outside normal meeting times, and partly to
help collect material in Oxfordshire and neighbouring counties.
They hoped to recruit from villages throughout Oxford, and
proposed to supply lecturers for local Women’s Institutes. The first
course of lectures was planned to take place in the Autumn of
1948, and Blackwood arranged for them to be in the University
Museum (ibid, letter to Mrs M.M. Banks, 24 June 1948).
However, the new branch quickly ran into problems. The

Oxfordshire team could not even agree on a suitable name with the
parent Society in London. Those in London felt that the branch was
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superfluous, and providing services that were already supplied in

London, particularly when Ettlinger proposed setting up a local
Board to answer queries, compile a bibliography, collect information
and material, and draft questionnaires. For her part, Blackwood
resigned from the Oxfordshire Folk Lore Society in June 1949,
citing the burden of her other professional commitments as the
reason for her departure. It is unclear from these papers what
happened to the branch.
1950
By the 1950s Blackwood was regularly asked to advise and support

field expeditions mounted by younger teams, and she continued in
this role throughout her life (see, for example, correspondence in
PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 34). Many of these
expeditions were organized from Oxford, including the Oxford North
Khorassan Expedition in 1958, the Oxford Snaefellsnes Expedition,
Iceland in 1958, the Oxford University Expedition to Sarawak
1955-1956, the Oxford University Expedition to the French Congo,
and the Oxford University Women’s Expedition to Bijapur, India in
1964 (to name a few, see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
box 34).
1952
Blackwood undertook a trip through Austria, presumably for the

International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological
Sciences in Vienna (see PRM biogs).
1953
In early 1953 Blackwood was contacted by Colin Simpson who was

researching his book Adam with Arrows: Inside New Guinea and
wanted to include a chapter on Blackwood’s personal experiences
amongst the Kukukuku. Blackwood responded to his request for
personal information with a firmness bordering on hostility.
‘I must begin by saying that I intensely dislike any form of personal

publicity other than the minimum necessary to authenticate my
work. Please respect this attitude, which is of very long standing,
and do not entitle a chapter of your book ‘Miss Blackwood’s Nine
Months in the Stone Age’, or use my name as a caption in any
way.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers Misc. ms. and
correspondence Re-Z, letter to Colin Simpson, 16 February 1953)
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She was a thoroughly private person, but she did recount her
general way of life in the field for Simpson, and wrote fondly of her
cat, Sally, who had charmed the villagers and was the first cat they
had ever seen. ‘Some of the toughest old warriors would spend
hours trailing bits of string for her to play with. I can send you, if you
are interested, a photograph of a group of Kukukuku on the
occasion of their first introduction to Sally, who was one of my best
assets, from the professional as well as the personal standpoint.’
(ibid) She also told Simpson how disappointed she had been not to
be able to enter the uncontrolled territory, and how frustrated she
had been when she had to leave the Kukukuku after only 9 months
to go on a collecting mission for Balfour. She later wrote to him, ‘I
have never ceased to regret that I did not get that last three
months, which from previous experience I expected to yield more
information than the whole of the first nine.’ (ibid, 20 March 1953)
Simpson evidently asked Blackwood for a photograph, which she

refused to give him. He may well have been surprised by the
strength of her feelings when he read her response.
‘There is no photograph of myself available, and if there were, it

would come into the form of personal publicity which I particularly
dislike. I see no point, either, in a book about the Kukukuku, of
biographical details about myself, except that I went as part of my
job as University Demonstrator in Ethnology on the staff of the Pitt
Rivers Museum a post which carries with it the obligation to carry
out original study and research as well as to teach the subject in
the University. ‘Black-wood’s Magazine’ was founded by another
branch of the family, with which I can claim only a distant
cousinship. But surely that is not relevant either. Please write about
the Kukukuku and not about me.’ (ibid, 20 March 1953)
Her strong opinions make one wonder about studying Blackwood

and her career even now!
Blackwood’s mother died in the late summer of 1953. Blackwood

and her sister had shared the work of looking after her during the
year (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence A-D, Audrey Grimes to Blackwood, 5 September
1953)
In November, Penniman wrote to the Secretary of Faculties

requesting Blackwood’s reappointment as Demonstrator (OU
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Archives, file FA/9/2/90, 3 November 1953).
1954
In June, Penniman wrote to the Secretary of Faculties nominating

Blackwood for one of the Readerships that were to be awarded to
Senior Demonstrators. In his letter he outlined and praised her work
and her skills, stating that ‘there are few indeed who can write and
speak with authority of so large a part of the world’. He went on,
‘[n]o one I have ever met has so many contacts throughout the
world, nor so much ability to secure accurate documentation over
so many areas…it is due to her that the Museum has so high a
reputation abroad in Americanist and Pacific subjects’ (OU
Archives, file FA/9/2/90, 8 June 1954). Presumably, however, his
appeal on Blackwood’s behalf failed.
In September, Blackwood visited the Musee de l’Homme in Paris to

select objects from French Indo-China to be sent to the Pitt Rivers
in exchange. She also organized the loan of a group of Bronze Age
objects from S.E. Asia, which were analysed as part of the
Museum’s Occasional Publications on Technology series (OU
Archives, file FA/9/2/90, Demonstrator’s Report 1954-5)
1955-56
A letter to David Davis, written in 1955, suggests that Blackwood

would still have liked the opportunity to return to Melanesia, but she
realized that this was now a remote possibility, although her choice
of words suggests that this was probably more on account of her
commitments at the Pitt Rivers Museum than because of her age –
she was now in her mid-60s.
‘I am very much interested to hear that you are going to work in

Netherlands New Guinea, and envy you the opportunity. Some
years ago I did a spell of field work in the Upper Watut River region,
Morobe District, and in the Lower Ramu River region, and wish I
could go back to New Guinea, but see no chance of doing so.’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 34, letter to David
Davis, 7 December 1955)
In the same year, she had an opportunity to reflect on her career

when Herbert Pinney asked her to give advice to a friend’s
daughter who was considering becoming an anthropologist.
Interestingly Blackwood recommended taking an undergraduate
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degree in a subject other than anthropology, and she mentioned her

own degree in English, as well as the careers of her mentors,
Marett, Balfour, Penniman and Buxton, in defence of her argument.
With the exception of Penniman, this was an earlier generation of
anthropologists whose work was largely seen as outdated by the
1950s. She had the impression that the Cambridge undergraduate
degree, where anthropology was part of a tripos, was not
satisfactory. It is impossible to know whether she had altered her
opinion of the benefits of an undergraduate degree altogether – in
contrast to her stance in the late 1930s and early 40s, when battling
Radcliffe-Brown – or whether she simply felt that existing courses
were not up to scratch. She certainly advocated a broad education,
only specializing in anthropology at a post-graduate level. The
Oxford Diploma had, by now, become more specialized, with
students concentrating on one sub-discipline, which Blackwood did
not favour:
‘While realizing the extent of the subject, I still think that the old
Diploma, giving equal weight to all three aspects, was better, but
my colleagues do not all share this opinion. This is an age of
specialists – I only hope it does not become one in which the
specialists, in the words of the old tag, ‘know everything about
nothing’. (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 34, letter to
Herbert Pinney, 25 November 1955)
She felt that a research degree was necessary, meaning that an

anthropologist would need to train for 3-4 years at a post-graduate
level. She also mentioned the paucity of jobs, and, interestingly, she
pointed out the lack of positions in physical anthropology in
particular, while adding that Museum posts were ‘often concerned
solely with the administration and arrangement of a museum’ (ibid).
It is likely that these comments, tinged with negativity, reflect
feelings about her own professional experiences. Her conclusions
were measured: ‘Summing up, it can be said that Anthropology
offers a varied, useful, very interesting and sometimes strenuous
life, but little in the way of financial advantage.’ However, her own
experiences had been positive: ‘Of course I, personally, think there
is no career to beat it, but I have been exceptionally lucky both in
opportunities for field work and in having a good University post to
come back to.’ (ibid)
Penniman wrote to the Secretary of Faculties in September 1955
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requesting an extension of Blackwood’s period of office until the

age of seventy. He request was considered by the University’s
Visitatorial Board in December, and in May 1956 Blackwood
received a letter from the Secretary of Faculties confirming her
reappointment as University Demonstrator. He added that a new
young Demonstrator [Audrey Butt?] had been appointed and it was
vital that Blackwood remain on the staff to ensure continuity of the
teaching and research programme, and so that she could advise
her new colleague (OU Archives, file FA/9/2/90, 29 September
1955).
In December 1955 Blackwood was also elected to represent the

University at the 32nd International Congress of Americanists, in
August the following year, in Copenhagen, on the recommendation
of the Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography. She
was elected again in 1956 (she had also been recommended as a
representative in 1949, but the University decided not to appoint a
delegate that year) (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 32,
letter from Douglas Veale, 6 December 1955). She travelled to the
1956 Congress with Irene Beazley and Mr Turner (see PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers box 32, letters to Irene Beazley
1956).
1957
Blackwood was elected Vice-President of the Anthropological

Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and served in that post until
1960 (see PRM biogs).
1959
Blackwood formally retired in 1959, at the age of 70, but she

continued to work at the Pitt Rivers Museum until her death.
1963
Up to 1963 Blackwood lived in Walton Street, then, on the death of

her ‘long term companion’ with whom she shared the house, she
had to move and sort out the house, so she moved to Littlemore
(see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers General
Correspondence J-M, letter from E. Jackson, 17 September 1963).
Her companion was called Miss Watters (see PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers uncatalogued correspondence and memories of
her, letter to Mrs Newall, 7 April 1967). From her correspondence at
67 de 77 26/04/2020 15:21
the time, it is clear that this was a difficult and trying job, both
physically and emotionally (see PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers General Correspondence).
Blackwood, now in her mid-70s and officially retired, was concerned

about her position at the Museum in the light of Penniman’s
retirement and Fagg’s arrival as the new Director. A letter from
Thomas H. Bagshawe (formerly Curator at the Luton Museum) to
Blackwood responds to her concerns: ‘I can well understand your
apprehension about the new curator and your own position after the
appointment…Best wishes to you and a hope that soon you will find
a happy home and be left in peace at the museum.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers General Correspondence A-D, 9
June 1963) A letter written a few years later, in 1967, to Audrey
Richards confirmed that Fagg had allowed Blackwood to keep her
room: ‘Our present curator, Bernard Fagg, has been very kind in
allowing me to keep my room here although I have officially retired.
There is plenty of work for me. I keep very fit and am pleased to be
busy and of use.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 32,
letter to Audrey Richards, 2 March 1967)
1966
Blackwood was given the post of Honorary Assistant Curator (see

PRM biogs).
1968
In January 1968 Penniman was moved to St Andrew’s Hospital in

Northampton, where he worked on his autobiography. Thus began
a long correspondence between Blackwood and Penniman, and
Blackwood visited Penniman in Northampton in her Baby Austin,
with the seat adjusted to make him more comfortable. Penniman
frequently asked Blackwood to look up references for his book, or
specific words, or more general details and information to assist in
his research. He often gave her a list of books and other items to
bring to him in Northampton. He wondered how she found time for
jobs in the Museum when he gave her ‘full-time…employment as
Research Fellow for Education of Emeritus Curators, who left the
chance of education until retirement’ (PRM ms collections
Blackwood papers /TKP uncatalogued letters, Penniman to
Blackwood, 22 October 1973). The friendship continued in this way
until Blackwood’s death in 1975, and some of their correspondence
68 de 77 26/04/2020 15:21
can be found in an uncatalogued box of PRM ms collections

Blackwood papers /TKP letters.
Around this time, Schuyler Jones first met Blackwood. He

remembered that, ‘When I first knew her [in 1968], Beatrice had
been retired for ten years, though no one who spent any time in the
museum could possibly have guessed. She was always one of the
first to arrive each morning and among the last to leave in the
evening…’
‘Beatrice, although she knew more about the museum and its
collections than the rest of the staff put together, was very diffident
and retiring when it came to expressing that knowledge in formal or
informal staff meetings. In contrast, she was a mine of information
to visitors…She was our database in the days before computers.
She either knew or had a very good idea of where anything in the
museum might be found…she had an excellent memory. She could
therefore identify almost anything that was brought in for
identification and go directly to the relevant section of our own
collections to turn up half a dozen objects like it.’ (PRM ms
collections Blackwood papers uncatalogued correspondence and
memories of Blackwood, Memories by Schuyler Jones for Felicity
Wood November 1993)
1969
Blackwood visited the Austrian Tyrol (see PRM biogs). There is part
of an undated diary, written in a notebook, in the manuscript
collections which may well have been written during this trip. In it,
Blackwood records arriving in Innsbruck on 13 September (the first
entry in the diary), where she went to the Tyrol Museum für
Volkskunde and studied the collections and later toured the old
town. It would appear that she was travelling with a group, because
the following day she visited Bad Ischl with Fran Asmus, Professor
O’Riordain of University College Dublin, and others, before going
on to Hallstatt. Over the next few days they explored the area,
visiting the salt workings, pottery making, and museums. On 17
September she noted that her companions left, and the next day
she took a train to Salzburg, where she ‘Found a shop with Austrian
handiwork + bought a whistle in form of a hen for Sir John Myres’
(PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 18, diary from trip to
Europe). On 19 she visited the shop again, and went to the castle
69 de 77 26/04/2020 15:21
and the catacombs. On the 20 September she began her journey

home, flying via Frankfurt and Brussels and arriving in London on
the same day (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 18,
diary from trip to Europe).
1971
Blackwood visited Ascona, Switzerland, for two weeks (see PRM

biogs)
1975
Blackwood died on 29 November at home in Oxford, aged 86

years. She was survived by her sister, Mrs Mary French,
Chislehurst, Kent. At some point shortly before her death she
crashed her Baby Austin while visiting Tom Penniman. Other
people’s memories of this incident differ: Catherine Fagg
remembered that she lost her car and her license and was never
the same again (see below). Schuyler Jones gave a more detailed
account of the story, as it unfolded following the car crash.
‘She then got a lift into Oxford and managed to purchase not only
the same make and model of car, but one that was the same colour
as well. Next morning she drove in to work as if nothing had
happened. No one knew anything about it until a police officer
arrived to get details of the accident. Her insurance company
decided that she would have to take a driving test, the mere
suggestion of which incensed her. In the end, uncharacteristically,
she gave it up and walked to and from the museum each day.
Finally, with the onset of winter, she gave in a little more and I was
allowed to drive her home each evening. I did this as usual on a
Friday evening in November, 1975. On the following Monday
Beatrice rang in to say that she had a cold and her doctor advised
her to stay at home. On Wednesday she was dead. In terms of her
contribution to the museum she ranks with General Pitt Rivers and
Henry Balfour. Those of us who were privileged to work with her
treasure her memory.’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
uncatalogued correspondence and memories of Blackwood,
Memories by Schuyler Jones for Felicity Wood November 1993)
If this story is correct, it seems hardly surprising, given Blackwood’s

fierce independence throughout her life, that the loss of her car and
consequently her increasing inability to fend for herself in day-to-
day life immediately preceded her death.
70 de 77 26/04/2020 15:21
It seems that at some point Blackwood may have travelled to

‘Lappland’:
PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 23: visited the Lapps –
‘The Lapp language has now incorporated a large number of Norse

words. Nowadays, most Lapps speak also the language of the
country in which they live. The Swedish Lapps I met, however,
spoke Lappish and Finnish but not Swedish.’ (3.262)
‘All the Lapps drink quantities of coffee. If you visit them it is not
etiquette to leave until you have had at least two cups of coffee, it is
more polite if you drink three or four. In the olden days they used
instead of coffee birchsap and duovlle, a fungoid growth found in
birches. It is gathered in the summer, dried in the smoke of the tent
and ground like coffee. It has a sweet taste.’
‘I found dried reindeer meat quite palatable up in Lappland. But you

need good teeth!’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
uncatalogued correspondence, undated lecture on ‘Field Studies’)
Haddon. Haddon corresponded with Blackwood about mental

testing in late 1920s and wished her well for her 1929 trip to
Melanesia, ‘I am already looking forward with interest to your return
– it will be fascinating to hear what you have seen + done.’ (PRM
ms collections Blackwood papers uncatalogued N.American photos
and Kew, Haddon to Blackwood, 28 June 1929). Blackwood asked
ACH to check over her paper on Solomon Island stories for the
Folklore Society Journal. She visited him when she was in
Cambridge (see Box 8, envelope 26, Haddon papers, CUL). There
are also letters in the PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
General Correspondence box. Haddon visited Blackwood and
Penniman at the Museum in June 1939, and stayed with the
Seligmans for the visit (see Gen Corres).
Sydney Ray – visits, correspondence re Melanesian languages, in

March 1933, while she was preparing her book, he commented on
the data she had gathered (see PRM ms collections Blackwood
papers Gen Corres M-S) Blackwood collected significant amounts
of linguistic data while in Melanesia (her undergraduate training had
been in linguistics and she was a great linguist herself) and she
was advised and helped in this work by Ray.
Seligman. Collected dreams for him while in New Guinea 1929-30
71 de 77 26/04/2020 15:21
and corresponded about them afterwards, late 1931-1934 (latterly

for Blackwood’s book) (see PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
Gen Corres M-S) Blackwood also wonders about including
something in her book about dreams, CGS encourages this and
offers to read any manuscript, which he did. Blackwood also visited
them at Toot Baldon, for work and pleasure. (Letter of thanks for an
offprint from BZS 1943, also, NB, letter from BZS to Blackwood, 28
August 1946, regarding Bor beads in the Seligman collection, in
PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 24.)
Balfour – takes a caring and humorous tone in letters while she is in

the field, e.g. ‘I will be very glad to hear of how you are getting on, if
you get time to write. Take care of yourself + don’t run risks. Also
don’t, like the proverbial missionary, get ‘absorbed in your work’
among cannibals!’ (PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 19,
HB to Blackwood, 26 August 1936) Schuyler Jones remembered
that, ‘In 1937 Henry Balfour had become increasingly alarmed at
the idea of Beatrice working alone in Highland New Guinea in areas
that were considered unsafe at best. He ordered her to return to
Oxford.’ (uncatalogued correspondence and memories of
Blackwood, Beatrice Blackwood Lecture, 20 May 1998). I have
found no evidence of this order. One gets the impression that their
relationship was very professional: although there was great mutual
respect, Blackwood did not have the warm relationship with Balfour
that she enjoyed with Thomson. See ‘The Blackwood Collection’
document for more on HB and Blackwood.
Marett. Blackwood was very fond of Marett, who advised and

encouraged her throughout. A few of his letters (ranging in date
from 1928-1943) are in PRM ms collections Blackwood papers
General Correspondence. In the year he died, Blackwood wrote a
memorial paper ‘R.R.M. as Anthropologist: a paper read to the
Lankester Society at Exeter College on June 2nd, 1943’, a copy of
which is kept in PRM ms collections Blackwood papers box 21. In
the paper she remembers referring to Thomson, Balfour and Marett
as ‘the Triumvirate, or, alternatively, the Trinity’.
There is a folder of people’s recollections of Blackwood in the box

‘uncatalogued correspondence and memories of Blackwood’, most
of which were gathered together for the Friends of the Pitt Rivers
Museum 10th Anniversary Newsletter in 1994. I have included
72 de 77 26/04/2020 15:21
some extracts here:
Schuyler Jones, Beatrice Blackwood Lecture, 20 May 1998
‘Beatrice was kind, thoughtful, helpful, and patient with students

and visiting scholars, but a stickler for correct museological
practices and procedures. Although diminutive in stature, she was
extremely outspoken and the transgressor would receive a wrathful
lecture delivered with a remarkable economy of words…a lesson
which no one on the receiving end was likely to forget.
‘Although she was shy and modest in the extreme, she inspired
respect bordering on trepidation.’
‘Blackwood was a well-known figure around Oxford in the 1920s

and 30s when she was frequently seen careering about on a huge
motorcycle with a sidecar, the latter usually full of books…’
‘My over-riding memory of Blackwood is of a complex personality.

She could be shy and rather aggressive by turns, but aggressive
only when she thought principles were in danger of being ignored.
As already indicated, she was extremely modest about her own
accomplishments, experience, and knowledge…Although working
full time in the Museum and knowing the collections better than
anyone, she was content to remain in the background, getting on
with the work she regarded as being of importance. She was warm
and generous with her time and knowledge whenever she felt that
she was in a position to assist someone who had a genuine interest
in the collections, regardless of whether that individual was a first
year geography student or a well-established scholar from abroad.’
Schuyler Jones for Felicity Wood November 1993
Jones only gradually realised Blackwood’s important role in the

history of the Museum:
‘Beatrice herself never had much to say on the subject. Aside from
a natural reticence concerning her own contribution to anything,
she was always too busy at work in the museum for idle
reminiscence. She was a slight figure, below average height, with a
fine sense of humour and a forthright manner. I soon discovered,
however, that she could be almost fiercely sharp with anyone who
mishandled museum specimens in her presence or rashly
embarked on some procedure which was contrary to museum
practices.’
73 de 77 26/04/2020 15:21
‘…Beatrice had charm and patience in abundance and was

courteous and welcoming to members of the public and visiting
scholars. She carried on a wide academic correspondence with
former students and other scholars all over the world.’
Catherine Fagg, January 1994
‘When Bernard was curator, I know that she was the most useful
member of the PRM, and always ready to help. He constantly
asked and accepted her advice. She looked after Tom Penniman
who came into the museum daily (Ken Walters collected him from
his lodgings), and when eventually Tom had to go into hospital - +
St. Andrews in Northampton was selected – Beatrice drove over at
least once a week to visit him. Unfortunately, on one of these
journeys, she had a crash, lost her car, + lost her licence. Then,
sadly, feeling that she was no longer independent, she found life
more + more frustrating, left her home in Littlemore, took on the
Wyndam House flats, where she died not long after she had moved
in.’
Jean Townsend, wife of Blackwood’s cousin, Sept 1994
Beatrice always very relaxed with their small children when she
visited and seemed to enjoy their company.
‘When we went to visit her in Oxford she would always prepare a

fine lunch or dinner for us and then take us to the Theatre. She
would always like to walk from 14 Walton Street where she then
lived to the Theatre, but she walked so fast we had a job to keep up
with her although we were years younger. She was great fun +
loved the theatre or concerts…I wish she would have told us more
about her travels.’
Ian Townsend, Blackwood’s cousin, Sept 1994
In the late 1950s she would come to lunch when he and his siblings
were children – once she broke down but had fixed the car long
before the RAC man arrived.
‘In those days, reflecting the culture of the times, I remember how I
found it strange that a woman should not only work but drive a car
and travel to strange places. In my world at the time, women, if they
were not housewives, worked as nurses or secretaries or on
production lines in factories.
‘Finding out from her what she did was always difficult. She
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seemed reluctant to talk about it, as if her work wasn’t important or

interesting. She was always more interested in us…’
Bibliography:
Gacs, Ute; Aisha Khan, Jerrie McIntyre & Ruth Weinberg (eds.)
1989. "Beatrice Mary Blackwood (1889-1975)" in Woman
Anthropologists: Selected Biographies. University of Illinois Press,
University of Chicago
Gosden, Chris and Chantal Knowles 2001 Collecting Colonialism:

Material Culture and Colonial Change Berg, Oxford
Knowles, Chantal 1998: ‘Beatrice Mary Blackwood (1889-1975)’ in

Petch, A. Collectors Volume 2, pp. 6-13. Pitt Rivers Museum,
Oxford
Knowles, Chantal 2004 ‘Blackwood, Beatrice Mary (1889-1975)’

entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Penniman, T.K. 1976a: 'Beatrice Mary Blackwood 1889-1975.'

American Anthropologist vol.78:2, June1976. p.321-2.
Penniman, T.K. 1976b: 'Obituary: Beatrice Mary Blackwood.'

Oceania vol.XLVI, 1975-6. p.234-7.
Percival, A.C. 1976: 'Obituary: Miss B.M. Blackwood.' Folklore

vol.87:1, p.113-4.
Simpson, Colin 1953. "A Woman of Oxford lives with the

Kukukukus" in Adam With Arrows: Inside New Guinea. pp. 64-84.
Angus and Robertson, Sydney
Extract from the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum 10th

Anniversary Newsletter. "Beatrice Blackwood Remembered." p.4-6.
contributions from Schuyler Jones, Bob Rivers, Catherine Fagg and
Kenneth Kirkwood
‘Miss B.M. Blackwood: Distinguished Anthropologist’ Obituary in

The Times, 2 December 1975, pg 14, issue 59567, col. F
Blackwood: List of Publications:
1927. 'A Study of mental testing in relation to Anthropology.' Mental

Measurement Monographs
1929. ‘Tales of the Chippewa Indians’ in Folklore vol. 40, no. 4, pp.
315-344
1930. ‘Racial Differences in Skin-Colour as Recorded by the Colour
75 de 77 26/04/2020 15:21
Top’ in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute vol. 60,

pp.137-168
1932. ’92. Folk-stories from the Northern Solomons’ (summary of a

paper) in Man vol. 32, p.74
1932. ‘Folk Stories from the Northern Solomons’ in Folklore vol 43,
no. 1, pp. 61-96
1934. with L.H. Dudley Buxton ‘An Introduction to Oxfordshire

Folklore’ in Folklore vol 45, no. 1 pp.29-46
1935. ‘Treatment of the Sick in the Solomon Islands’ in Folklore vol.

46, no. 2, pp.148-161
1935. Both Sides of Buka Passage: an ethnographic study of

social, sexual, and economic questions in the north-western
Solomon Islands. Oxford, Clarendon Press
1939. with L.H. Dudley Buxton and J.C. Trevor ‘Measurements of

Oxfordshire Villagers’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 1-10
1939. ‘Leonard Halford Dudley Buxton, D.Sc., F.S.A.’ in Folklore,

vol. 50, no. 2, pp.204-205
1939. ‘Life on the upper Watut, New Guinea’ in The Geographical

Journal vol. 94, no. 1, pp. 11-24
1939. ‘Folk-Stories of a Stone Age People in New Guinea’ in

Folklore, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 209-242
1940. ‘Crafts of a Stone Age People in Central New Guinea’ in

Man, vol 40, p. 11
1940-43. ‘Use of Plants Among the Kukukuku of Southeastern

Central New Guinea’ in Proceedings of the Sixth Pacific Sciences
Congress (Volume 4) of the Pacific Science Association. University
of California Press
1941. ‘Some Arts and Industries of New Guinea and New Britian’ in
Man, vol. 41, p. 88
1945. ‘Mary Edith Durham: 8 Dec., 1863-15 Nov., 1944’ in Man, vol.
45, pp.22-23
1948. [NB written by Balfour, edited and prepared for publication by

Blackwood] ‘Ritual and Secular Uses of Vibrating Membranes as
Voice-Disguisers’ in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
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vol. 78, no. 1/2, pp. 45-69
1950. ‘Reserve Dyeing in New Guinea’ in Man, vol 50. pp. 53-55
1950. 'The Technology of a Modern Stone Age People in Central

New Guinea.' Occasional Papers on Technology 3. Pitt Rivers
Museum, University of Oxford
1953. ‘Sir Francis Knowles: 1886-1953’ in Man, vol. 53, pp. 88-89
1955. with P.M. Danby 'A Study of Artificial Cranial Deformation in

New Guinea.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol.
85:173-192.
1962. ‘Robert H. Lowie: 1883-1957’ in Man, vol. 62, pp. 86-88
1970. 'The Classification of Artefacts in the Pitt Rivers Museum,

Oxford.' Occasional Papers on Technology 10. Pitt Rivers Museum,
University of Oxford.
1978. 'The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut. Edited from her published
articles and unpublished field notes, and with an introduction by
C.R. Hallpike.' Monograph series no.2. Pitt Rivers Museum
1991. The Origin and development of the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Revised and updated by Dr. S. Jones). Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
Blackwood also wrote numerous scholarly book reviews throughout

her career, and contributed entries for the ‘Museum News’ section
of Folklore between 1958-1971
This document was written by Frances Larson during the ESRC-

funded Relational Museum project 2002-2006 as a series of
research notes.
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Beatrice Blackwood (1889-1975) about:reader?url=https://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/sma/index.php/articles/articl...

Beatrice Blackwood (1889-1975)

This document was written during the ESRC funded Relational

1998.356.1 Beatrice Blackwood

This document contains:

chronological account of Blackwood’s career

very brief notes on her friendships with other notable

notes on some people’s memories of Blackwood

bibliography for books and articles on Blackwood

list of Blackwood’s main publications

Beatrice Mary Blackwood was born on 3 May 1889 at her parents’

of three children of James Blackwood (1822-1911), a publisher and

Blackwood won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford, in

She was awarded a second-class honours degree in English

Blackwood met Czaplicka again, at the house of a mutual friend,

having difficulty in preparing her material for publication. I offered to

Blackwood had enrolled on Oxford’s Diploma in Anthropology in

While working on the diploma course, Blackwood spent her

In 1918, having graduated with distinction from the Diploma course,

(Penniman 1976b: 235). She also continued to work with Czaplicka

Arthur Thomson became Dr Lees Professor of Anatomy at Oxford

Blackwood was promoted to Departmental Demonstrator in the

Blackwood was first listed as Demonstrator in Physical

In May 1921, Blackwood’s friend Marya Czaplicka killed herself, at

Blackwood was made Fellow of the Anthropological Institute of

Dudley-Buxton resumed his work as Lecturer in Physical

In the summer of 1923 she travelled to Turkey, and donated a small

In 1924 Blackwood was awarded a Laura Spelman Rockefeller

Blackwood arrived in America) he started doing psychological

According to Schuyler Jones, Marett had put her in touch with

Race Relations: In the American South in particular Blackwood was

There was so much suspicion and fear on both sides that

Blackwood found it very difficult to build up the confidence of the

Her experiences made her aware of the complexities of social,

her from believing in her anthropometric research as a physical

Europe: ‘There is no population in Europe to-day which can be

Blackwood spent much of her time issuing cautions and

easier to handle, to divide up the population of Europe on certain

What Blackwood’s lectures actually reveal is the fact that the

Her trip to North America began in September 1924. She left

In early January 1925 Blackwood attended the National Research

From Nashville she travelled up to Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada)

House she undertook a trip to Oxford House between 6 and 16

Cultures in transition: Blackwood became interested in the

‘…while these gravestones are no longer representative of native

illustrated than among these tribes of the north-west coast.’ (PRM

On 21 September she set out from Vancouver, arriving in

There is a gap in Blackwood’s diary at the beginning of January. It

On 13 June she arrived in Phoenix, Arizona. From here she visited

worked with Barbara Freire Marecco during her fieldwork in the

Sixty miles west of Albuquerque, the Acoma pueblo claims to be

‘I never saw Acoma without a feeling of excitement or left it without

On 3 August she arrived back in Santa Fe where she enjoyed a

From Phoenix she visited Fort Apache on 18 October. And on 27

Meanwhile, the annual report for the Department of Human

30 August. On 4 September she was back in Holbrook, in Gallup on

Back in Oxford, Dudley-Buxton became Reader in Physical

Following Thomson’s letter to Margoliouth in November 1927,

In Trinity Term 1929 Blackwood was granted one year’s leave of

Department of Human Anatomy; she also lectured in ‘Human

Blackwood’s fieldwork was funded by the Committee for Research

Blackwood probably left England for Australia in early July (her

diary starts on 21 July, while in Colombo, and it took about 3 weeks