How Scottish women defied rampant sexism – and corsets – to found world’s oldest female-only climbing club

When Eilish McColgan lines up at the Olympics, she’ll be wearing the very best racing kit. Her shoes are exactly the right size. Her running gear is light and breathable. Every thread, stitch and lace has been calibrated to help, not hinder. 

No one sends an elite athlete out to compete in jeans and high-heels. It would be like climbing a cliff-face in a ballgown. Which, to our eyes, is exactly what Lucy Smith and Pauline Rankin seem to be doing on Salisbury Crags in 1908. 

The ladies have taken on the challenge of the cliff wearing long, full skirts, shirt-waist blouses, nipped jackets and straw hats. Lucy appears to have ankle boots on. Pauline has favoured a smart pair of shoes, with a hint of a heel. It's an outfit that could just as easily see them seated in Jenners’ Tea Room, doing nothing more dangerous than slicing a scone. And yet, here are the ladies, roped together, scaling the Crags. Tea would probably be taken later. 

Lucy and Pauline were members of the Ladies’ Scottish Climbing Club, founded in 1908. It became known as the “Scottish Ladies”. It is the world’s oldest active female-only climbing club. Lucy was a co-founder, along with Jane Ingles Clarke and her daughter, Mabel Jeffrey.

They had been inspired by the The Ladies Alpine Club, founded in London the previous year, because the boy’s own Alpine Club would not permit women members, even if they had scaled the Teufelsgrat whilst wearing a frock.

Climb ‘no longer exists’

The mountain men were scathing about women climbers. One notable climber and poet, Etienne Bruhl, was appalled by the very idea of a lady on the slopes. In 1929, women climbed The Grepon without men to help them. Etienne was furious. That just spoiled everything for the lads. In a seriously Gallic snit he wrote “Of course there are still some rocks standing there, but as a climb it no longer exists. Now that it has been done by two women alone, no self-respecting man can undertake it. A pity, too, because it used to be a very good climb.”

Climbing in the restrictive clothing of the day was a struggle. Irishwoman Elizabeth Le Blond hit on a solution. She began her climbs in familiar heavy skirts, but once away from the delicate sensibilities of men, she whipped her skirt off and carried on in a pair of riding breeches. Naturally, she would cover her lower limbs on the way back down. She once left her skirt at the top of the peak and had to climb all the way back up to get it.

By the 1890s, Scotland’s hills and mountains were becoming fashionable, and the ladies were fearless. Queen Victoria herself climbed Lochnagar and Ben Macdui. It's most unlikely that she wore riding breeches for her trip. She didn’t even wear breeches when she was riding.

‘An Accomplished Lady Climber’

The Graphic Magazine of August 13, 1898, highlighted the joys and dangers of climbing in “The Scottish Alps: Round About The Coolin (sic) Hills, Skye”. It's written and illustrated by the fantastically named Lockhart Bogle, a popular artist. 

He could show a sniffy sexist how to treat a lady on a climb. An admiring illustration captures a woman in full late Victorian splendour. Her sweeping outfit is probably tweed. Heavy, but practical in one way. Tweed was thought to defeat the midgie.

She has a matching hefty nipped-waist jacket with huge fashionable mutton sleeves and a dinky Tam-o-Shanter hat on her head. The caption reads “An Accomplished Lady Climber”. Her male companion is decked out in considerably more comfortable attire of plus-fours and a sensible pair of shoes.

‘Socially appropriate’

Scotswomen were steadily climbing to the top, in clothes that were designed to keep them in their place. Jane Inglis Clark took to climbing quite late in life. She had been an enthusiastic hillwalker but moved to mountaineering with natural ease and grace, despite her skirts. She took on the notorious Buachaille Etive Mor, believed to be the most difficult climb in Britain at that time. A photograph of Jane shows what looks like a lady on a picnic, with her jaunty hat and her shirtwaister. Until you spot the mountaineer's axe in her hand. 

Others of the Ladies’ Scottish Climbing Club wore knickerbockers under their skirts, or had buttons sewn onto the skirt so they could hoik them up and catch them at the front to free their legs. To our eyes, it still seems like an uncomfortable way to do any kind of serious exertion. Acceptable attire had to be observed when the ladies could be seen. So, naturally, on Salisbury Crags, society demanded Pauline and Lucy be in ‘socially appropriate’ wear.

Changing the world

The women kept climbing. People may have regarded the women of the ‘Scottish Ladies’ as mildly dotty, but they were anything but. They were revolutionaries.  Like all the early pioneers of women’s sports they pushed the limits of accepted dress codes until the corsets burst, forcing society to celebrate women’s athletic achievements, and, of course, spurring manufacturers on to create the hi-tech wear we see on today’s female Olympians. 

The Ladies' Scottish Climbing Club today boasts about 120 members, booted and suited for anything the mountains can throw at them. Pauline and Lucy might well have envied the kit available to sportswomen today, but they never let a little thing like a floor length frock stop them.

Look closely at the picture of those two young women climbing on Salisbury Crags. You can just make it out. Lucy is smiling. Pauline has a look of intense concentration. These radical ladies may be changing the world for sporting women, but on that day on Salisbury Crags, they are climbing because they love it.