Editing Mary Anning (section)

=== Early childhood ===
[[File:Lyme Regis - Dorset dot.png|thumb|upright=.7|alt=Map of the UK|[[Lyme Regis]], Dorset]]
Mary Anning<ref>Dennis Dean writes that Anning pronounced her name "Annin" (see {{Harvnb|Dean|1999|p=58}}), and when she wrote it for [[Carl Gustav Carus]], a aide to King [[Frederick Augustus II of Saxony]], she wrote "Annin's" (see {{Harvnb|Carus|1846|p=197}}).</ref> was born in [[Lyme Regis]] in [[Dorset]], England, on 21 May 1799.<ref name=eb>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Mary Anning |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Anning |access-date=7 March 2018}}</ref> Her father, Richard Anning (''c''. 1766–1810), was a [[cabinetmaker]] and carpenter who supplemented his income by mining the coastal cliff-side fossil beds near the town, and selling his finds to tourists; her mother was Mary Moore (''c''. 1764–1842) known as Molly.<ref>{{Cite ODNB |title=The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |date=23 September 2004 |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/568 |pages=ref:odnb/568 |editor-last=Matthew |editor-first=H. C. G. |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/568 |access-date=30 November 2019 |editor2-last=Harrison |editor2-first=B.}}</ref> Anning's parents married on 8 August 1793 in [[Blandford Forum]] and moved to Lyme, living in a house built on the town's bridge. They attended the [[English Dissenters|Dissenter]] chapel on Coombe Street, whose worshippers initially called themselves independents and later became known as [[Congregationalism|Congregationalists]]. [[Shelley Emling]] writes that the family lived so near to the sea that the same storms that swept along the cliffs to reveal the fossils sometimes flooded the Annings' home, on one occasion forcing them to crawl out of an upstairs bedroom window to avoid drowning.<ref name=Emling11 />

[[File:Mary Anning Plaque.JPG|thumb|upright=.7|alt=Oval blue plaque marking site of Anning's house|[[Blue plaque]] where Mary Anning was born and had her first fossil shop, now the [[Lyme Regis Museum]]]] [[File:Mary Anning's house and shop in Lyme Regis, drawn in 1842.JPG|thumb|1842 sketch of Anning's house|alt=Sketch of house with two large front windows on either side of a front door and next to the steps leading up from the street to the door are two partially open cellar doors]]

Molly and Richard had ten children.<ref name="Goodhue10">{{Harvnb|Goodhue|2002|p=10}}</ref> The first child, also Mary, was born in 1794. She was followed by another daughter, who died almost at once; Joseph in 1796; and another son in 1798, who died in infancy. In December that year, the oldest child, (the first Mary) then four years old, died after her clothes caught fire, possibly while adding wood shavings to the fire.<ref name=Emling11 /> The incident was reported in the ''[[Bath Chronicle]]'' on 27 December 1798: "A child, four years of age of Mr. R. Anning, a cabinetmaker of Lyme, was left by the mother for about five minutes ... in a room where there were some shavings ... The girl's clothes caught fire and she was so dreadfully burnt as to cause her death."<ref name=Cadbury5 />

When Anning was born five months later, she was thus named Mary after her dead sister. More children were born after her, but none of them survived more than a year or two. Only the second Mary Anning and her brother Joseph, who was three years older than her, survived to adulthood.<ref name="Emling11">{{Harvnb|Emling|2009|pp=11–14}}</ref> The high [[child mortality]] rate for the Anning family was not unusual. Almost half the children born in the UK in the 19th century died before the age of five, and in the crowded living conditions of early 19th-century Lyme Regis, infant deaths from diseases like [[smallpox]] and [[measles]] were common.<ref name="Goodhue10" />

On 19 August 1800, when Anning was 15 months old, an event occurred that became part of local lore. She was being held by a neighbour, Elizabeth Haskings, who was standing with two other women under an elm tree watching an equestrian show being put on by a travelling company of horsemen when lightning struck the tree—killing all three women below.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hawkes |first1=Jaquetta |title=A Land |date=1953 |publisher=Readers United |location=London |pages=56–57}}</ref> Onlookers rushed the infant home, where she was revived in a bath of hot water.<ref name="Cadbury5">{{Harvnb|Cadbury|2000|pp=5–6}}</ref> A local doctor declared her survival miraculous. Anning's family said she had been a sickly baby before the event, but afterwards she seemed to blossom. For years afterwards, members of her community would attribute the child's curiosity, intelligence and lively personality to the incident.<ref>{{Harvnb|Emling|2009|pp=14–16}}</ref>

Anning's education was extremely limited, but she was able to attend a Congregationalist [[Sunday school]], where she learned to read and write. Congregationalist doctrine, unlike that of the [[Church of England]] at the time, emphasised the importance of education for the poor. Her prized possession was a bound volume of the ''Dissenters' Theological Magazine and Review'', in which the family's pastor, the Reverend James Wheaton, had published two essays, one insisting that God had created the world in six days, the other urging dissenters to study the new science of geology.<ref>{{Harvnb|Emling|2009|p=26}}</ref>