By Amara Thornton (Research Officer, Ure Museum)

Born in New Zealand, Caroline Amy Hutton attended Girton College, Cambridge and studied Classics in the early 1880s.  Like her contemporary at Girton Eugenie Sellers Strong and near-contemporary Jane Ellen Harrison (Newnham), Hutton gave lectures at the British Museum on its antiquities collections after finishing her studies. She was admitted as a student to the British School at Athens in the mid 1890s to research terracotta artefacts in museums in Athens, as well as conduct desk-based topographical research.

On her return to Britain, in 1899 Macmillan published her book Greek Terracotta Statuettes.  This introductory guide focused on the British Museum’s collections, and featured an introduction by the Keeper of the Greek & Roman Department Alexander Stuart Murray.  Hutton subsequently took on important administrative roles at both the British School at Athens and the Hellenic Society.

In addition to serving on the Committee of the British School at Athens she became joint-editor of the School’s Annual. She served on the Hellenic Society as a member of its Council, and her work there included sustaining the Society’s administration and library particularly during the First World War – for which she was particularly remembered at her death. Her war work also included joining her Hellenic Society colleague John Baker-Penoyre as Hon Secretary of “Sweaters”, his organisation for collecting knitted goods to send to serving soldiers.

She continued to research and publish on Greek antiquities for the rest of her life.

References/Further Reading

Accounts for the Organisation. Mr John Penoyre’s Organisation for Supplying Sweaters and Other Comforts to H. M. Forces in the Field. 1917. MS War, Women and Society 1914-18: Women at Work Collection, Imperial War Museum. [Archives Unbound].

Birmingham Daily Post. 1892. London Correspondence. [British Library Newspapers], 13 October.

Birmingham Daily Post. 1893. London Correspondence. [British Library Newspapers], 20 January.

British School at Athens, 1896/1897. List of Directors and Students. Annual of the British School at Athens 3: 245-9.

Daily News. 1899. Greek Terra Cottas. [British Library Newspapers], 29 November.

Gill, D. 2002. “The Passion of Hazard”: Women at the British School at Athens before the First World War. Annual of the British School at Athens 97: 491-510.

Gill, D. 2011. Sifting the Soil of Greece: The Early Years of the British School at Athens (1886-1919). London: Institute of Classical Studies.

Smith, C. H. and Hutton, C. A.  1908. Catalogue of the Antiquities (Greek, Etruscan and Roman) in the Collection of the Late Wyndham Francis Cook, Esquire. London.

The Star 1893. Ladies’ Column. [British Library Newspapers], 28 October.