Remembering Mary Charteris Thorburn, Pioneer Female Tackle Merchant

I recently came across a photo of Mary Charteris Thorburn, a famed fly tier and tackle maker from Scotland. She was in business from about 1915 through her death in 1950, and made flies for most major outlets. She also sold a ton of tackle branded with her name, including Young and Dingley badged reels.

The following blurb was published in the July 1916 Forest & Stream and came with the accompanying photo:

Miss M.C. Thorburn, in her Workshop at Edinburgh, Scotland, Making Salmon Flies

American sportsmen have grown accustomed to seeing fields of outdoor recreation and activity they once thought restricted to mere man, invaded--and successfully, too--by their new partner in fun, the sportswoman.

Many of them, however, probably do not realize that the broadening out of woman's activities in the countries at war has included her entry into the field of dressing expert fishing tackle for anglers all over the world.



The picture shows Miss M.C. Thorburn in her workshop at Edinburg, Scotland, dressing spring salmon flies. She conducts the entire business herself, which besides the making of both wet and dry flies for trout and salmon fishing, includes the manufacture and sale of trout and salmon gut casts, rods, nets, and other equipment for the expert angler.

Her obituary from The Scotsman dated January 9, 1950 helps us to better understanding this pioneering tackle merchant.

Edinburgh Business Woman's Death

The death occurred yesterday of Miss Mary Charteris Thorburn, fishing tackle maker, of 59 George Street. Miss Thorburn, who was an expert in fly dressing and made flies for all the big competitions, was well known to anglers throughout the world. She started the business shortly after the First World War at 12 Shandwick Street and some 20 years later moved to the George Street Premises. A native of Dinwoodie Station, Dumfriesshire, she was 71 years of age. The business will be continued by her niece, Miss Nessie Graham, who has been associated with her in running the shop for many years.

An amazing lady. To see some examples of trade reels sold by her company, click here.

-- Dr. Todd

Ladies With Rods ca. 1933

Keeping with the theme this week of women and fishing (in honor of mother's day) I reprint an interesting article from 1933 on women anglers. My wife could probably attest to the fact that husbands and boyfriends often make terrible teachers (I could tell you the most horrible golf story ever on this theme). Fortunately, her father taught her how to fish when she was very young.

The article Ladies with Rods comes from Time Magazine (24 April 1933).

Ladies With Rods

Many a Connecticut woman packed up a rod & reel and repaired to a three-mile stretch of Branford River near New Haven, when the State trout season opened one day last week. Few of them minded much when they tangled their lines in trees and bushes, whipped their hooks into each others' clothes, got their wading boots waterlogged. They were happy because at last they had a chance to learn how to fish with no impatient male anglers standing by to criticize, complain, show off. Any husbands or fathers who went along had to sit meekly inactive on the banks. This was a stream for women only.

The fisherwomen had Publisher Thomas Hambly Beck, president of P. F. Collier & Son Co., to thank for their fun. He calls fishing "my golf," serves as chairman of Connecticut's State Board of Fisheries & Game. When he heard last year about the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries' trout stream for women in North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest he decided then & there that Connecticut women should have the same privilege. Property-owners along the chosen three miles of Branford River helped him by leasing fishing rights to the State without charge. He had the stream well stocked with gamey brook trout.

Only requirement for use of the stream is a State fishing license. Women who are squeamish about handling worms will not be sorry that fly fishing alone is permitted. On hand to teach them the art is a State warden of their own sex. She is Edith A. Stoeher, 27, a husky, genial sportswoman who breeds English setters on her farm near South Wethersfield, likes to hunt, fish, trapshoot. Last fortnight, in a field test with four other applicants for the job, she proved her skill with rod & reel, her knowledge of flies, knots, trout. Publisher Beck expects her to turn out many a woman angler able to whip Connecticut's 32 State-leased trout streams with the best of men.

This was all part of the national "Fish and Feel Fit" program designed to help combat the Great Depression which had reached its zenith around the time this article was published.

--Dr. Todd