Anna Bateson

Anna Bateson (1863 – 1928) was an English botanist, market gardener, and suffragist. After working as an assistant in botany at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she and her mother (also named Anna Bateson) campaigned for women's suffrage, she moved to New Milton, Hampshire and set up a pioneering market gardening business.

Early life and family Bateson was born in 1863, the eldest of seven children of William Henry Bateson, Master of St John’s College, Cambridge, and his wife Anna, née Aikin. Her siblings included geneticist William Bateson and fellow suffragists Mary Bateson and Margaret Heitland. She was educated at home and at a day school in Cambridge, apart from a year spent in Karlsruhe, Germany. She held a Bathurst studentship and worked as an assistant demonstrator at the College.

Gardening In Hampshire, despite describing herself as 'town-bred' and 'entirely without knowledge of the horticultural trade', she became an apprentice market gardener for two years with a family in South Wales, and then set up her own nursery garden in New Milton in 1892, which she ran for the remaining thirty-six years of her life.

Civic and personal life Bateson was active in civic life. During World War I she served on the local Military Service Tribunal. She served as a Poor Law guardian, a school manager, a member of Lymington District Council, and as president of the local Women's Institute and district Nursing Association.

She died on 27 May 1928.