In 1904 the society elected its first female fellows, following a number of years of tireless campaigning by the botanist Marian Farquharson. Whilst the society's council was reluctant to admit women, the wider fellowship was more supportive; only 17% voted against the proposal. Among the first to benefit from this were the ornithologist and photographer Emma Louisa Turner, Lilian J. Veley, a microbiologist and Annie Lorrain Smith, a lichenologist and mycologist, all formally admitted on 19 January 1905. Also numbered in the first cohort of women to be elected in 1904, was the paleobotanist, and later pioneer of family planning, Marie Stopes, the philanthropist Constance Sladen, founder of the Percy Sladen Memorial Trust and Alice Laura Embleton (1876 – 1960), biologist, zoologist and suffragist, who had been one of the earliest women to deliver a paper to the society on 4 Jun 1903.