Mary Petherbridge was born in
London in 1870. She was educated at the
North London Collegiate School. She graduated from the Natural Sciences Tripos at
Newnham College, University of Cambridge, in 1893. She first worked as a librarian in the People's Palace, London, and then studied librarianship in America for a year. One of her pupils was
Theodora Bosanquet, later secretary to
Henry James who had approached the Bureau for a suitable candidate. Petherbridge was indexer of the
East India Company's records and the
India Office, the
Drapers' Company's records, and ''The Ladies' Field'' periodical, among other work. The India Office index entries by Petherbridge and her small staff of women comprise 430,000 entries in 72 volumes, nearly a third of the total entries in the Records catalogue. This article is reproduced in the 'Index makers' profile of her in
The Indexer journal. Petherbridge was a pioneer in promoting freelance indexing as an occupation and in training women to do it. Along with
Nancy Bailey, she played a key role in the development of indexing as a serious profession choice, as continued now by the
Society of Indexers and other indexing societies around the world. == Publications ==