In December 1907 a group of ladies who were climbers in the Alps met in London and agreed to form a new club, similar to the long-established Alpine Club, which at the time did not accept women members on account of their supposed physical and moral deficiencies in the matter of mountain climbing. The club's first president was the Bishop of Bristol, the second was Elizabeth Le Blond in 1908, who had been praised by T. G. Bonney when he became president of the Alpine Club as one of those whom our stern Salic law prevents us from numbering among our members, and it was the first club specifically for women mountaineers. Initially, it was the Alpine Section of the Lyceum Club, an intellectual women's club, to which Elizabeth Le Blond belonged, but in 1908 it established an independent existence. The club had its base at the Great Central Hotel, Marylebone,