In Britain, during the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth many new national scientific societies were formed; these acted as a public focus for their respective disciplines, and gained social status for their members. However, the only societies specifically for mathematicians were at a local, amateur level. Only in the middle of the nineteenth century did a national society appear – the London Mathematical Society. Applied mathematicians often had their societal needs met by other more specialised societies, and the LMS became especially attractive to pure mathematicians; it was dominated by Cambridge wranglers, and was not international in outlook. When considering the rise of pure mathematicians it may be a natural assumption to attribute their success to the LMS, but an examination of the Society's activities shows that this would be wrong; the Society did little to raise the status of pure mathematicians, or engage with the public, or help establish their discipline as one that was worthy of study in its own right. Accordingly, an explanation of pure mathematicians' success in establishing their discipline must be looked for elsewhere.