#15505, Charles Robert DARWIN

In February 1809 Charles was born into an erudite family in which two generations were already free-thinkers of the Lunar Society. Susannah was in increasingly poor health and died when he was only 8 years old so he remembered little of his mother but was doted upon by elder sisters Marianne, Caroline and Susan. As the child of a well-to-do family with plenty of servants he enjoyed a most favourable childhood being calm, comfortable with his own company and having a solitary if enquiring mind. He grew close to his father who gave him his first books on geology and natural history.
After a year at a small day school run by Revd George Case, the Unitarian minister, Charles joined his older brother Erasmus at Shrewsbury School as a boarder even though it was only a short walk away from home. Even in the early 19th century parental views on day versus boarding raged and historians have been wholly unable to agree upon what effect that decision had on young Charles.
Although his headmaster Revd Samuel Butler (1774-1839) achieved great success in the academic world Charles described his time at Shrewsbury as ‘Simply a Blank’ because it taught only the classics which were of no interest to him. As a thinker and a dreamer who needed to learn through observation and experimentation he detested having to learn by rote.
In 1825, like his father and grandfather he took a place at Edinburgh University to study medicine. He welcomed its free-thinking society but found the pre-anaesthetic surgery wholly unpleasant and switched to studying divinity at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Ironically this gave him time to pursue his real passion, biology. He graduated in 1831 having spent much of his time collecting bugs in the Fens, but before being ordained his tutor recommended him as a ’gentleman naturalist’ for a voyage around the world on HMS Beagle.

The slow pace of the voyage, (1831-1836) including a 5-week stay in the Galapagos Islands gave him plenty of time for reading, and importantly, thinking. Ideas on evolution as opposed to transmutation as it was then known, started to formulate themselves in his mind in conflict with his Christian learning and he worried himself sick, literally. He knew his ideas were radical and feared the ostracism experienced by his grandfather. To make matters worse his favourite daughter, 10-year-old Anne died in 1851.
Worry and recurring bouts of illness weakened him and although he had written up his ideas extensively not one word had been published. Suddenly in 1858 he received a letter from one of the world’s most respected anthropologists, Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913), a long-standing admirer, who had developed a similar explanation of evolution. Wallace wanted his friend’s advice about publication.
This placed Darwin in a moral dilemma. He knew he must go ahead and publish his own work but he also knew he must allow Wallace some credit. So, extracts from Darwin’s work were presented alongside extracts from Wallace’s to the Linnean Society and Wallace agreed he had been treated fairly.

Also in membership of the Linnean Society at this time was Thomas Spencer Cobbold (1828-1886) #174, the country’s leading helminthologist who had been consulted by Darwin about the evolution of parasites.
In November 1859 Darwin published ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’ It drew fierce criticism from the Church and people did not like the thought that they were descended from apes. Darwin was not well and defence of his theories was left largely to Thomas Huxley. Before an inquisitive nation the battle between God and Science was intense.
Darwin’s book contained a thinly veiled warning about close relatives having children. He had observed that orchids were less healthy when self-fertilised and he started to worry about his marriage to his own cousin. He and Emma had ten children but had already lost two sons and a daughter and had nursed the others through many illnesses
His book was instantly successful and ran to many editions. In the fifth he introduced the term ‘Survival of the Fittest’ which avoided the question of who determined the selection, and in February 1875 with his hesitation gone he published The Descent of Man which ruffled more orthodox Christian feathers but slowly the thinking population was won over
His continuing ill health, tended by Emma, who stood by him despite their differences in religious belief, led him to envisage his end in a quiet corner of the local churchyard. The nation, led by Thomas Huxley, had a different idea and the man who changed the world was buried in Westminster Abbey in 1882.