Charles Robert Darwin was born at The Mount House, Shrewsbury Parish of St. Chad, on February 12, 1809, the second son and fifth child of Dr. Robert Waring Darwin, physician, and Susannah Wedgwood Darwin. A daughter was born the following year. Susannah Darwin was a Unitarian and attended the Rev. G. Case's chapel in the High Street. Francis Darwin commented: "My father as a little boy went there with his elder sisters. But both he and his brother were christened and intended to belong to the Church of England; and after his early boyhood he seems usually to have gone to church and not to Mr. Case's. It appears (St. James's Gazette, December 15, 1883) that a mural tablet has been erected to his memory in the chapel, which is now known as the 'Free Christian Church.'" (F. Darwin, 1995: 6)
In the spring of 1817, Charles, age 8, was sent to be tutored by the Reverend George Case, the Unitarian minister (Bowlby, 1990: 61). Susannah Darwin died at age 52, when Charles was 8 years old, and Charles' older sisters assumed her role in his upbringing. At age 9, he entered Shrewsbury School, which the Reverend Samuel Butler, headmaster, had so improved that it had become one of the leading schools of England. Although the school was hardly a mile from the Mount, Charles was a boarder. He spent seven years in attendance. Charles said the following about the Shrewsbury School (C. Darwin, 1985:27-28):
Charles was an avid hunter and collector throughout his childhood and teen years. These skills would stand him in good stead as a naturalist. In the latter part of my school life [Dr. Butler's school in Shrewsbury] I became passionately fond of shooting, and I do not believe that anyone could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands. This taste long continued and I became a very good shot. (C. Darwin, 1958: 44) Darwin and his family were regular visitors to their Wedgwood relations at Maer Hall, about 24 miles NE of Shrewsbury and within a day's ride; the estate of 1000 acres had woods, a lake, and sporting facilities ample for the young Charles. Robert Darwin expected his sons to follow in his footsteps and become physicians. Both studied medicine, but ultimately Erasmus lived a leisured life in London. The subsequent choice of clergyman, after Charles rejected medicine, may seem odd considering the vein of skepticism in the Darwin family, but it was a respected vocation with the leisure time for study of natural history. References cited:
A special thank you: We are very grateful to the personnel of ABBEYCOLOR LIMITED, 101 Frankwell, Shrewsbury SY3 8JS. Adrian Madin (Managing Director), Giles Madin, Robert Evans, and the staff provided rapid processing of slides and made available their archive of negatives of historical illustrations of the town. It was a pleasure to do business with such helpful and friendly people. The images on this page are from their archive. Return to: Biography index Last updated 27 August 1998 (JHW) |