Darwin, Then and Now

Shrewsbury Scholl

At the age of eight, Darwin’s mother died. For a year, Darwin along with his younger sister, Emily Catherine continued to be homeschooled at home by their older sister Caroline until 1818 when their father enrolled them in Doctor Butler’s boarding school in Shrewsbury, one mile from home. Nature, not school was on Darwin’s mind. Collecting insects was his greatest interest, “By the time I went to this day-school my taste for natural history was well developed.”

Collecting was soon to become a passion that Darwin would eventually weave into the history of western civilization. As a young boy, Darwin was engaging with a measure of mischievousness: “I may here also confess that as a little boy I was much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and this was always done for the sake of causing excitement. For instance, I once gathered much valuable fruit from my father’s trees and hid it in the shrubbery, and then ran in breathless haste to spread the news that I had discovered a hoard of stolen fruit.”