

ERASMUS DARWIN 



BORN DECEMBER 7, 1881. KILLED IN ACTION APRIL 24, 1915. 



SINCE this book was finished Erasmus Darwin, a grandson 

 of Charles and Emma Darwin, has been killed in action. 

 He was only thirty-three years old, and his life was cut 

 short before all its promise could be fulfilled ; but he had 

 already shown himself a man of such rare abilities and so 

 fine and lovable a character that it has been felt that some 

 account of him should be put on record. At the request of 

 his aunt, Mrs. Litchfield, I therefore add to her book this 

 little tribute to his memory. I have made use of a notice 

 already published in The Times, and have supplemented it 

 from letters written by the Commanding Officer and some 

 of the men of Erasmus's battalion, and by those of his 

 friends who can speak of a side of his life of which I have 

 no direct knowledge. 



Erasmus was the eldest child and only son of Horace and 

 Ida Darwin, and a grandson on his mother's side of the first 

 Lord Fairer. He was born on December 7, 1881, at Cam- 

 bridge, which was throughout his life the home of his father 

 and mother. He was in Cotton House at Marlborough, and 

 gained an exhibition for mathematics at Trinity College, 

 Cambridge. He came up to Trinity in October, 1901, and 

 took the Mathematical Tripos in his second year, being 

 placed among the Senior Optimes. Afterwards he took the 

 Mechanical Sciences Tripos, and was placed in the second 

 class in 1905. On leaving Cambridge, he went through the 

 shops at Messrs. Mather and Platt's at Manchester. After 

 this he worked for some little while with the Cambridge 

 Scientific Instrument Company, of which he was a director, 



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