(Jhiklhood and Boyhood 



81 



intellectual activity of Birmingham, on Priestley, Watt, Boulton, 

 Samuel Galton, and their association with the Wedgwoods and 

 Darwins, and realise that no attempt was made to free Birmingham 

 from the trammels of mediaeval education. Samuel the first had 

 indeed sent his son to Warrington Academy to study under Priestley 

 and Enfield, but the younger genei-ation, the sons and grandsons of the 

 men, who had made Birmingham and their great fortunes out of 

 Bii'mingham, fell back into the old theological and educational ruts. 

 It is one of the most interesting chapters in the life of Francis Galton 

 to read on the one hand the letters of Dr Jeune, headmaster of King 

 Edward's School, Birmingham', then called the Free School, to Tertius 

 Galton, and compare his views on education with those of his pupil 

 Francis Galton, a boy in his teens ! Galton lived in Dr Jeune's house 

 at Edgbaston, and walked daily through a mile of streets to school 

 and back. He started with ill luck, for some weeks after going on 

 Jan. 26, 1835 to the school, he was invalided home and the attack 

 proved to be one of scarlet fever. Francis had been in the doctor's 

 hands in the previous Christmas vacation and was possibly specially 

 receptive, and the attack undoubtedly left him languid and inert. The 

 epidemic was a severe one, for the headmaster wrote that he felt 

 convinced by his late fatal experience that however disguised it might 

 be by other symptoms it would turn out as in every recent instance an 

 attack of scarlet fever. " It is a subject of congratulation rather than 

 of regret that he should have undergone the trial, as the complaint I 

 understand never returns." Little Johnny Booth, stepson of Galton's 

 aunt, Adele Booth, who had been at Boulogne with him, and then 

 gone to the Free School died from the fever. The life of another 

 boarder was despaired of for some days. We have indeed to remember 

 that we are back in the days when healthy children were put to bed 

 with one that had the measles, in order that they might " get through 

 them." When Francis got back after Easter, he was far behind his 

 classmates and he was removed from the second into the third class 

 at his own desire. Probably he never properly recovered from this 



' Dr Jeune afterwards became successively Dean of Jersey, Master of Pembroke 

 College, Oxford, and Bishop of Peterborough. He was a man of distinction and had 

 a distinguished son. He was only 2i^ when he went to Birmingham, and he remained 

 there from 1834 to 1838 just the time of Galton's career in the school. At Oxford he 

 was a reformer, and, perhaps, his experience at Birmingham was of value to him later. 



p. G. 11 



