Abstract

In 1852 Charles Darwin wrote to his cousin William Fox Darwin about his sister Susan’s heroic work to remedy a particularly deplorable situation suffered by the children of the poor:

“Susan has lately been working in a way, which I think truly heroic about the scandalous violation of the act against children climbing chimneys. We have set up a little Society in Shrewsbury to prosecute those who break the Law. . . . It makes one shudder to fancy one of one’s own children at 7 years old being forced up a chimney—to say nothing of the consequent loathsome disease, & ulcerlated limbs, & utter moral degradation.”

The Darwin children, as implied from this excerpt, were raised in a safe, comfortable, in many ways unremarkable upper-middle-class home. This normally hidden domestic sphere, though, can be illuminated through their myriad voices. In this talk I will share some of the Darwin children’s thoughts on their childhood to provide a glimpse into the working life of a man of science stationed at home and how his work schedule was inextricably intertwined with the pleasures and pitfalls of domestic life.