{{Short description|Grandson of Charles Darwin}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}} {{Infobox person | name = Erasmus Darwin | image = Erasmus Darwin IV.jpg | caption = 2nd Lt. Erasmus Darwin in uniform of The Green Howards. | birth_date = 7 December 1881 | birth_place = The Orchard, Cambridge | death_date = {{death date and age|1915|4|24|1881|12|7|df=y}} | spouse = | children = | parents = Sir Horace Darwin<br />Ida Darwin | module = {{Infobox military person | embed =yes | branch = Royal Air Force | rank = Second Lieutenant | service_years = 1914–1915 | battles = First World War {{KIA}} }} }}
[[image:Menenpoort ieper.jpg|thumb|upright=1.27|right|The Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium]] '''Erasmus Darwin''' (7 December 1881 – 24 April 1915) was an English businessman and soldier, killed in the First World War. He was the grandson of the naturalist Charles Darwin.
== Family and early life== Darwin was born in The Orchard, Cambridge, the son of Horace Darwin<ref name=Burkes/> and his wife Ida (née Farrer), daughter of Thomas Farrer, 1st Baron Farrer. Erasmus was Charles and Emma Darwin's second grandson after the birth of Bernard Darwin 5 years earlier.<ref name=Browne/> Charles wrote to Horace to congratulate them on the birth.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-13541 |title=| Darwin Correspondence Project |publisher=Darwinproject.ac.uk |date= |accessdate=2021-03-17}}</ref> However, Charles was unable to travel from his home at Down House in Kent to Cambridge to see his newborn grandson due to his ill health;<ref name=Browne/> his heart was failing and would eventually result in his death in April 1882.<ref name=Browne/> Darwin was named after his great uncle Erasmus Alvey Darwin who died 3 months before his birth, and after his great-great-grandfather Erasmus Darwin.
Darwin had two younger sisters; Ruth (1883–1972) and Nora (1885–1989), later Lady Barlow.<ref name=Burkes/>
He was brought up at Cambridge and at Abinger Hall in Surrey, the seat of his maternal grandfather.<ref name=Raverat/> He is mentioned several times in his cousin Gwen Raverat's childhood memoir ''Period Piece''.<ref name=Raverat/> His family at Cambridge also included the uncles William Erasmus Darwin (Uncle William), Francis Darwin (Uncle Frank), George Darwin (Uncle George), Leonard Darwin (Uncle Lenny), and aunts Henrietta Litchfield (Aunt Etty) and Elizabeth Darwin (Aunt Bessy).<ref name=Raverat/> His paternal grandmother, Emma Darwin ("grandmama"), resided in part at Down House and in part at Cambridge until her death in 1896.
==Education and business career== Darwin was schooled at King's College School, Cambridge<ref>{{Cite book|title=A History of King's College Choir School Cambridge|author=Henderson, RJ|year=1981|page=42|publisher=King's College Choir School |isbn=978-0950752808}}</ref> and then Marlborough College ( in Cotton House). He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge as an exhibitioner on 25 June 1901. He was awarded the Maths Prize in 1902. He took the Mathematical Tripos in his second year and afterwards the Engineering Tripos, coming 2nd in the class of 1905.<ref name=Times/> He was awarded a BA degree in 1904 and an MA in 1910.<ref name=Trinityrollofhonour/>
After graduating, he worked for Mather and Platt in Manchester, and later for Bolckow and Vaughan in Middlesbrough, where he became company secretary. He was also a director of the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, the firm founded by his father.<ref>M. Cattermole, A.F. Wolfe (1987) ''Horace Darwin's Shop: A History of the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company''</ref> He went on a business trip to North America with John Edward Stead.<ref name=Litchfield/><!-- can dates be identified by looking at ship passenger records?-->
==Military career and death== thumb|left|Captain John Vivian Nancarrow,<ref name=JVN/> who was reported buried with Darwin. Darwin was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion of the Green Howards (Alexandra Princess of Wales's Own Yorkshire Regiment), a Territorial Army infantry unit, in September 1914,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/28899/pages/7230 |title= Gazette listing |website= www.london-gazette.co.uk|format=PDF|access-date=2021-03-17}}</ref> shortly after the outbreak of the war in August. After the Regular Army was basically wiped out at the end of 1914, the Territorials had to replace them. The Green Howards joined the British Expeditionary Force in Belgium and France on the Western Front as part of the Northumbrian Division, on 17 April 1915. Casualty rates in the trenches among junior officers were exceptionally high, especially amongst those without any combat experience – on average, junior officers were killed or wounded after six weeks fighting.<ref name=Lewis-Stempel/> Darwin only survived one. He was shot and killed on 24 April during the Battle of St Julien, part of Second Battle of Ypres. He, along with a close colleague Captain John Nancarrow<ref name=JVN /> were reportedly "buried in one grave, with a little cross over it, by a farmhouse near St Julien."<ref name=Litchfield/> He was 33 years old and unmarried.<ref name=Burkes/>
A lengthy article, part news article, part obituary and part eulogy was printed in ''The Times'',<ref name=Times/> where his cousin Bernard Darwin was on the staff.<ref name=Bernard/> His cousin, Lady Margaret Keynes, later recalled "...on April 23 [1915], Rupert Brooke had died on his way to Gallipoli with the Naval Division, and my cousin Erasmus... ...had been killed the day after near Ypres. Reading the appalling list of casualties in ''The Times'' had become a daily terror lest it contained the names of friends and acquaintances, as it so often did."<ref>Margaret Keynes A House by the River: Newnham Grange to Darwin College</ref>
More details were published in the book ''Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters'' by his Aunt Etty.<ref name=Litchfield/> These included a letter from Cpl Wearmouth to Ida, a letter from his commanding officer Col. Maurice Bell and letter from Pte Wood, as well as a letter from his former colleague John Edward Stead.<ref name=Litchfield/> Darwin family letters noted: "The Royal Irish Fusiliers recovered his body along with that of Captain Nancarrow and the two were buried together with a little cross over it by a farmhouse near St Julien." However this grave must have been destroyed in the years of subsequent fighting and he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial. Commanding Officer, Colonel Bell wrote of him:- "Loyalty, courage and devotion to duty, he had them all.....He died in an attack which gained many compliments to the Battn. He was right in front. It was a man's death."
A separate memorial book by Bernard, ''Erasmus Darwin: Born 7 December 1881, Killed in Action 24 April 1915'' was also published.
With intense fighting in the Ypres Salient continuing for the next three and a half years, the location of Darwin and Nancarrow's grave however was lost, and they are two of more than fifty thousand soldiers with no known grave memorialised on the Menin Gate in Ypres.<ref name=CWGC/> He is also memorialised on the war memorial within Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge,<ref name=TrinityChapel/> The Savile Club in London and within Marlborough College Memorial Hall. His name appears on the Saltburn by the Sea war memorial, which stands close to his last home in Albion Terrace, as listed in the 1911 census.
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== References== <references> <ref name="Bernard">Peter Ryde, ‘Darwin, Bernard Richard Meirion (1876–1961)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32715 accessed 1 April 2013]</ref> <ref name="Burkes">Burke's Landed Gentry [http://www.burkespeerage.com/FamilyHomepage.aspx?FID=3423 Darwin of Downe]</ref> <ref name="Browne">E. Janet Browne ''Charles Darwin: The Power of Place''</ref> <ref name="CWGC">{{CWGC|id=1609108|name=Darwin, Erasmus|access-date=18 November 2024}}</ref> <ref name="JVN">{{cite web|url=http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/918535/NANCARROW,%20JOHN%20VIVIAN|title=Casualty Details | CWGC}}</ref> <ref name="Lewis-Stempel">John Lewis-Stempel Six Weeks: The Short and Gallant Life of the British Officer in the First World War: The Life and Death of the British Officer in the First World War</ref> <ref name="Litchfield">Henrietta Litchfield (1915) ''Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters''. See http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1553.1&viewtype=text&pageseq=1</ref> <ref name="Raverat">Gwen Raverat (1952) ''Period Piece''</ref> <ref name="Times">Second Lieut. E. Darwin. Grandson of the Scientist Killed in Action. ''The Times'', Friday, 30 April 1915; pg. 4; Issue 40842; col D</ref> <ref name="TrinityChapel">{{cite web|url=http://trinitycollegechapel.com/war-memorials/|title=Trinity College Chapel - Gallery|website=trinitycollegechapel.com}}</ref> <ref name="Trinityrollofhonour">{{cite web|title=Trinity College Chapel Role of Honour WWI|url=http://trinitycollegechapel.com/media/filestore/general-documents/RollOfHonourWWI.pdf|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160615132105/http://trinitycollegechapel.com/media/filestore/general-documents/RollOfHonourWWI.pdf|archive-date=15 Jun 2016|access-date=17 March 2021|website=Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge}}</ref> </references> {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Darwin, Erasmus IV}} Category:1881 births Category:1915 deaths Category:Military personnel from Cambridge Category:British military personnel killed in World War I Category:British Army personnel of World War I Erasmus IV Category:Green Howards officers Category:People from Cambridge Category:Territorial Force officers Category:People educated at Marlborough College Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge