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Erasmus DARWIN was born on the 12th December 1731 at Elston Hall, Elston, Nottinghamshire, where his family were members of the local gentry. He was the youngest of four sons and seven children of parents Robert DARWIN, a lawyer, and his wife Elizabeth (nee HILL).
His siblings were Robert (17 October 1724 - 4 November 1816), Elizabeth (15 September 1725 - 8 April 1800), William Alvey (3 October 1726 - 7 October 1783), Anne (12 November 1727 - 3 August 1813), Susannah (10 April 1729 - 29 September 1789) and John (28 September 1730 - 24 May 1805).
Many of his family members bare the name Erasmus, and it derives from his ancestor Erasmus EARLE.
He was educated at Chesterfield Grammar School, and later at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He obtained his medical education at the University of Edinburgh Medical School.
In 1756, he settled in Nottingham as a physician, but met with little success and so the following year he moved to Lichfield,
Staffordshire to try to establish a practice there.
A few weeks after his arrival, using a novel course of treatment, he restored the health of a young man whose death seemed inevitable. This ensured his success in the new locale. Erasmus became a highly successful physician, and practiced for more than fifty years in the Midlands. George III invited him to be his Royal Physician, but he declined.
Erasmus was a large man who gave up weighing himself when he reached 336 pounds (24.3 stones, 153 kg). He enjoyed his food so much that as he put more weight on, a semi-circle had to be cut out of his dining-table to accommodate his bulk. When visiting patients, he would have his driver, also a very large man; walk ahead of him to make sure the floor of a house would take his weight.
In Lichfield, Erasmus wrote "didactic poetry, and developed his system of evolution. He was the inventor of several devices; a horizontal windmill, a carriage that would not tip over, a canal lift for barges, a copying machine, a variety of weather monitoring machines and an artesian well.
He did not patent any of his inventions, believing this would damage his reputation as a doctor, and encouraged his friends to patent their own modifications of his designs. He worked on a speaking machine which apparently did a very convincing impression of a child saying 'mama' and 'papa'. His friend Matthew BOULTON offered him thousands of pounds if he could develop his machine to recite the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments.
In Lichfield, he lived in Beacon Street, in a large medieval timber-framed 17th century brick built house on the West Gate entrance to The Close. He was responsible for the enlargement of the original house and its noble Palladian frontage. His family coat of arms consisted of three scallop shells, and the motto E conchis omnia, or ‘everything from shells’. He had the motto printed on his bookplate and painted on his carriage. When he found himself satirized in verse by a local clergyman who wrote ‘Great wizard he! by magic spells. Can all things raise from cockle shells’, he had the motto on his carriage painted over but kept the bookplates.
Though huge in size, pock marked and, impeded by a stammer, Erasmus was widely known as charming, kind and attractive to the ladies. He liked sex, prescribing it as a cure for hypochondria. In 1757, he married Mary (Polly) HOWARD (1740 - 1770) in Lichfield. They had five children:- Charles (1758 – 1778), Erasmus II (1759 - 1799), Elizabeth (1763, survived 4 months), Robert Waring
DARWIN (1766 - 1848), father of the naturalist Charles DARWIN, and William Alvey (1767, who survived just 19 days).
He was a founding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham (which existed from 1765 – 1813) a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and natural philosophers.
His wife Mary (Polly) died in 1770 aged 30, a victim of illness, drink and opium. He continued to live in the same house with his sister Susanna, as housekeeper. Not too long after his wife’s death, a governess Mary PARKER, was hired to look after his 3 year old son Robert. By late 1771, employer and employee had become intimately involved and together they had two illegitimate daughters, Susanna PARKER (1772 - 1856) and Mary PARKER Jnr (1774 - 1859). Erasmus founded a boarding school for girls' school at Ashbourne, Derbyshire, which was managed by Susanna and Mary. In 1782, Mary Snr (the governess) married Joseph Day (1745–1811), a Birmingham merchant, and moved away.
During his marriage, Erasmus may have fathered another child, this time with a married woman. Lucy SWIFT gave birth in 1771 to a baby, which she also named Lucy, and she was christened a daughter of her mother and William SWIFT, but there is reason to believe the father was really Erasmus. Lucy Jnr. married John Hardcastle in Derby in 1792 and their daughter, Mary, married Francis BOOTT, the physician.
In 1775, Erasmus met Elizabeth POLE, daughter of Charles COLVEAR, 2nd Earl of Portmore, and wife of Colonel Edward POLE (1718 - 1780). He fell for her straight away, but as she was married, he could only make his feelings known for her through poetry.
In 1776 he formed the Lichfield Botanical Society in order to translate the works of the Swedish botanist Carlos Linnaeus from Latin into English. This took seven years. The result was two publications: A System of Vegetables between 1783 and 1785, and The Families of Plants in 1787. In these volumes, Erasmus coined many of the English names of plants that we use today.
He went on to write The Loves of the Plants, a long poem, which was a popular rendering of Linnaeus' works. Erasmus also wrote Economy of Vegitation, and together the two were published as The Botanical Garden.
When Elizabeth POLE’s husband Edward POLE died, Erasmus married Elizabeth in 1781, and moved into her home, Radbourne Hall, four miles (6 km) west of Derby, together with his whole family – legitimate and illegitimate. Elizabeth had already three sons from her previous marriage. The hall and village are these days known as Radbourne. In Derby, Erasmus re-established his medical practice.
Erasmus became a Mason in the famous Time Immemorial Lodge of Cannongate Kilwinning, No. 2, of Scotland.
In 1782, he and his wife Elizabeth, he moved to Full Street, Derby. They had four sons, one of whom died in infancy, and three daughters:- Edward (1782 - 1829), Frances Ann Violetta (1783 - 1874), married Samuel Tertius GALTON, was the mother of Francis GALTON, Emma Georgina Elizabeth (1784 - 1818), Sir Francis Sacheverel (1786 - 1859), John (1787 - 1818), Henry (1789 - 1790), and Harriet (1790 - 1825), who married Admiral Thomas James MALLING.
On account of all the travelling that would have been involved in continuing his active involvement with the Lunar Society, he gave it up, although he did continue to correspond with several of its members. Later he formed the much closer to his home, Derby Philosophical Society, which became a more formal off shoot of the Lunar group.
He was one of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, a natural philosopher, physiologist, abolitionist, inventor and poet. He openly sympathized with the colonies in the American Revolution, writing to a friend, "I hope Dr. [Benjamin] FRANKLIN will live to see peace, to see America recline under her own vine and fig-tree, turning her swords into plough-shares." After the war, Erasmus was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
His poems included much natural history, including a statement of evolution and the relatedness of all forms of life. He was a member of the DARWIN – Wedgwood family, which includes his grandsons Charles DARWIN and Francis GALTON.
Painting of Erasmus DARWIN by Joseph WRIGHT c 1792/3 in Derby.
Oil on canvas measuring 762 x 635mm. It hangs in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery.
Life-sized stone cast of Erasmus DARWIN by William Joseph COFFEE c 1795 in Derby.
It is on display at Derby Museum and Art Gallery.
He moved to Breadsall Priory, just north of Derby. Only weeks after moving into his new home, he died suddenly on 18 04 1802, probably of a lung infection. He was aged 70. His body is buried in All Saints Church, Breadsall.
Erasmus is probably best known as the grandfather of the biologist Charles Darwin, who wrote 'Origin of Species’.
Erasmus is commemorated on one of the eight Moonstones, in Great Barr, Bimingrngham. The Moonstones are a series of eight carved sandstone monuments of various members of the Lunar Society.
On the 5th February 1952, Darwin House became a Grade I listed building.
On the 5th April 1999, Darwin House became a museum and visitor centre dedicated to his life’s work and it is called
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