English presentation

Around 1857, daguerreotypes—portable, ornate devices used by early photography pioneers to capture household portraits as they traveled from city to city, village to village, and house to house—were already falling into disuse. The method was soon to be supplanted by emulsion plates, which were faster and more affordable. Within a few years, the first color photograph was taken by Gabriel Lippmann and the Lumière brothers, who would later set images into motion, paving the way for modern cinematographic technology.

In the summer of 1857, Charles and Emma Darwin’s eldest son, William Erasmus, returned home from Cambridge for his summer vacation, bringing with him a photographic novelty. Using it, he captured an image of his mother and their tenth child, baby Charles Waring Darwin. This photograph is believed to be one of the earliest recorded images of a child exhibiting features consistent with what science would later identify as Down syndrome. The baby’s distinct facial characteristics, combined with Emma’s advanced maternal age (she was 48 at the time of his birth) and Darwin’s handwritten reflections lend credence to this hypothesis.

Recently, with the publication of the final volumes of Darwin’s correspondence, it was revealed that he explored this condition in collaboration with Dr. John Langdon Down, the physician who first described the syndrome. Their correspondence, dated December 1873, took place when Darwin was 64 years old—many years after Charles Waring’s tragic death from scarlet fever in 1858, a poignant year that also marked the first public unveiling of Darwin’s groundbreaking ideas in On the Origin of Species.

In Volume 21 of Darwin’s complete correspondence, two fascinating letters from December 1873 provide valuable insight into 19th-century scientific thought. In one of these letters, Dr. John Langdon Down assures Darwin that he had encountered several children with the condition that would later bear his name. He notes that these children came from diverse ethnic backgrounds, suggesting that the condition was a universal occurrence.

The core of Down’s letter to Darwin focuses on his observations regarding the distinctive shape of the ears in children he had studied. While historically significant, the document may strike modern readers as unsettling due to the terminology and theories it reflects. The explanation is steeped in the 19th-century scientific framework of “involution” and “degeneration,” concepts that influenced contemporary understandings of human development but are now obsolete. It is not surprising, therefore, that the University of Cambridge attaches a warning to the volumes of Darwin’s complete correspondence and to the Darwin Correspondence Project website, giving an account of the historical reality of the period and the possibly disturbing terms present in the letters he exchanged.

Charles Darwin is the scientist to whom the cliché image of a genius isolated in his laboratory should never be attached. Having lived between 1809 and 1882, throughout his life he not only travelled much of the world aboard the HMS Beagle on an expedition that lasted six years exploring the American and Australian coasts and archipelagos of the Indian Ocean, but was also a very dedicated correspondent.

Biographers unanimously report that he devoted at least two hours a day to his monumental correspondence, writing and responding from his home studio.  

In 2023, researchers at the University of Cambridge completed the 30-volume publication of Darwin’s complete correspondence, a project that began in 1985. This monumental effort has revealed the scale of his global intellectual network. In addition to the thousands of letters Darwin sent and received, biologist John van Wyhe, curator of the Darwin Online project, recently unveiled a comprehensive catalog of Darwin’s library. This collection, comprising approximately 13,000 items—including books and annotated clippings—demonstrates that even from his studio, Darwin maintained a remarkable connection to the wider world. Among the treasures in this collection are copies of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital dedicated to him, as well as the first editions of books by Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell, readings he did daily in the company of his wife Emma, in addition to a majority of publications on Geology and Botany.

It is estimated that throughout his life, Darwin corresponded with more than 2,000 researchers from all over the world. And he certainly maintained this behavior almost until the end of his days. When his works were republished, he often included observations received through this collaboration. Science historian and biographer Janet Browne has noted that Darwin’s correspondence allowed him to build a community of researchers, drawing them into discussions about ideas that were not immediately embraced. In this way, he brought the entire world closer to the gardens and yards of Down House, the name of his residence in County Downe, London, to which he moved with his family in 1842, escaping the hustle and bustle of London. The correspondence, however, was not limited to letters. But it wasn’t just letters that postmen carried and collected: boxes with specimens of plants, crustaceans, and other animals from all over the world made it one of the most difficult correspondences to transport in the region.

It is possible that Darwin’s curiosity was largely circumstantial, yet it is important to recognize that, beyond The Origin of Species, the naturalist published at least two other significant works during his lifetime: The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1865) and the controversial The Descent of Man (1871). In the latter, Darwin ventured into risky territory by linking evolutionary theory to human development, including exploring the regressive hypothesis of evolution—a concept not far removed from the ideas used by Dr. John Langdon Down in his diagnosis of intellectual disabilities, which informed the treatments he proposed at the time. Outdated from a biological and anthropological point of view, these are ideas that were in force in the Victorian era and, through the efforts of Herbert Spencer and the positivists, spread throughout the world, reaching their own “degeneration” in the Second World War, with the adoption of Aktion T4 in the Third Reich and the horror of the concentration camps.

It is known from his correspondence and the work of his biographers that even during his family life at Down House, Darwin did not refrain from systematizing and observing the nature and behavior of his children. For him, systematic analysis was a kind of compulsion. The notes on the development of his firstborn, William, resulted in what is now considered a pioneering work on child development, anticipating Jean Piaget’s later observations. The accounts of his last child, the baby Charles Waring, are few but significant. The baby’s life coincided with a particularly tumultuous period in his father’s intellectual journey, as Darwin was confronted with the work of Alfred Russel Wallace and felt compelled to hasten the publication of his own research. On the day Darwin’s groundbreaking ideas were first publicly presented by his friends at the Linnean Society, Darwin and his wife, Emma, were burying their son at St. Mary’s Church in Downe.

The daguerreotype taken by Darwin’s son, William, offers a poignant glimpse of Emma’s loving gaze at baby Charles Waring. Still, we know very little about how his famous father viewed the child. The family’s notes and the few letters Darwin wrote to close friends and relatives offer some insight, though Darwin’s words about his son are scarce. It is known that the family’s butler, Joseph Parslow, had a particular affection for the child and that Charles Waring received considerable care and attention, but beyond that, much remains unknown. Tragically, we can never know how his development would have unfolded had he not succumbed to scarlet fever before reaching two years of age. Would he have attended Dr. Down’s school, Normansfield, which remains a leading institution for the care and development of children with intellectual disabilities? This remains a mystery, though it is notable that, by coincidence, a grandson of Dr. Down himself was born with the syndrome that Down had described at the end of the 19th century.

Without intending to clarify the obscurity that naturally arose concerning the baby Charles Waring, but impacted by this information and taking from the available documents and bibliography, it was that “Down House, 1858: the memorial of Charles Waring Darwin” was born. Over nearly a decade, from the initial research to the final draft, I endeavored to approach this sensitive subject with the utmost care, weighing every possible assumption and deduction regarding this critical moment in both the Darwin family’s life and the history of scientific development. The final result, while neutral, aligned more closely with my own expectations. Immersed in the lives of Darwin, his wife Emma, their children, and the people who were part of this pivotal time, I felt a profound need to develop this narrative, carefully shaped with the editorial expertise of Letícia Möller from the Dialogar publishing house in Brazil. This work, far more than mere curiosity, seeks to honor the incredibly difficult period in a father’s life—the devastating loss of a child—and offers a deeper look at Darwin’s immense human legacy. I hope that this exploration of Down House in 1858 will continue to illuminate aspects of Darwin’s life that extend beyond his scientific contributions.