Eugenics: “a Darwin family business”

Denis Sewell

“[In the] years leading up to the First World War, the eugenics movement looked like a Darwin family business. … Darwin’s son Leonard replaced his cousin Galton as chairman of the national Eugenics Society in 1911. In the same year an offshoot of the society was formed in Cambridge. Among its leading members were three more of Charles Darwin’s sons, Horace, Francis and George.” ¹

Related articles

• Darwin and eugenics: Darwin was indeed a ‘Social Darwinist’
• A Civic Biology and eugenics
• Eugenics … death of the defenceless: The legacy of Darwin’s cousin Galton
• The Darwinian roots of the Nazi tree (review of From Darwin to Hitler by Richard Weikart)
• America’s evolutionists: Hitler’s inspiration? (review of War against the Weak by Edwin Black)

Reference

1. Sewell, D., The Political Gene: How Darwin’s Ideas Changed Politics, p. 54, Picador, London, 2009. Return to text.