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OCR Rendition - approximate
Childhood and Boyhood 81 intellectual activity of Birmingham, on Priestley, Watt, Boulton, Samuel Galton, and their association with the Wedgwoods and Darwins, and realise that no attempt was made to free Birmingham from the trammels of mediaeval education. Samuel the first had indeed sent his son to Warrington Academy to study under Priestley and Enfield, but the younger generation, the sons and grandsons of the men, who had made Birmingham and their great fortunes out of Birmingham, fell back into the old theological and educational ruts. It is one of the most interesting chapters in the life of Francis Galton to read on the one hand the letters of Dr Jeune, headmaster of King Edward's School, Birmingham', then called the Free School, to Tertius Galton, and compare his views on education with those of his pupil Francis Galton, a boy in his teens ! Galton lived in Dr Jeune's house at Edgbaston, and walked daily through a mile of streets to school and back. He started with ill luck, for some weeks after going on Jan. 26, 1835 to the school, he was invalided home and the attack proved to be one of scarlet fever. Francis had been in the doctor's hands in the previous Christmas vacation and was' possibly specially receptive, and the attack undoubtedly left him languid and inert. The epidemic was a severe one, for the headmaster wrote that he felt convinced by his late fatal experience that however disguised it might be by other symptoms it would turn out as in every recent instance an attack of scarlet fever. " It is a subject of congratulation rather than of regret that he should have undergone the trial, as the complaint I understand never returns." Little Johnny Booth, stepson of Galton's aunt, Adele Booth, who had been at Boulogne with him, and then gone to the Free School died from the fever. The life of another boarder was despaired of for some days. We have indeed to remember that we are back in the days when healthy children were put to bed with one that had the measles, in order that they might " get through them." When Francis got back after Easter, he was far behind his classmates and he was removed from the second into the third class at his own desire. Probably he never properly recovered from this ' Dr Jeune afterwards became successively Dean of Jersey, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Bishop of Peterborough. He was a man of distinction and had a distinguished son. He was only 28 when he went to Birmingham, and he remained there from 1834 to 1838 just the time of Galton's career in the school. At Oxford he was a reformer, and, perhaps, his experience at Birmingham was of value to him later. P. G. 11
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