Sir Richard Owen : his life and works / by C.W.G. Rohrer.

  • Rohrer, C. W. G. (Caleb Wyand Geeting), 1873-1952.
Date:
[1911]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sir Richard Owen : his life and works / by C.W.G. Rohrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    long to the typical John Bnll. Nor was his character nnlike [134] —bluff, burly, obstinate, and perhaps not particularly bril- liant, he was yet possessed of sound common sense. Childhood and Youth. Sir Richard Owen as a school-boy succeeded admirably with his studies. In 1808, when Owen was but four years of age, his father, a West India merchant, and often absent from home, included the following sentence in a letter to his wife: “I am glad to know James and Richard come on so well with their studies and are so attentive.” James was Professor Owen’s elder brother. After the above preparatory instruction given by an old Quaker lady, Richard Owen, at the mature age of six, was sent to the Lancaster Grammar School to join his elder brother James. Whewell, the famous master of Trinity, who was Owen’s fellow-townsman, also received the first rudi- ments of his education at this school. Another school-fellow who was in the same class as Owen’s elder brother was Higgin, late Bishop of Derry. One of Owen’s teachers in the Lancaster Grammar School stigmatized him as “ lazy and impudent,” and prophesied that he would come to a bad end. This gentleman gave instruc- tion in penmanship. However, in spite of his dismal pre- dictions he managed to teach Owen to write a remarkably clear and neat hand, which hardly varied till within a few years of his death. “ At this period of his life,” as Professor Owen’s last sur- viving sister would relate, “ Richard was very small and slight and exceedingly mischievous, and he hardly grew at all until he was sixteen.” Owen’s family were evidently apprehensive that it would end by his being a “ small man.” But he soon began to make up for his early want of stature, and when he left the Gram- mar School he was already a big, awkward lad. At mature manhood Professor Owen’s height was six feet in his socks. At the age of fourteen Richard Owen had given no signs of a taste for the work to which his life was afterwards de-