Constituency : Lichfield 1892-5 ( Liberal Unionist )
Leonard bucked the trend by unseating his Liberal opponent Sir John Swinburne by 4 votes.
Leonard was the son of Charles Darwin. He was educated at Clapham School. He joined the Royal Engineers. Between 1877 and 1882 he worked in the Intelligence Division of the Ministry of War. In 1890 he was promoted to the rank of Major. He was an accomplished astronomer and chemist but felt himself inferior intellectually to his siblings.
Leonard supported bimetallism, Indian currency reform and municipal trading. His maiden speech was
Leonard was unseated in 1895 by 44 votes. The result was overturned on petition but the Liberals still won the by-election.
Between 1908 and 1911 Leonard was President of the Royal Geographical Society . He then became chairman of the British Eugenics Society until 1928. He was mentor to the geneticist Ronald Fisher.
In 1912 Leonard presided over the International Eugenics Congress and gave an interview in the New York Times in which he advocated economic measures to discourage "reproduction on the part of degenerate paupers ". He discussed the idea of a "lethal chamber " but rejected it. He did lobby the government for flying squads of scientists to identify the "unfit" in the run up to the First World War.
In 1926 Leonard wrote The Need for Economic Reform. He had some contact with Keynes who had praised his book on bimetallism but said he neither liked nor trusted the economist.
He died in 1943 aged 93, the last survivor of Darwin's children.
No comments:
Post a Comment