Alfred Newton - Life

Life

Alfred Newton was the fifth son of William Newton of Elveden Hall in Suffolk, sometime MP for Ipswich and a Justice of the Peace for the County of Norfolk. The family wealth was founded on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, where Alfred's grandfather Samuel Newton had a sugarcane plantation in St Kitts, and a property in St Croix (both in the West Indies). With the abolition of slavery the golden days of sugar were over, and William sold up and returned to England, purchasing the property of Elveden, near Thetford from the Earl of Albermarle. Elveden (pronounced and sometimes spelt 'Eldon' and often improperly spelled as "Elvedon") was a house and estate with a history. The house was built in 1770 by Admiral Augustus Keppel (Lord Keppel) on land where James II had hunted game. After the comparatively humble Newtons left, the estate was owned by Prince Duleep Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjab and the last Maharajah of Lahore, and then the Guinness family (Earl of Iveagh).

In 1828 the Newton family, complete with children and servants, made a lengthy trip to Italy. On the way back Alfred was born on 11 June 1829 at Les Délices, a chateau near Geneva that had once been owned by Voltaire. Alfred had a lively childhood, but suffered an accident when about five or six, which left him somewhat lame in one leg. He went to school in 1844 to Mr Walker's school at Stetchworth near Newmarket, and was keeping birds in cages and looking after various other animals from quite a young age.

As with Charles Darwin, a youth spent shooting game birds – black or red grouse, common pheasant, partridge – led to a more general interest. Unlike Darwin, however, Newton's interest stayed with birds, some of which were rare even in those days. They included the Great Bustard (Otis tarda), Montagu's Harrier (Circus pygargus), ravens, buzzards (Buteo sp.), redpolls, wrynecks (Jynx), which are small woodpeckers that specialise in ants. "The vast warrens of the 'Breck', the woods and water-meadows of the valley of the Little Ouse, and the neighbouring Fenland made an ideal training-ground for a naturalist". This enthusiasm he shared with his younger brother Edward: the two carried out bird observation when they were together and corresponded whenever they were apart.

In 1846 he went to a tutor in Biggleswade for a few months, and in 1848 Newton entered Magdalene College, Cambridge as a pensioner or commoner. In Cambridge jargon, this meant a student who paid for both his education and his lodgings. Newton graduated BA in 1853. He spent the rest of his life at Magdalene, and never married. A fall later in life, when he was on a trip to Heligoland, further crippled him, and he then walked with the aid of two sticks, instead of one, as formerly. "From a three-legged, he has become a four-legged man" commented a friend.

He is buried in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.