Celebrating Forgotten Scientists: John Edmonstone

Charles Darwin is said to be the father of evolution. He pushed the boundaries of science and challenged the social beliefs of his time, sending ripples through his community with his theories, so much so that he is known as one of the greatest scientists and philosophers of his time.

However, prior to this, Darwin was enrolled at Edinburgh University to study Medicine, a subject he had very little interest in. 

It was only in 1826, having dropped out of the Medicine course and instead nursing an increasing interest in natural history, that a young Charles Darwin met the man who would teach him skills that would prove vital for his theories about evolution

John Edmonstone, a free man, had a taxidermy shop a few doors down from where Darwin was living with his brother at the time. They became good friends, and John gave the young Darwin lessons on the art of preserving animals, specifically birds. Letters from Darwin to his sister state that during their daily sessions, John would speak fondly of his tropical homeland in South America.

Both of John’s parents were slaves on a wood plantation in what was then British Guiana (now Guyana). He learned his skills from Charles Waterton, a soon-to-be English Naturalist and pioneering conservationist, who also happened to be a hero of Darwin’s, who visited Guyana in 1812.

When the owner of the plantation John worked on, Charles Edmonstone, moved back to his Cardross Park estate in Scotland, he took John with him. In Scotland, John became a free man, and 5 years later he was a successful shop owner with a thriving business.

Without John, Darwin would not have learned to preserve the Finch specimens he collected from the Galapagos Islands on his HMS Beagle voyage in 1831. These specimens were used as evidence for natural selection. It could be argued that without John, Darwin may not have been so heavily inspired to travel to South America in the first place.

Darwin already had a ‘hatred’ for slavery, some state that his friendship with John helped him to produce his theory of evolution, which rejected the racism of the time and showed that all living things, regardless of race or species, come from one common ancestor.