Charles Darwin’s family damaged by inbreeding

The children of Charles Darwin, whose theories on evolution revolutionised science, may have been genetically blighted themselves — because of generations of inbreeding in his own family. Reasearchers have linked a series of marriages between cousins from Darwin's family, and that of Emma Wedgwood, who became his wife, to the high levels of infertility and premature death that beset both their wider families as well as their children. Charles and Emma, who were also first cousins, had 10 children, of whom three died early while three were infertile.
Studies of Darwin's ancestors show a history of intermarriage between the Darwins and Wedgwoods that could have produced multiple genetic defects. Such marriages were so common in Darwin's family, according to research from James Moore, professor of science history at the Open University, that both of his maternal grandparents and his mother were Wedgwoods. He said: "In Victorian times it was quite common for cousins to marry but the level of intermarriage in these families was unusual even then."



Moore found that Darwin's maternal grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the pottery dynasty, had married his own third cousin, Sarah, and had eight children. The couple's eldest daughter, Susannah Wedgwood, married Robert Darwin, her cousin. Charles was their child. Meanwhile, Josiah and Sarah's second eldest son, also Josiah, had nine children, of whom four, including Emma, married first cousins.

Moore, who is about to publish a research paper on Darwin, said: "The results of this unintended experiment in close-cousin breeding are striking — 26 children were born from these first-cousin marriages, yet 19 of the offspring did not reproduce. Five died prematurely, five were unmarried and considered deficient, and nine married without issue. Among the 62 aunts, uncles, and cousins in the four generations founded by Josiah and Sarah, 38 remained childless. Just as Britain's population was booming, the fertility of Darwins and Wedgwoods was falling."