Ruth Frances Darwin

Ruth Frances Darwin CBE was Commissioner of the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency and an advocate of eugenics. Darwin was born Emma Cecilia Farrer and took the name Ida from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale of Little Ida's Flowers. Her father was Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade Thomas Farrer and her mother was Frances Erskine, daughter of the historian and orientalist William Erskine and granddaughter of James Mackintosh. Thomas Farrer was a friend of Charles Darwin and, following the death of Frances Farrer, married Katherine Wedgwood, niece of Emma Darwin.On 3 January 1880 Ida Farrer married her stepmother's cousin Horace Darwin, youngest son of Charles and Emma Darwin, at St Mary's, Bryanston Square. The couple had a son and two daughters: