Hewett Cottrell Watson

Hewett Cottrell Watson (9 May 1804 – 27 July 1881) was a phrenologist, botanist and evolutionary theorist. He was born in Firbeck, near Rotherham, Yorkshire, and died at Thames Ditton, Surrey.

Watson was the eldest son of Holland Watson, a Justice of the Peace and Mayor of Congleton in Cheshire, and his wife, Harriet Powell. His mother died when he was fifteen. He had seven older sisters and two younger brothers and his early life was overshadowed by a terrible relationship with his father, a reactionary conservative whose character Watson himself detailed in later years. As a teenager, Watson suffered a serious injury to his knee in a cricket match, and never recovered full movement in the joint again. Watson's mother had attempted to distract him from family tensions by sending him to work with the family's gardener, and it was after her death that his obsession with botany began. While training for the legal profession in Liverpool, Watson became interested in phrenology and decided to study medicine and natural history at Edinburgh University (from 1828 to 1832). He was elected a Senior President of the Royal Medical Society as an undergraduate, but left without taking a degree because of a breakdown in his health. In Edinburgh, he became friendly with the botanist Robert Graham, who encouraged his interest in biogeography, and with the phrenologist George Combe, joining the Edinburgh Phrenological Society in 1829. Soon afterwards, Watson inherited an estate in Derbyshire. In 1833, he moved to Thames Ditton. He travelled to the Azores in 1842, spending three months collecting botanical specimens from four of the larger islands, while serving at his own expense as ship's botanist for the Styx under the command of Captain Vidal.

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