John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

Early life

John Lubbock was born in 1834, the son of Sir John Lubbock, 3rd Baronet, a London banker, and his wife Harriet. In 1840, his grandfather died and his father inherited the family wealth, title, 3000 acres including a 668 acre estate between Farnborough and Down. He was brought up in the family home of High Elms Estate, near Downe in Kent. The family had two homes, one at 29 Eaton Place, Belgrave Square where John was born, and another in Mitcham Grove. Lubbock senior had studied mathematics at Cambridge University and had written on probability, and on astronomy. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was keenly involved in the scientific debates of the time, as well as serving as the Vice Chancellor of London University. During 1842, his father brought home a "great piece of news": the young Lubbock said later that he initially thought that the news might be of a new pony, and was disappointed to learn it was only that Charles Darwin was moving to Down House in the village. The youth was soon a frequent visitor to Down House, and became the closest of Darwin's younger friends. Their relationship stimulated young Lubbock's passion for science and evolutionary theory. John's mother, Harriet née Hotham, was deeply religious.

In 1843 he went to a preparatory school and, in 1845, Lubbock began studies at Eton College. He left Eton due to poor health in 1848 and Darwin suggested to Lubbock senior that he gift his son a microscope for his 14th birthday. In 1849 he joined the Royal Institution and attended lectures during the winter sessions from 1849 to 1851. He also attended Friday lectures and set himself a personal reading plan. After finishing school, he was employed by his father's bank, Lubbock & Co. (which later amalgamated with Coutts & Co.), of which he became a partner at the age of 22. Around 1852, he assisted Darwin's research by examining and illustrating barnacles. In 1865, he succeeded to the baronetcy.

Business and politics

In the early 1870s, Lubbock became increasingly interested in politics. In 1870, and again in 1874, he was elected as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone. He lost the seat at the election of 1880, but was at once elected member for London University, of which he had been vice-chancellor since 1872. As an MP, Lubbock had a distinguished political career, with four main political agendas: promotion of the study of science in primary and secondary schools; the national debt, free trade, and related economic issues; protection of ancient monuments; securing of additional holidays and shorter working hours for the working classes. He was successful with numerous enactments in Parliament, including the Bank Holidays Act 1871 and the Ancient Monuments Act 1882, along with another 28 acts of Parliament. When the Liberals split in 1886 on the issue of Irish Home Rule, Lubbock joined the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party in opposition to Irish home rule. A prominent supporter of the Statistical Society, he took an active part in criticising the encroachment of municipal trading and the increase of the municipal debt.

Lubbock's thoughts about the nature and value of politics were deeply influenced by his scientific research, particularly his writings on early human society. He believed that the cognitive foundations of morality could be shaped through political economy, particularly through a national education system that implemented subjects mandated by the state. He held that the minds of children could be shaped in the direction of democracy, liberalism and morality through learning how to read and write. To this goal he was a strong supporter of the Elementary Education Act 1870 and he defended the introduction of the national curriculum during the 1870s and 1880s.

In 1879, Lubbock was elected the first president of the Institute of Bankers. In 1881, he was president of the British Association, and from 1881 to 1886, president of the Linnean Society of London. In March 1883, he founded the Bank Clerks Orphanage, which in 1986 became the Bankers' Benevolent Fund – a charity for bank employees, past and present, and their dependants.

In January 1884, he helped found the Proportional Representation League, later to become the Electoral Reform Society. He authored the pamphlet Proportional Representation shortly after the founding of this organisation. He is credited with the now-common use of multi-member districts instead of country-wide districting proposed by Thomas Hare in his 1859 single transferable voting (STV) proposal.

Entomology, archaeology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology

In addition to his work at his father's bank, Lubbock took a keen interest in biology, archaeology and evolutionary theory. Darwin had put him in touch with the American entomologist James Dwight Dana who led Lubbock to join the entomological society in 1851 and also guided him on the dissection of specimens. Lubbock also taught himself illustration and lithography. His first scientific paper, the description of a new copepod which he named as Labidocera darwinii, was published in 1853. In 1855, he and Charles Kingsley discovered the skull of a musk ox in a gravel pit, a discovery that was commended by Darwin. A collection of Iron Age antiquities Lubbock and Sir John Evans excavated at the site of Hallstatt in Austria is now in the British Museum's collection. He spoke in support of the evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley at the famous 1860 Oxford evolution debate. During the 1860s, he published many articles in which he used archaeological evidence to support Darwin's theory. In 1864, he became one of the founding members (along with Thomas Henry Huxley and others) of the elite X Club, a dining club composed of nine gentlemen to promote the theories of natural selection and academic liberalism. He held a number of influential academic positions, including President of the Ethnological Society from 1864 to 1865, vice-president of Linnean Society in 1865, and President of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology in 1868. In 1865 he published Pre-Historic Times, which became a standard archaeology textbook for the remainder of the century, with the seventh and final edition published in 1913.

His second book, On the Origin of Civilization, was published in 1870. He held the position of President of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland from 1871 to 1872, as well as the position of Vice President of the Royal Society in 1871. During this period he worked with John Evans, the other key figure in the establishment of the discipline of archaeology. He invented the terms "Palaeolithic" and "Neolithic" to denote the Old and New Stone Ages, respectively. He also introduced a Darwinian-type theory of human nature and development. "What was new was Lubbock's ... insistence that, as a result of natural selection, human groups had become different from each other, not only culturally, but also in their biological capacities to utilize culture."

Lubbock complained in the preface to Pre-Historic Times about Charles Lyell:

Family

Lubbock was one of eight brothers and three sisters; three brothers, Alfred, Nevile and Edgar, played first-class cricket for Kent. Edgar and Alfred also played football and played together for Old Etonians in the 1875 FA Cup Final. His nephew, Percy Lubbock, was a prominent man of letters and another nephew was the writer and historian Basil Lubbock.

Lubbock married Ellen Frances Horden in April 1856. Five years after her death, on 17 May 1884 he married Alice Lane Fox, the daughter of Augustus Pitt Rivers . He rebuilt Kingsgate Castle, near Broadstairs in Kent, as his family home, where he died in 1913. He was succeeded by his eldest son, John.

He was buried in St Giles the Abbott Church, in Farnborough, Kent. Three years later, his remains were disinterred and placed in a family burial ground a few hundred yards from the church, along with the original stone Celtic cross marking his grave. In 1986, Bromley Council, unknown to the Lubbock family, moved the cross back to the main church graveyard.