Background
She was the middle child and elder daughter of Sir Horace Darwin, through whom she was a granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin (she was born a year after Charles"s death in 1882). Her mother, The Honorary
She was the middle child and elder daughter of Sir Horace Darwin, through whom she was a granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin (she was born a year after Charles"s death in 1882). Her mother, The Honorary
Ida Farrer (1854–1946), was the daughter of Thomas Farrer, 1st Baron Farrer. She was appointed to the Board of Control, as an unpaid member, in 1921, replacing Ellen Pinsent
In 1929, with money from the estate of her father who had died in 1928, she founded the Darwin Trust to foster research into "mental defect, disease or disorder". In 1932 she was appointed to the Brock Committee (a Parliamentary committee chaired by Sir Laurence Brock) that produced the Brock Report that called for the forced sterilisation of "mental defectives"
She was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1938.
She retired from the Board of Control in 1949.