Education
He was educated at Rugby School and Christ"s College Cambridge, and later became a banker at Grant and Maddison"s Union Banking Company in Southampton.
He was educated at Rugby School and Christ"s College Cambridge, and later became a banker at Grant and Maddison"s Union Banking Company in Southampton.
William was a great believer in university education being available to all, and championed the establishment of a university college in Southampton in 1902. William died on 8 September 1914 at Sedbergh in Cumbria. Raverat remembered him fondly as an eccentric and entirely unselfconscious man in her childhood memoirs Period Piece (1952).
William is primarily notable as a subject of Charles Darwin"s studies of infant psychology.
During William"s first three years his father kept a diary of gestures and facial expressions the infant made. The studies were part of Darwin"s comparison between animal and human development, after he had already thoroughly studied orangutan babies at the London Zoo.
The diary contains observations on the child learning to follow a candle with his eyes after nine days, smiling with his eyes after six weeks and three days, and developing distinctive cries adjusted to specific situations after eleven weeks. He also noticed the development of more profound personality traits, such as reason and, at two-and-a-half years, conscience.
Charles Darwin published his findings in the journal Mind in June 1877, in an article titled "A biographical sketch of an infant".
The studies were also an influence behind his work The Expression of the Emotions in Manitoba and Animals, published in 1872.
William was a keen amateur photographer, and took several portraits of members of his family.