The date is conjectured from the content of the letter. Bernard Darwin’s fifth tooth was ‘nearly through’ on 23 July 1877 (F. Darwin 1920b, p. 6), so this letter must have been written a month or two earlier, from the reference to Bernard’s first two teeth. CD and Emma Darwin were away from home from 8 June until 4 July, visiting first Caroline Sarah and Josiah Wedgwood at Leith Hill Place in Surrey, then moving on to visit William Erasmus Darwin in Southampton on 13 June (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)). Francis evidently stayed in Down for the first part of their absence (see letter from Francis Darwin, 11 June 1877). A report of an inquest on a death from starvation and scrofulous disease appeared in The Times, 14 June 1877, p. 13. In 1877, 14 June was a Thursday; apparently Francis did go to Southampton on or around the following Thursday (21 June), as he wrote from Southampton on CD’s behalf to P. P. C. Hoek in a letter of [c. 24 June 1877].

The letter and Francis’s reply have not been found.

See n. 1, above.

See n. 1, above, for Francis’s visit to Southampton. Elizabeth Wedgwood, Emma’s sister, lived in Down. The letters to her have not been found. Francis played the bassoon. His ‘bassoon man’ was William Henry Stone, a physician at St Thomas’s Hospital, London (letter from Emma Darwin to H. E. Litchfield, [3] February 1877 (DAR 219.9: 144)).

See n. 1, above. For CD’s interest in scrofula, see the letter to Agricultural Gazette, 22 March 1877.