Poultry breeder’s key role in Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ follow-up
BY 1865, cotton broker Thomas Stretch Senior had moved his family to Burscough Street in Ormskirk from Booth Lane, Kirkdale and lived at Vine Cottage, the very last property before the Burscough Boundary.
Thomas was a partner in the firm of Colin Campbell & Son, Cotton Brokers of Hackins-Hay, Liverpool, to whom he had been apprenticed at 15 and later he became a Partner. He worked there continually up until his sudden death in 1898 aged 83.
From the first years of the Family living in the town they were very much involved with the local community and from as early as 1865 Thomas Snr was a director of the annual show for the Ormskirk & Southport Agricultural Society of which he was one of the founder members.
He was also a winner of several prizes for his poultry entries, including ducks, bantams and his very successful Cochin China Buff chickens.
Whilst Thomas Stretch carved a successful business career in the town and proved an expert poultry breeder and exhibitor, his sons became local sporting heroes and excelled at athletics and cricket.
In 1868 a letter appeared in The Field magazine written by the Natural History Editor William Bernhardt Tegetmeier. Tegetmeier was a close friend of Charles Darwin and in February 1868 Darwin wrote to him requesting his help in contacting breeders of poultry who could help with some research. Darwin wrote: My dear Sir I am going to ask you, as so often on other occasions, to aid me if in your power. — I want to know the proportion of birth of males to females in as many domestic animals as possible. Now has this been ever recorded with poultry, especially Ducks, or, pigeons.—or Turkeys or canary Birds?
Perhaps some of the great pigeon fanciers w d know whether they habitually rear a large excess of males or females.
The letter, published in The Field, asked for statistics on the ratio of males to females in poultry, Thomas Stretch must have been a subscriber to The Field, as he responded to the request in the published letter and wrote a simple response to Tegetmeier.
Stretch will have known Tegetmeier as a fellow Poultry Breed Judge and author of the The Poultry Book published in 1867. Stretch wrote: Ormskirk 25 th Feby 1868 Dear Sir, In response to your letter requesting information respecting the relative numbers of males & females, I beg to give you my mite of information with respect to Poultry— 1
In eight years the number of chickens reared by me is as follows, viz Cocks (Males) 487 Pullets (Females) 514 (514) 1,001 2 Yours truly Th. Stretch
Tegetmeier gave Stretch’s letter to Charles Darwin, together with a related memorandum, which reads: ‘Mr Stretch’s fowls are cochins of a very superior quality and always selling for a very high price I should think it most likely that the record would be accurately kept’.
This gathering of statistics as part of Darwin’s research which resulted in his publication: The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. London: J. Murray, 1868. First edition.
This was a follow-on from his Origin of the Species, trying to present evidence of how domestic breeders impacted on the evolution of animals and birds.
Darwin studied the history of fowl, investigated breeds that were known throughout the world, examined English breeds, and crossed several different breeds. He concluded that the red jungle fowl (now Gallus gallus bankiva) from Southeast Asia was the common ancestor of domestic chickens.
The letter from Thomas Stretch in 1868 was handed to Darwin by Tegetmeier and it was kept by Darwin in his research files.
The letter survives today in the Darwin Correspondence Archive in Cambridge University Library.
Thomas Stretch died suddenly in 1898 aged 83, his death occurred one morning when he was on his usual walk into Ormskirk Station to take the 9.45 train into Liverpool to his office. He felt unwell and turned to walk home but collapsed in the street close to Vine Cottage.
He was carried home and a Doctor attended but he never regained consciousness.
The funeral was held at Walton Parish Church and Canon Woodrow of Ormskirk performed the service.
Stretch had been a founder of the Ormskirk Athletic Society, on the Society’s dissolution in 1877 he was presented with a gold watch for his dedication to the society. He was a Manager and Trustee of the Ormskirk Savings Bank, a Committee Member of the Ormskirk Working Men’s Institute and former chair of the Ormskirk Board of Health.
His son Thomas Herbert Stretch took over the poultry breeding and exhibiting and also entered the world of pedigree dog breeding, specialising in the Rough Collie breed, with which he found local, national and international success.
His son-in-law was Henry Brighouse, of the local law firm and he had many friends in the business and retail community in the town.