Charles Todd, 1869-1957

Charles Todd died at Croydon on 22 September 1957, seventeen years after he had retired from active work. He was born on 17 September 1869 at Carleton, a small village near Carlisle. His father, Jonas Todd, was clerk and steward of the Cumberland and Westmorland asylum; his mother was born Grace Barker. His forbears on both sides of the family had been small farmers in that district as far back as records can be traced. Charles was the eldest of the family: he had three sisters, two of whom died young. He had poor health as a boy and did not attend school regularly till he was 12. For a time before that he attended a dame school in Carlisle ‘where the education consisted in the daily repetition of the multiplication table, the dates of the kings of England and the principal parts of the Latin verbs’.