Early Life
Leadbeater was born in Stockport, Cheshire, in 1854. His father, Charles Sr., was born in Lincoln and his mother Emma was born in Liverpool. He was an only child. By 1861 the family had relocated to London, where his father was a railway contractor's clerk. Charles Sr. died from tuberculosis in 1862, when Leadbeater was only eight years old. Four years later a bank in which the family's savings were invested became bankrupt. Without finances for college, Leadbeater sought work soon after graduating from high school in order to provide for his mother and himself. He worked at various clerical jobs. During the evenings he became largely self-educated. For example, he studied astronomy and had a 12-inch reflector telescope (which was very expensive at the time) to observe the heavens at night. He also studied French, Latin and Greek.
An uncle, his father's brother-in-law, was the well-known Anglican clergyman, William Wolfe Capes. By his uncle's influence, Leadbeater was ordained an Anglican priest in 1879 at Farnham by the Bishop of Winchester. By 1881, he was living with his widowed mother at Bramshott in a cottage which his uncle had built, where he is listed as "Curate of Bramshott". He was an active minister and teacher who was remembered later as "a bright and cheerful and kindhearted man." About this time, after reading about the séances of medium Daniel Dunglas Home (1833–1886), Leadbeater developed an active interest in spiritualism.
Read more about this topic: Charles Webster Leadbeater
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)