Editing Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (section)

== Early life ==

[[File:My father and mother in their old age.jpg|thumb|Her parents, Newson and Louisa Garrett in their old age; from ''What I Remember'' by [[Millicent Garrett Fawcett]]]]

Elizabeth was born in [[Whitechapel]], London, and was the second of eleven children of [[Newson Garrett]] (1812–1893), from [[Leiston]], [[Suffolk]], and his wife, Louisa (born Dunnell; {{circa}} 1813–1903), from London.<ref>Manton, p. 20</ref><ref name="Ogilvie">{{cite book |last=Ogilvie |first=Marilyn Bailey |url=https://archive.org/details/womeninscience00mari |title=Women in science : antiquity through the nineteenth century : a biographical dictionary with annotated bibliography |publisher=MIT Press |year=1986 |isbn=978-0-262-15031-6 |edition=3. print. |location=Cambridge, Mass. |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Her paternal ancestors had been [[ironworker]]s in East Suffolk since the early seventeenth century.<ref>Manton, p. 17</ref> Newson was the youngest of three sons and not academically inclined, although he possessed the family's entrepreneurial spirit. When he finished school, Newson found few opportunities in Leiston, so he moved to London to make his fortune. There, he fell in love with his brother's sister-in-law, Louisa Dunnell, the daughter of an innkeeper of Suffolk origin. After their wedding, the couple went to live in a [[pawnbroker]]'s shop at 1 [[Commercial Road]], [[Whitechapel]]. The Garretts had their first three children in quick succession: Louisa, Elizabeth, and a son, Dunnell, who died at the age of six months.<ref>Manton, p. 22</ref> When Garrett was three years old, the family moved to 142 [[Long Acre]], where they lived for two years, while one more child was born and her father advanced in his career, becoming not only the manager of a larger pawnbroker's shop, but also a [[silversmith]].<ref>Manton, p. 23</ref> Garrett's grandfather, owner of the family engineering works, [[Richard Garrett & Sons]], had died in 1837, leaving the business to his eldest son, Garrett's uncle. Despite his lack of capital, Newson was determined to be successful and in 1841, at the age of 29, he moved his family to Suffolk, where he bought a barley and coal merchants business in [[Snape, Suffolk|Snape]], constructing [[Snape Maltings Concert Hall|Snape Maltings]] from 1846.<ref>Manton, p. 25</ref>

The Garretts lived in a square Georgian house opposite the church in [[Aldeburgh]] until 1852. Newson's malting business expanded and more children were born, Edmund (1840), Alice (1842), [[Agnes Garrett|Agnes]] (1845),<ref>{{cite ODNB | id = 53628 | title = Garrett, Agnes (1845–1935), interior designer and suffragist | author = Kelly, Serena | year=2004}}</ref><!--access-date=11 July 2018--> [[Millicent Garrett Fawcett|Millicent]] (1847), who was to become a leader in the constitutional campaign for women's suffrage, Sam (1850), Josephine (1853) and George (1854). By 1850, Newson was a prosperous businessman and was able to build Alde House, a mansion on a hill behind Aldeburgh. A "by-product of the industrial revolution",<ref>Manton, p. 28</ref> Garrett grew up in an atmosphere of "triumphant economic pioneering" and the Garrett children were to grow up to become achievers in the professional classes of late-[[Victorian England]]. Elizabeth was encouraged to take an interest in local politics and, contrary to practices at the time, was allowed the freedom to explore the town with its nearby salt-marshes, beach and the small port of [[Slaughden]] with its boatbuilders' yards and sailmakers' lofts.<ref>Manton, pp. 28–32</ref>