Childhood and Cambridge

Alfred Marshall was born at Clapham on 26 July 1842. His father was a cashier in the Bank of England, with the result that Alfred enjoyed a City connection and an exposure to monetary economics at an early age. William Marshall was also somewhat of a despot in his own home (Alfred’s writings abound in weasel-words such as ‘nearly’, ‘generally’, ‘probably’, ‘perhaps’, ‘on the whole’; his economics is noteworthy for its qualifications and assumptions; and a psychological explanation for such evasiveness might be the subconscious desire of the oversensitive spirit to avoid confrontation) and a strict Evangelical Christian (a man who, destining his son for a career in the ministry, compelled him to study useful subjects such as Hebrew — often, as was the case with Mill, late into the night — and forbade Alfred not only the self-indulgence of board games but ‘the fascinating paths of mathematics’ as well: ‘His father hated the sight of a mathematical book.’).1 It must have required a great deal of courage for Alfred, at the end of his secondary education at the Merchant Taylors’ School (where he was ‘small and pale, badly dressed, looked overworked and was called “tallow candles” by his fellows’)2 to turn down a classics scholarship to St John’s College, Oxford, in order to study mathematics (supported by a loan from an uncle) at St John’s College, Cambridge.