---
title: "Andrew Crosse"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Crosse"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:06:04.246897+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

A few months after the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Crosse was conducting another electrocrystallization experiment when, on the 26th day of the experiment, he saw what he described as "the perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail". More creatures appeared and two days later they began moving their legs. Over the next few weeks hundreds more appeared. They crawled around the table and hid themselves wherever they could find shelter. Crosse identified them as being members of the genus Acarus.
Puzzled, Crosse mentioned the incident to a couple of friends. A local newspaper learned of the incident and published an article about the "extraordinary experiment," naming the insects Acarus crossii. The article was subsequently picked up by other newspapers across the country and elsewhere in Europe. Some readers apparently gained the impression that Crosse had somehow "created" the insects, or at least claimed to have done so. He received angry letters in which he was accused of blasphemy and trying to take God's place as a creator. Some of them included death threats.
Other scientists tried to repeat the experiment. W. H. Weeks took extensive measures to assure a sealed environment by placing his experiment inside a bell jar. He obtained the same results as Crosse, but due to the controversy that Crosse's experiment had sparked, his work was never published. In February 1837 many newspapers reported that Michael Faraday had also replicated Crosse's results. However, this was not true. Faraday had not even attempted the experiment. Later researchers, such as fellow members of the London Electrical Society Henry Noad and Alfred Smee, were unable to replicate Crosse's results.
Crosse did not claim that he had created the arthropods. He assumed that there were insect or arachnid eggs embedded in his samples. Later commentators agreed that the arachnids -since the Acarus genus are arachnids- were probably cheese mites or dust mites that had contaminated Crosse's instruments.
It has been suggested that this episode was a source of inspiration for Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, but this cannot have been the case, since Crosse's experiments took place almost 20 years after the novel was first published. The idea appears to have originated in the book The Man Who Was Frankenstein (1979) by Peter Haining. Mary Shelley did, however, know Crosse through a mutual friend, the poet Robert Southey. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley reportedly attended a lecture by Crosse in London in December 1814, in which he allegedly explained his experiments with atmospheric electricity. However, Mary Shelley's diary speaks only of "Garnerin" as the lecturer. Similarly dubious is a claim that Edward W. Cox wrote a report of their visits to Fyne Court to see Crosse's work in the Taunton Courier in Autumn 1836. Percy had been dead for over a dozen years by then.

== Other interests ==
Crosse also wrote a great many poems and enjoyed walking on the Quantock Hills, in which Fyne Court is set, "at all hours of day and night, in all seasons".
Crosse advocated the benefits of education for the lower classes, argued against emigration, and supported a campaign by local farmers against falling food prices and high taxes during the 1820s. He was also active in party politics, speaking in support of friends at election meetings. Following the Battle of Waterloo Crosse boarded a ship at Exeter to see the captured Napoleon Bonaparte on the deck of HMS Bellerophon near Plymouth. Crosse also served as a magistrate.

== Personal life ==
Crosse married Mary Anne Hamilton in 1809. They had seven children, although three died in childhood. Mary died in 1846 following several years of ill health.
On 22 July 1850 Crosse married again, aged 66. His second wife was the 23-year-old Cornelia Augusta Hewett Berkeley. They went on to have three children.
Crosse suffered a stroke while dressing on the morning on 26 May 1855. He died on 6 July 1855, in the same room in which he had been born.
The Italian writer Dacia Maraini is his great-great-granddaughter, the socialite Cornelia Edith "Yoï" Crosse being his granddaughter and her grandmother.

== Memorial ==
The laboratory table on which Crosse carried out experiments stands in the aisle of the Church of St Mary & All Saints, Broomfield, and an obelisk in his memory is in the churchyard.
Crosse's home, Fyne Court, was largely destroyed by fire in 1894. The garden and the 65-acre (260,000 m2) estate are now owned by the National Trust, and are open to visitors.

== Documents ==
A number of documents related to Andrew Crosse and his work are held in the Somerset Record Office. In December 2008 Somerset County Council acquired a further two letters for the sum of 400 pounds to add to the collection.

== References ==