Birth and ducation

On 23 May 1718 William Hunter was born to parents John Hunter and Agnes Paul, at or near the family farmhouse at Long Calderwood, a few miles east of the then village of East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire. William was the seventh of the couple's ten children, of whom six survived into adulthood. His father, earlier a grain merchant in Glasgow, moved to East Kilbride on marriage in 1707, and purchased the estate and farmhouse at Long Calderwood in 1717.

The house still stands today (Figure 1.1), a solid two-storey stone building now engulfed in the much expanded ‘new town’ of East Kilbride. In 1956 a trust was formed to preserve and manage it, comprising the East Kilbride Development Corporation, the University of Glasgow and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow; the trust was wound up in 1985. More recently the house has been refurbished by South Lanarkshire Council and is now presented as the Hunter Birthplace Museum, a tribute to the brothers William and John.

William attended school from the age of eight in nearby East Kilbride. Reminiscences of him as a schoolboy by his sister Dorothea are preserved in the Hunter-Baillie papers. William was the only one of John Hunter's sons we can be sure attended the local seat of higher learning, Glasgow University (then generally known as Glasgow College). In 1731, at the age of thirteen, which was normal for the times, William matriculated there to study for the degree of Master of Arts, and was awarded an annual bursary of £10 per annum.