  James Ward was born in Hull, Yorkshire, on 27th January 1843, as a son of James Ward, senior, a merchant with some scientific and philosophical ambition (in a book entitled God, Man and the Bible, he tried to give a scientific explanation of the Flood). His father’s enterprises were disastrous, however, so that lack of resources was to be a constant source of anxiety for the family, which included an uneducated, hard-working, deeply religious mother, six sisters and a brother (another son died).