His Father Was A Member Of The Indian Civil Service

His father worked for the ICS is the first fact about Alan Turing we want to mention. Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912 in Maida Vale, London. A blue plaque honors the location of his birth. He had many relatives in India. Turing's unique name placed his father in a distinguished line of English gentry. He was not wealthy, but he was unmistakably upper middle class in the particular meaning of the English class system. In the Madras Presidency, when his father served as a member of the Indian Civil Service, he met and wed Ethel Sara Stoney. She was the daughter of the Madras Railways' head engineer, who came from an Anglo-Irish family with a somewhat low social standing. An East India Company rule prohibiting the employment of males with Indian mothers was first introduced in the 1790s as a result of the physical characteristics of one of the Turings born in Madras.

Despite being born in a nursing home in Paddington, London, Alan Turing was actually conceived in British India, most likely in the town of Chatrapur. While Turing was growing up, his parents moved back and forth between Guildford, England and India due to his father's ongoing civil service commission. They sent their two sons to live with friends in England rather than risking their health in the British colony. Turing was sent to boarding schools for private students while his father was gone in India. He struggled with social integration in the beginning, but after that, he excelled in science and math.