9781422277577

Chapter The Strange Route to St. Mary’s 1 Alexander Fleming was born in southwestern Scotland in 1881, on a lonely farm called Lochfield in Ayrshire, bordering on Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire. His father, a hill farmer, had married twice, having four children by each marriage. Alec, as his family and friends called him, was the second youngest of the eight Fleming children. When they were not at school, Alec would explore the hills and the moorland with his brothers and sister. Hunting—without guns—and fishing developed his powers of observation. From a very early age, Alec had a love of sport that was to last throughout his life, and which was to play a big part in determining his career. Life at the farm was secluded—their nearest neighbors were a mile away. Only at the village school at Loudoun Moor, or at the kirk , would Alec have met anyone outside his own family, and the school had one class of only twelve or fifteen children with one teacher. At the age of ten, Alec moved on to the school at Darvel, the nearest town. He would make the four-mile walk in all weathers. He worked well there and at the age of twelve went to the academy at Kilmarnock for about eighteen months. Alec’s father had died when he and his brothers were still very young and they had few memories of him. His mother, Grace, was left to run the farm

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