Joseph Parslow was an English manservant, who worked as butler

Butler

A butler is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some also have charge of the entire parlour floor, and housekeepers caring for the entire house and its...

 for the English naturalist Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

 for over thirty years. In this role he was variously as head servant, Darwin's companion

Companion

Companion may refer to:* A friend or acquaintance you associate yourself with* Companion , a nurse assistant or similar professional who assists a patient one-on-one* Companion , an architectural feature of ships...

, scientific assistant, and nurse through Darwin's illness

Charles Darwin's illness

For much of his adult life, Charles Darwin's health was repeatedly compromised by an uncommon combination of symptoms, leaving him severely debilitated for long periods of time...

.

Parslow was born in Standish

Standish, Gloucestershire

Standish is a small village and civil parish in the Stroud local government district in Gloucestershire, England.The village is north-west of Stroud, on the B4008 road to Quedgeley...

, Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....

 the son of an agricultural labourer. He was first employed by Charles and Emma Darwin

Emma Darwin

Emma Darwin was the wife and first cousin of Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, scientist and author of On the Origin of Species...

 shortly after their marriage in 1839, when they lived in Upper Gower Street

Gower Street (London)

Gower Street is a street in Bloomsbury, Central London, England, running between Euston Road to the north and Montague Place to the south.North Gower Street is a separate street running north of the Euston Road...

. In 1842 the family moved to Down House

Down House

Down House is the former home of the English naturalist Charles Darwin and his family. It was in this house and garden that Darwin worked on his theories of evolution by natural selection which he had conceived in London before moving to Downe....

 in Downe

Downe

Downe is a village in the London Borough of Bromley in London, UK.Downe is south west of Orpington and south east of Charing Cross. Downe lies in a wooded valley, and much of the centre of the village is unchanged; the former village school now acts as the village hall.-Darwin:Charles Darwin...

, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, and Parslow moved with the family.

Parslow married Eliza Richards, a maid of Emma's, at St George Hanover Square, London on 20 May 1845. They had two sons; the elder Arthur Parslow who became a carpenter and married Mary Anne Westwood, another member of the Darwin household who was Darwin's grandson's Bernard Darwin

Bernard Darwin

Bernard Richard Meirion Darwin CBE JP a grandson of the British naturalist Charles Darwin, was a golf writer and high-standard amateur golfer. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.-Biography:...

's wet nurse

Wet nurse

A wet nurse is a woman who is used to breast feed and care for another's child. Wet nurses are used when the mother is unable or chooses not to nurse the child herself. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some cultures the families are linked by a special relationship of...

. The younger son Ernest died in 1856 of smallpox

Smallpox

Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...

.

Darwin enjoyed playing billiards

Billiards

Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...

 with Parslow. Parslow retired in 1875, being succeeded by another servant William Jackson. On Darwin's death in 1882, he and Jackson attended the funeral.

He is buried in Down churchyard, along with members of the Darwin family.