'Son Christopher' is an article published in 'Once a Week' magazine, a British weekly illustrated literary magazine published by Bradbury& Evans from 1859 to 1880. It was written by Harriet Martineau, an English social theorist often seen as the first female sociologist. The following article, however, is a fictional story set at Dorsetshire; in Squire Battiscombe's mansion, which looked down upon the fishing town of Lyme Regis, as little account was made of the weather as in any house in England, for the family could seldom have gone out of doors at all if they had been afraid of the gales on the bare downs; or the chilling blasts which drove up the ravines from the beach below; or the sea-foam, which, on stormy days, wetted everything within a quarter of a mile of the margin of the tide.