As his widow was an invalid, the care of the family fell upon the eldest sister Jean, who ruled with a rod of iron. The family had moved to Bedford to take advantage of its grammar school,where the two elder boys were educated. Jean started her own school, and two of the other sisters went out as schoolteachers, and generally sacrificed themselves for the sake of advancing the boys. The eldest son, Arthur, was another Turing whom fortune did not help: he was commissioned in the Indian Army, but was ambushed and killed on the North-West Frontier in 1899. The third son Harvey emigrated to Canada, and took up engineering, though he was to return for the First World War and then turn to genteel journalism, becoming editor of the Salmon and Trout Magazine and fishing editor of The Field. The fourth son Alick became a solicitor. Of the daughters only Jean was to marry: her husband was Sir Herbert Trustram Eve, a Bedford estate agent who became the foremost rating surveyor of his day. The formidable Lady Eve, Alan ‘s Aunt Jean, became a moving spirit of the London County Council Parks Committee. Of the three unmarried aunts, kindly Sybil became a Deaconess and took the Gospel to the obstinate subjects of the Raj. And true to this Victorian story, Alan‘s grandmother Fanny Turing succumbed to consumption in 1902.
Julius Mathison Turing, Alan‘s father, was the second son, born on 9 November 1873. Devoid of his father‘s mathematical ability, he was an able student of literature and history, and won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from where he graduated with a BA in 1894. He never forgot his early life of enforced economy, and typically never paid the ‘farcical‘ three guineas to convert the BA into an MA. But he never spoke of the miseries of his childhood, too proud to moan of what he had left behind and risen above, for his life as a young man was a model of success. He entered for the Indian Civil Service, which had been thrown open to entry by competitive examination in the great liberal reform of 1853, and which enjoyed a reputation surpassing even that of the Foreign Office. He was placed seventh out of 154 in the open examination of August 1853. His studies of the various branches of Indian law, the Tamil language and the history of British India then won him seventh place again in the Final ICS examination of 1896.
He was posted to the administration of the Presidency of Madras, which included most of southern India, reporting for duty on 7 December 1896, the senior in rank of seven new recruits to that province. British India had changed since Sir Robert left it in 1792. Fortune no longer helped the daring; fortune awaited the civil servant who could endure the climate for forty years. And while (as a contemporary writer put it) the district officer was ‘glad of every opportunity to cultivate intercourse with the natives,‘ the Victorian reforms had ensured that‘the doubtful alliances which in old days assisted our countrymen to learn the languages‘ were‘no longer tolerated by morality and society.‘ The Empire had become respectable.
With the help of a ￡100 loan from a family friend he bought his pony and saddlery, and was sent off into the interior. For ten years he served in the districts of Bellary, Kurnool and Vizigapatam as Assistant Collector and Magistrate. There he rode from village to village,reporting upon agriculture, sanitation, irrigation, vaccination, auditing accounts, and overseeing the native magistracy. He added the Telugu language to his repertoire, and became Head Assistant Collector in 1906. In April 1907 he made a first return to England. It was the traditional point for the rising man, after a decade of lonely labour, to seek a wife. It was on the voyage home that he met Ethel Stoney.
Alan‘s mother was also the product of generations of empire-builders, being descended from a Yorkshireman, Thomas Stoney (1675-1726) who as a young man acquired lands in England‘s oldest colony after the 1688 revolution, and who became one of the Protestant landowners of Catholic Ireland. His estates in Tipperary passed down to his great-great-grandson Thomas George Stoney (1808–1886), who had five sons, the eldest inheriting the lands and the rest dispersing to various parts of the expanding empire. The third son was a hydraulic engineer,who designed sluices for the Thames, the Manchester Ship Canal and the Nile; the fifth emigrated to New Zealand, and the fourth, Edward Waller Stoney (1844-1931), Alan‘s maternal grandfather, went to India as an engineer. There he amassed a considerable fortune,becoming chief engineer of the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway, responsible for theconstruction of the Tangabudra bridge, and the invention of Stoney‘s Patent Silent Punkah-Wheel.
A hard-headed, grumpy man, Edward Stoney married Sarah Crawford from another Anglo-Irish family, and they had two sons and two daughters. Of these, Richard followed his father as an engineer in India, Edward Crawford was a Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and Evelyn married an Anglo-Irish Major Kirwan of the Indian Army. Alan‘s mother, Ethel Sara Stoney, was born at Podanur, Madras, on 18 November 1881.
他的遗孀身体羸弱，因此支撑家庭的重担就落在了年长的姐姐珍妮的身上，她用高压手段管制着这个家。为了上学他们举家搬到了贝德福德，在那里两个更加年长的男孩接受了教育。珍妮开办了私人学校，其他的两个姐妹担任了学校的老师，她们呕心泣血想让男孩们成才。最年长的男孩阿瑟，又是一个不被幸运之神眷顾的图灵族人：他加入了印度军队，但是在1899年的西北边境战中中埋伏被杀。第三个男孩哈维移民去了加拿大，当了工程师，因为第一次世界大战又回国投身新闻业，变成了《鲑鱼与鳟鱼》杂志和《田地》杂志的编辑。第四个男孩埃里克当了律师。女儿里面只有珍妮结婚了——他的丈夫是一个房地产代理商叫赫伯特·特拉斯坦·伊夫，他是他那个时期的一流的评定测量师。这个令人敬畏的伊夫太太，也就是艾伦的婶婶珍妮，变成了伦敦县议会公园委员会的策划人。在未出嫁的三个婶婶中，西碧儿成为了女执事，拿着福音书到处传教。在维多利亚时代的最后，艾伦的祖母范妮·图灵死于结核。
朱利叶斯·马西森·图灵，艾伦的父亲，是（上文中没有提到的）二儿子，于1873年11月9日出生。绝缘于他父亲的数学能力，他在文学和历史方面是一位能力很强的学生，并且得到了牛津大学基督学院的奖学金，1894年他拿到学士学位毕了业。他忘不了他早年拮据的生活，典型的事例就是他始终没有花上“可笑的”3基尼将学士学位换成硕士学位。他对自己童年的悲惨闭口不谈，他太过于骄傲以致于不屑谈起曾经的坎坷，因为他作为一个年轻男人的生活是成功的典范。他进驻印度文职机构，这个文职机构在1853年因为自由改革而以考试竞争的形式对外供职，由于比英国外交部还难考而享有声誉。在1853年8月的开放考试中，他在154位考生中名列第7。他学习了印度的各项法律，塔米尔语，以及英属印度史帮助他在1896年的ICS期终考试中再次夺得第7名。
他被派到马德拉斯省的行政机构去当官，这个省覆盖了印度南部的大片疆域，复试的前七名新人都被派到了这个省。自从罗伯特先生在1792年离开后，英属印度发生了改变。幸运之神不再青睐那些勇者，幸运眷顾了这位可以忍受那里的气候长达40年之久的文职公务员。据当时的一位作者记载，这位行政区长官非常喜欢同当地人交流感情。维多利亚时代的改革确保了“那些旧时代令人生疑的联盟帮助我们的同胞学习语言”是“不再忍受道德与社会”【使印度逐渐现代化】。由此大英帝国也变得使人尊敬。
他向家里的一个朋友借了100法郎买了一只矮种马和一些马具,然后被调到了内政部。十年来他作为一个税收员助力和文职官辗转于贝拉里、卡努尔和维萨卡帕特南地区。他骑着小马跑过一个又一个山村，写下了这些地方关于农业，医疗卫生，灌溉，接种疫苗，审计查账和监督地方官员的报告。他还将泰卢固语加入了他的报告中，在1906年的时候，他成为了首席税务助理。在1907年的时候他第一次返回英格兰。按照惯例，对于这个奋斗了十年事业蒸蒸日上的男人来说，也是时候成家了。而正是在回家的旅途上，他遇见了艾赛儿·斯托尼。
艾伦的母亲也同样是大英帝国建设者们那一代的产物，出生于约克郡。托马斯·斯托尼在他还是年轻人的时候就在1688年的革命中得到了英格兰最早的殖民地的土地。并且成为了爱尔兰天主教拥有土地的新教徒之一。他在蒂珀雷里建了一座庄园并且传给了孙子的孙子——托马斯▪乔治▪斯托尼。托马斯▪乔治▪斯托尼有五个儿子，最大的继承了土地，其余的四个儿子由于大英帝国的扩张而分散到了不同的地区。老三是一个水利工程师，曾经为泰晤士河，曼城运河，尼罗河设计过水闸。老五移民到了新西兰，老四——爱德华·沃勒·斯托尼（1844-1931），艾伦的外公，到印度当了工程师，在那里他积聚了数量可观的财富，成为马德拉斯铁路的首席工程师，负责建设唐各布达拉桥，还发明斯托尼无声涡轮。
爱德华头脑精明，脾气却很糟糕。他娶了萨拉·克劳福德为妻，她来自一个住在爱尔兰的英格兰家庭。他们生了两个儿子和两个女儿。在这些儿女中，理查德子承父业在印度当了一名工程师。爱德华▪克劳福德是皇家军医的一名少校；伊夫莲嫁给了印度军的柯万少校。还有一位艾塞儿▪萨拉▪斯托尼，就是艾伦的母亲，她于1881年11月18日，出生于印度马德拉斯省的博德努尔。