Littlethorpe formed part of Narborough/Enderby in the 2001 census and came under the Enderby subdivision.
The village, along with Narborough, shares its twinning with the village of Genappe in Belgium.
He entered Anderson's University (now University of Strathclyde), in 1847, but a severe attack of famine fever (either typhus or relapsing fever) that he caught while he was a pupil at St Andrews Lying-in Hospital (now Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital), interrupted his studies, and led him to become an assistant, first to Thomas Browne of Saffron Walden in Essex, and afterwards to Edward Dudley Hudson at Littlethorpe, Cosby, near Leicester.