Richard Robert Madden

Richard Robert Madden

Richard Robert Madden in 1858
Born (1798-08-22)22 August 1798
Dublin
Died 5 February 1886(1886-02-05) (aged 87)
Booterstown
Nationality Irish
Known for
Children Thomas More Madden (son)

Richard Robert Madden (22 August 1798 – 5 February 1886) was an Irish doctor, writer, abolitionist and historian of the United Irishmen. Madden took an active role in trying to impose anti-slavery rules in Jamaica on behalf of the British government.

Life

Madden undercover in Syria, exploring the Turkish Empire

Madden was born at Wormwood Gate Dublin on 22 August 1798 to Edward Madden, a silk manufacturer and his wife Elizabeth (born Corey) .[1] His father had married twice and fathered twenty-one children.[2] Luckily for young Richard his father was still affluent enough by the time he was reaching adolescence to afford him a top quality education. This meant private schools and a medical apprenticeship in Athboy Co. Meath. He studied medicine in Paris, Italy, and St George's Hospital, London. While in Naples he became acquainted with Lady Blessington and her circle.[3]

In 1828 he married Harriet Elmslie,[1] herself coincidentally the youngest of twenty one children. Born in Marylebone in 1801 and baptised there into the Church of England,[4] she was the last child of John Elmslie (1739 – 1822), a Scot who owned hundreds of slaves on his plantations in Jamaica,[5] and his wife Jane Wallace (1760 – 1801). Both Harriet's parents were of Quaker stock, but while living in Cuba she converted to Roman Catholicism.[6] On marriage, Madden stopped travelling, and for five years practised medicine.

Eventually he realised that he needed to contribute to the abolitionist cause. The slave trade had been illegal in the empire since 1807, but slaves still existed. Abolishing slavery was a popular cause and it was obvious that the trading of slaves was still in progress and many were not actively involved but they were complicit with the activity.[7]

Madden was employed in the British civil service from 1833, first as a justice of the peace in Jamaica, where he was one of six Special Magistrates sent to oversee the eventual liberation of Jamaica's slave population, according to the terms of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. From 1835 he was Superintendent of the freed Africans in Havana. His son, Thomas More Madden, who later became a surgeon and writer, was born there. In 1839 he became the investigating officer into the slave trade on the west coast of Africa, in 1847 the secretary for the West Australian colonies. He returned to Dublin and in 1850 he was named secretary of the Office for Loan Funds in Dublin.[8]

He died at his home in Booterstown, just south of Dublin city, in 1886 and is interred in Donnybrook Cemetery.

Published works

Madden at the 1840 Anti Slavery conference

Besides several travel diaries (Travels in Turkey, Egypt etc. in 1824–27, 1829,[9] and others (1833)), his works include the historically significant book The United Irishmen, their lives and times (1843, 7 Vols.),[10] which contains important details on the causes of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

His other books include:

His time in Jamaica is also noticeable for his collection of letters and autobiographical accounts of several Muslim African slaves there at the time. These accounts are dealt with in his two-volume memoir, A Twelve Month's Residence in the West Indies.

He also wrote poetry for The Nation.[11]

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 J. M. Rigg, ‘Madden, Richard Robert (1798–1886)’, rev. Lynn Milne, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 16 Oct 2015
  2. ↑ Richard Robert Madden, egypt-sudan-graffiti.be, Retrieved 16 October 2015
  3. ↑ J. M. Rigg, ‘Madden, Richard Robert (1798–1886)’, rev. Lynn Milne, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
  4. ↑ ""England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975" , FamilySearch". Retrieved 17 February 2016.
  5. ↑ Legacies of British Slave-ownership, retrieved 17 February 2016
  6. ↑ Memorial in Donnybrook Cemetery, retrieved 17 February 2016
  7. ↑ Murray, David.R. (1972). "Richard Robert Madden". JSTOR 30088913.
  8. ↑ Boylan, Henry (1998). A Dictionary of Irish Biography, 3rd Edition. Dublin: Gill and MacMillan. p. 262. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4.
  9. ↑ Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia and Palestine in 1824, 1825, 1826 & 1827 (online version)
  10. ↑ The United Irishmen, their lives and times (online version)
  11. ↑ Lalor, Brian (2003). The Encyclopedia of Ireland. Yale: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09442-8.
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