Children of Edward & Jane Richardson

One incident in this year impressed me very much. It was at No. 6 Summerhill Grove. My sister Anna, aged ten, was standing by the fire when her clothes took fire. She shrieked and ran out of the room, and at the door she met my mother, who laid her flat on her back, and with equal promptitude covered her with a door-mat. The whole affair was over in a few seconds, and my sister was only very slightly burnt.

I have sometimes thought that if Anna's health had permitted her to engage in more active work, her intense theological feelings might have been somewhat modified. Whether for the better or not, who can say? Assuredly, her spiritual growth was a great comfort to herself, while to all her friends, her loving zeal and reverent humility caused them to feel in her presence as if they stood on holy ground.

and was distressed to note how weak she was. She was hardly able to walk, and had repeated attacks of sickness, and was depressed by being constantly confined to the house. In the evenings, however, when the curtains were drawn, and the lamps lighted, the old spirit would return, and she would talk in a way that you could sit and listen for hours.

Edward's illness was mental. He had induced my father to allow him to extend the works at Blaydon by adding the manufacture of alkali to the manure business. I believe Edward would have preferred to establish works in the lower reaches of the Tyne, by which the transfer of the raw salt into barges then requisite on account of the old bridge at Newcastle, as also other lighterage would also have been avoided. To this, however, my father would not agree, and, as it turned out, this decision was right. In the coming years, all the small alkali works had to shut up owing to the introduction by Brunner, Mond & Co. of the Solvay or ammonia process, and had my brother started works on a new site, the loss would have been so much the greater. Edward worried very much over his business, and suffered from sleeplessness and aggravated constipation.

I went to Bruce's Academy in Percy Street, Newcastle, but only for part of a year, where I gained, in June 1845, two prizes for history and geography respectively.

My health had always been a matter of concern to my dear parents, and in the late summer of 1845 I was sent to Carlisle to the care of Robert Doeg and his wife, (née Sarah Ann Squire).

After the Irish trip some months were spent in more or less desultory study, and I having expressed some inclination for shipbuilding, an offer from Senhouse Martindale to instruct me in ship draughting at Liverpool was accepted.

Lloyds' Register of British and Foreign Shipping, Liverpool

10th. month 30th. 1857.

I hereby certify that I have known John Wigham Richardson from childhood. He was an inmate at my house for some time, learning to model and draught vessels, and also to gain an insight into shipbuilding generally, and he soon became master of all he undertook in this line. I have much pleasure in recommending him as a draughtsman to any shipbuilder, believing him to be a competent, steady and obliging young man of strictly honest principles and unimpeachable character.

Senhouse Martindale,

Lloyds' Surveyor

"Don Juan Wigham Richardson" was appointed Consul of the Argentine Republic "in the city and port of Newcastle-on-Tyne." It is not known how long he held this position, but he probably did so only for a short time.

While the shipbuilding business was expanding rapidly J.W.R. was, to use his own words, "working harder than any man has a right to work." His health, always frail, was severely taxed by overwork; moreover, he had fallen into the practice, so fatally easy to a busy man, of taking scarcely any exercise. In view of his rather reckless horsemanship and the uneven paving of some of the streets to be traversed, his friends had not been sorry, when he abandoned his custom of riding to and from the works. But the change had this disadvantage, that it encouraged the sedentary habits to which his way of life naturally inclined him. He now drove daily in a closed carriage to and from Walker, occupying himself the while with a book - for choice his beloved Ovid, and almost wholly neglected the physical exercise which became no longer compulsory.

Even his fiery energy could not indefinitely sustain him under such conditions, and in the autumn of 1876 he was laid aside with a severe attack of rheumatic fever. His sufferings were acute. For at least a fortnight, twenty-three hours out of every twenty-four were a mere blur of continuous pain. During the remaining twenty-fourth his senses were blunted by injections of morphia, and the prospect of this blessed respite supported him through the long period of consciousness. Recovery was long deferred and often interrupted.

It was many weeks before he could be removed to Newcastle, and when at last it was possible to travel he was still in a very feeble condition,¹ so shrunken and wasted that his brother-in-law, Robert Spence Watson, lifted him like a child out of the railway carriage. He reached home in safety, but a long time had yet to elapse before he was perfectly re-established.

¹It may be noted that he was always rather below the average weight proportioned to his height . . . .

Owing to the approaching termination of the lease the Richardson family removed in 1902 from Wingrove House, their home for thirty-seven years, to Hindley Hall near Stocksfield, some fourteen miles west of Newcastle. After this migration J.W.R. took a less active share in the business of his firm, going to Walker only once a week.

I was brought up and have lived in what may be called ultra-philanthropic circles, and have been connected with engineering and shipbuilding since 1853, i.e. for fifty-four years, and I am now vice-chairman of the firm which has launched in tonnage and value more steamers than any other firm in the United Kingdom. I have served on the Local Board of Walker and on the County Council of Northumberland, and I was for three years chairman of the Longbenton School Board, and am a magistrate for Northumberland, Chairman of the Licensing Bench of the West Castle Ward, and on the Committee for visiting the prisons.