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A FAMILY WHO’S WHO - David Ricardo, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 10 Biographical Miscellany [1795]

Edition used:

The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa with the Collaboration of M.H. Dobb (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005). Vol. 10 Biographical Miscellany.

Part of: The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, 11 vols (Sraffa ed.)

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


A FAMILY WHO’S WHO

I.

DAVID RICARDO’S BROTHERS AND SISTERS

The children of Abraham Ricardo and Abigail Delvalle are listed here in the order of their birth. The list is derived from two main sources. One is the birth registers of Bevis Marks Synagogue, in which fourteen of the children are recorded: for the years 1777–1782, however, the registers are incomplete. The other is a genealogical table giving a list of the children of Abraham and Abigail Ricardo prepared in 1814, when Armorial Ensigns were granted to David Ricardo and to his own and his father’s descendants. This genealogy is endorsed as follows: ‘Extracted from the Records of the College of Arms London and Examined therewith this 10th day of May 1814 sd. James Cathrow, Somerset Herald’.1 It comprises seventeen children, of whom three belong to the period of the gap in the Synagogue records.

The list below includes seventeen children. It is not impossible, however, that this is incomplete. Thus Mr Percy Ricardo, a grandson of Abraham Ricardo, who was supposed to know more about the family than anyone else, says in a letter of 14 Jan. 1890: ‘I have heard he had over 20’, adding that he had himself known fifteen of them personally.2 And Mr William Austin, son of Ricardo’s daughter Fanny, in a letter of 18 July 1899,3 states that in addition to the seventeen in a list in the possession of the family ‘there were six others who died early’.4

1. Joseph, b. 26 June 1770. As a young man he went to America where he was in business in Philadelphia. For the purpose of his business at this time he received a loan from his father, who in his will in 1802 relinquished all claims upon him personally or upon his partnership with Henry Capper ‘under the firm of Capper and Ricardo at Philadelphia’. When he was in America he seems to have borrowed money from his brother David,1 who in his will of 1820 stipulated that Joseph should not be called upon for the payment of the £1060 ‘which he has owed me for some time’, but that whether he paid or not should be ‘left to his own free will and option’. From America he returned to London, and in 1807 in a codicil to his father’s will he was made an executor. Subsequently he was in business as hatter at 24 Finch Lane, Cornhill, under the firm of Ricardo, Teulon and Co.2 He died unmarried at East Dulwich on 24 April 1847, and was buried at Nunhead Cemetery.

2. Abraham, b. 18 May 1771. Nothing is known of him. In the College of Arms genealogy of 1814 he is described as ‘of the City of London, unmarried, gentleman’; he died in 1839, and was buried on 1 August at the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Cemetery at Mile End. That he was not quite normal is suggested by the fact that in his father’s will in 1802 he is the only son the legacy to whom is left to trustees, with instructions to pay him the annual income and powers to prevent his selling, assigning or otherwise alienating that income. Moreover, on 29 April 1812 (a few weeks after his father’s death) he made over to three trustees (these being his brothers Joseph and David and himself) the principal of £1800 of Three per cent Reduced Stock, the dividends being payable to himself. This was probably his share of the residue of his father’s estate, which was bequeathed unconditionally and which he was presumably persuaded to safeguard in this way.3 It is also noteworthy that he is the only brother to whom Ricardo failed to make the bequest of £100; and at Ricardo’s funeral, which was attended by seven of his eight brothers, Abraham was no doubt the one who was not present.

3. David, b. 18 April 1772, d. 11 September 1823.

4. Hannah, usually called Henrietta, b. 2 July 1773. She married about 1797 David Samuda, merchant, and there were eleven children of the marriage, of whom three died young. The family stayed with Ricardo at Gatcomb in the summer of 1823; a visit which is memorable for a fishing anecdote that is told in a letter to Mill.1 Her husband died on 30 Jan. 1824, aged 58, and was buried at the Jewish Cemetery at Mile End. She died on 18 Feb. 1850 at Dulwich, and was buried at Nunhead Cemetery.

5. Isaac, b. 3 July 1774, died in infancy and was buried on 11 Nov. 1774 at Mile End.

6. Moses, b. 13 Nov. 1776. He married about 1806 Fanny Wilkinson, sister of Ricardo’s wife. There were no children of their marriage. A surgeon by profession, he became in effect Ricardo’s family doctor, being also at times consulted by Mill. His home was at Bow and Ricardo often stayed with him on coming to London on short visits from Gatcomb. He was a director of an oil-gas company at Bow and in 1821–1823 took part in the controversy on the relative merits of coal-gas and oilgas for lighting, contributing several papers to the Annals of Philosophy.2 His ill-health, which is often referred to in Ricardo’s correspondence, was the cause of his early retirement from practice, after which he went to live at Brighton. He was on a visit to Gatcomb in September 1823 and attended Ricardo at his last illness. He was doubtless the author of the Memoir of Ricardo which opens this volume. His wife Fanny died on 28 July 1827,3 while he, living into his ninetieth year, died at Brighton on 7 March 1866.4

7. Rebecca, b. 1778.5 She married on 15 May 1808 Isaac Keyser, who held from the year 1800 one of the twelve ‘Jew brokerships’ in the City.1 There were four sons and one daughter of the marriage. Her husband’s sudden death on 27 Dec. 1817 after a brief period of insanity is referred to by Ricardo in a letter to Mill, above, VII, 240. She died on 28 July 1838 and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery.

8. Jacob, b. 1780,2 was clerk to his father on the Stock Exchange from 1802 to 1806, and an executor of his will. His career on the London Stock Exchange, of which he was a member from 1806 to 1833, and its Chairman in 1820, is mentioned below, p. 129. In partnership with his brother Samson he was engaged in extensive financial operations in France, some reference to which is made below in connection with Ricardo’s investments there. It is as a loan-contractor in France that Jacob is alluded to by J. B. Say when he writes of David Ricardo: ‘Frère d’un autre Ricardo, banquier, qui a soumissionné quelques emprunts, il ne nous est point prouvé que David Ricardo se soit interessé dans aucun de ceux qui ont eu pour objet la consommation de quelque grand crime politique’.3 There is no doubt that Say’s allusion is to the Loan raised by the French Government on 10 July 1823, when the French army, with the blessing of the Holy Alliance, had invaded Spain in order to overthrow the constitutional government and restore the absolute power of the King. There were two bids for the Loan from English competitors, one from Jacob and Samson Ricardo (referred to as ‘Messrs Ricardo and Brothers’), the other from Rothschild who was successful.4 Meanwhile David Ricardo’s sympathies were on the other side and on 12 June 1823 he was attending a meeting in support of the Spaniards at the London Tavern.5

Two years later Jacob and Samson Ricardo are found involved in a financial operation which, though of a very different political complexion, yet gave rise to much criticism on account of its mismanagement. This was the loan of £2 millions for the Greek insurgents issued in London by the Ricardos at 56½ in 1825, very little of the proceeds of which ever reached the Greeks; and in the course of the speculations which attended it a number of English Radicals and Philhellenes, including Joseph Hume and John Bowring, emerged with little credit to themselves.1 J. B. Say in a curiously similar tone to his earlier remarks on the French Loan wrote of this business: ‘David Ricardo, l’économiste, était frère du banquier Ricardo, qui a traité dernièrement à Londres pour l’emprunt grec, et dont les amis de cette héroïque nation croient avoir à se plaindre.’2

He married about 1810 Harriet Levy of whom he had five sons and four daughters. His eldest son was John Lewis Ricardo (1812–1862), author of The Anatomy of the Navigation Laws, 1847, member of the Stock Exchange, 1834–1848, Liberal M.P. for Stoke-on-Trent from 1841 to 1862, member of the Political Economy Club, 1847–1862. Jacob Ricardo died in Paris on 17 Feb. 1834; his wife died in 1844 aged fifty-eight.

9. Abigail, b. 1782.3 As the eldest unmarried daughter during the last years of her father’s life, she seems to have been in charge of his household. She died unmarried at Croydon Lodge, Beckenham, the residence of W. A. Wilkinson, her brother-in-law, on 24 June 1847, and was buried at Nunhead Cemetery.

10. Daniel, usually called Francis, b. 2 May 1783, was Ricardo’s clerk on the Stock Exchange from 1802 to 1806 (being followed in this capacity by another brother, Ralph), and from 1810 to 1857 a member of the Stock Exchange in his own right. He was in partnership with his brother Ralph4 and the two of them together made a bid for the Loan of 1820.1 He was an executor of David Ricardo’s will. He married on 25 April 1821 Elizabeth Lucy Alexander, and died in Upper Harley Street on 17 June 1865, leaving no children.

11. Rachel, b. 30 July 1784. She married in 1826 William Arthur Wilkinson, the widower of her younger sister Esther (on him see below). They had a daughter who died in infancy, and a son, David, who was a member of the Stock Exchange from 1851 to 1905. She died at Shortlands, Beckenham, on 27 June 1851, and was buried at Nunhead Cemetery.

12. Raphael or Ralph, b. 6 Dec. 1785, was Ricardo’s clerk on the Stock Exchange from 1807 to 1810, and a member from 1811 to 1874. His partnership with his brother Francis has been mentioned above. In the summer of 1817 he accompanied Ricardo on a tour up the Rhine and to Paris. His marriage on 30 March 1819 to Charlotte Lobb is referred to by Ricardo in a letter to McCulloch, above, VIII, 22. They had three sons and one daughter; the eldest son, Percy, who was a member of the Stock Exchange from 1842 to 1892, has been mentioned on p. 54. Ralph’s descendants are the Ricardos of Bramley Park, Guildford, Surrey, on whom see Burke’s Landed Gentry, 1921. Later in life he wrote a pamphlet, Juvenile Vagrancy, Suggestions for its Diminution (16 pp., ca. 1848). He died at Park Square, Regent’s Park, on 4 Nov. 1875, leaving effects valued at £70,000.

13. Benjamin, b. 11 Dec. 1787, was a member of the Stock Exchange, 1817–1834. He married, first Anne Barnes, by whom he had a son and a daughter; and secondly Miriam Lindo, at Bevis Marks Synagogue on 31 May 1818, and by her had one son. He died at Cape Town on 18 Feb. 1841.

14. Esther, b. 17 Feb. 1789. She married in 1818 William Arthur Wilkinson (1796–1865), nephew of David Ricardo’s wife. Ricardo, writing to Mill, deplored the disparity of age between them, but spoke of him as ‘a great favorite with all our family’.2 Wilkinson was on the Stock Exchange as Ricardo’s clerk from 1811 to 1816 and as a member from 1817 to 1865. He was a railway director, M.P. for Lambeth, 1852–1857, and a member of the Political Economy Club, 1857–1865. At his death he left effects valued at £35,000. Esther died in childbirth on 10 April 1823 at Hackney, leaving four children, the eldest of whom was only three years old. Two of her sons became members of the Stock Exchange: William Ernest from 1845 to 1859 and Conrad from 1847 to 1914. The eldest son, Horace, was father of Canon Horace Ricardo Wilkinson, the present owner of the Ricardo letters described below, p. 109 ff. (For W. A. Wilkinson’s second marriage see above, sub Rachel).

15. Sarah, b. 22 Dec. 1790. She is best known under her married name of Mrs. Porter as a writer on educational subjects. (Her works are listed in the brief article on her in the Dictionary of National Biography.) She married in 1814 or earlier1 George Richardson Porter (1792–1852), F.R.S., author of The Progress of the Nation, 1834 and frequently reprinted; he became Joint Secretary of the Board of Trade, having established its statistical department in 1834, and was one of the founders of the Statistical Society and a member of the Political Economy Club, 1841–1852. Of their marriage there were two sons and two daughters. She died at West Hill, Wandsworth, on 13 Sept. 1862.

16. Samson, b. 19 Nov. 1792, was a member of the Stock Exchange from 1821 to 1859, and was associated in business with his brother Jacob (see above, p. 57–8). He was also an underwriting member of Lloyd’s from 1817.2 He took part in the currency controversy which followed the crisis of 1837, contributing two pamphlets, Observations on the Recent Pamphlet of J. Horsley Palmer, Esq. on the Causes and Consequences of the Pressure on the Money Market, &c., London, Charles Knight, 1837, pp. 43, and A National Bank the Remedy for the Evils Attendant upon our Present System of Paper Currency, London, Pelham Richardson, 1838, pp. 65. In both of these he advocated his brother’s Plan for a National Bank, which he reprinted in full as an appendix to the second of his own publications. He was M.P. for New Windsor from 1855 to 1857, and member of the Political Economy Club, 1840–1862. He died unmarried at Grosvenor Place on 14 Nov. 1862, leaving property worth £140,000.

17. Solomon, b. 2 June 1795, died in infancy and was buried on 28 August 1795 at Mile End Cemetery.

II.

RICARDO’S CHILDREN

The list of Ricardo’s children is inscribed on the fly-leaf of his Family Bible at Gatcombe, where, following an entry for his marriage to Priscilla Ann Wilkinson (20 Dec. 1793), the birthday of each child is noted. There are also the birth-certificates of the children as described above, p. 41–2; and a few further details are contained in the College of Arms genealogy, mentioned on p. 54.

1. Osman, b. 25 May 1795 at Kennington. He was educated at Charterhouse (1805) and at Trinity College, Cambridge (matriculated 1812, B.A. 1816). He married on 22 May 1817 Harriett, youngest daughter of Robert Harvey Mallory, of Woodcote, Warwickshire. On marriage they lived first at Hyde near Gatcomb Park and then from 1819 at Bromesberrow Place, Ledbury, where they were often visited by Ricardo. A daughter was born to them in February 1818, but died in une of the same year;1 whereafter they remained childless. He was Liberal M.P. for Worcester from 1847 to 1865, and ‘a magistrate and deputylieutenant for Worcestershire, and also a magistrate for the counties of Gloucester and Hereford’.2 He died at Bromesberrow on 2 Jan. 1881, leaving his estate to his nephew Frank Ricardo.

His wife Harriett (1799–1875) was a great favourite with Ricardo. Compliments and messages for her abound in the letters of Mill, who used to send her books to read, from the Nouvelle Héloïse to his own Political Economy. Tom Moore, after meeting her at a dinner-party in July 1823, wrote in his diary: ‘Mrs. R. is more than pretty, and may be called lovely; her manners, too, very agreeable’.3

2. Henrietta (or Netty), b. 10 May 1796 at Kennington. She married at St George’s, Hanover Square, on 17 Feb. 1814 Thomas Clutterbuck (1779–1852). It was through the mediation of his father Daniel Clutterbuck, a banker, of Bath and of Bradford Leigh in Wiltshire, that Ricardo bought Gatcomb Park from the Sheppards (with whom the Clutterbucks were related by marriage). Thomas Clutterbuck was Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1826 and in 1852. After their marriage they lived at Widcomb House, Bath, until 1822, when he bought Hardenhuish Park (or Harnish), Wiltshire, which became his family seat and in the grounds of which Ricardo was buried. They had two sons and five daughters. Henrietta died on 9 March 1839 and was buried at Hardenhuish.1

3. Priscilla (usually called Sylla), b. 4 Oct. 1797 at Kennington. She married on 11 April 1816 Anthony Austin who came of a family of merchants and manufacturers. Their residence was at Bradley, Wotton-under-Edge. A contemporary who met them at Easton Grey in 1822 gives this picture of her: ‘She (who was a Ricardo) very lively and high spirited, amusing clever, rather too boisterous to pass for very refined but exactly the sort of woman for her invalid husband’.2 There were three sons and a daughter of the marriage. She died in London on 16 Nov. 1839.

4. Fanny, b. 6 Oct. 1800 at Kennington. She married in January 1819 Edward Austin, who was brother of her sister Priscilla’s husband. The marriage took place in spite of Ricardo’s disapproval, a subject which is amply dealt with below, p. 161 ff., and above, VII, 325, 335. They lived at Wotton-under-Edge. She had one son, and died shortly after, on 17 April 1820.

5. David, b. 18 May 1803 at Mile End. He was at Charterhouse, 1812–1815; had a tutor at home, James Hitchings, 1815–1818; went in 1818 to the private school at Sunninghill, near Windsor, kept by Hitchings after leaving Gatcomb Park. At the age of seventeen he went up to Cambridge as a pensioner of Trinity College, matriculating in 1820, graduating as B.A. in 1824 and taking his M.A. in 1829. He was married at Sunbury on 1 June 1824 to Catherine (1802–1871), youngest daughter of William Thomas St Quintin, of Scampston Hall, Yorkshire. He inherited from his father Gatcomb Park which became his seat. There were two sons and a daughter of the marriage.

He was returned as one of the two members for the newly enfranchised borough of Stroud in the first Reformed Parliament on 13 Dec. 1832, defeating by a narrow majority George Poulett Scrope, the political economist. The election gave rise to a spate of abusive pamphlets, some of which are listed in F. A. Hyett and W. Bazeley’s Bibliographer’s Manual to Gloucestershire Literature, 1896, vol. ii, p. 312. Soon after, he took the Chiltern Hundreds, and Scrope was elected in his place on 27 May 1833. For many years, until 1856, he was chairman of the Stroud Board of Guardians. He wrote several pamphlets, chiefly on social topics, which are listed as follows by Hyett and Bazeley: Emigration considered as a means of Relief in the present distressed Condition of the Poor in this Neighbourhood, Stroud, 1833, pp. 12; Rebecca at Stroud; or, a few Words about Turnpike Trusts, London, 1847, 15 pp.; Medical Relief; A Plan of Medical Relief, laid before the Board of Guardians of the Stroud Union, on Friday, 1st of June, 1849, with some observations thereon, ‘By David Ricardo, Esq., Chairman’, Stroud, 1849, 22 pp.

He died on 17 May 1864. His first son having died in infancy, he was succeeded at Gatcombe by his second son, Henry David (1833–1873). The latter had five sons and six daughters, the eldest son being Lt.-Col. Henry George Ricardo, R.A., D.S.O. (1860–1940), the last proprietor of Gatcombe.

6. Mary, b. 6 April 1805 at Mile End. She was one of the family party who went on the continental tour in 1822. She died unmarried on 4 March 1839 and was buried at Hardenhuish.

7. Mortimer, b. 10 Aug. 1807 at Mile End. Went first to Charterhouse, 1815; then had James Hitchings as tutor, first at home and afterwards at Sunninghill; went to Eton, 1823; entered Trinity College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1825, but did not graduate. His Tutor at Trinity was William Whewell (afterwards Master of the College for many years). He was Captain in the 2nd Life Guards and married on 18 July 1836 Catherine, daughter of General the Hon. Robert Meade. In 1840 he bought the Manors of Upper and Nether Kiddington near Oxford, with the residence of Kiddington Hall,1 and was Deputy-Lieutenant of Oxfordshire. His mother died at Kiddington in 1849 and was buried there. In 1855, soon after the death of his wife, he sold the estate and went to live at Bure Homage, Christchurch, in Hampshire, where he died on 21 April 1876.

He had seven sons and two daughters, several of his children dying before him, and was succeeded by his fifth son Frank Ricardo (1850–1897). The latter, on the death of his uncle Osman in 1881, inherited Bromesberrow Place, where the Ricardo Papers were later found by his son and heir, the present Mr Frank Ricardo.

8. Birtha, b. 15 Sept. 1810 at Mile End. As a girl of twelve she was taken by her parents on the tour on the continent in 1822. She died unmarried at Bath on 10 Aug. 1856 and was buried at Hardenhuish.

RICARDO IN BUSINESS

Ricardo in Business

[1 ]The original of this list, as well as the King of Arms’ grant dated 12 April 1814, are in the possession of Mr Frank Ricardo.

[2 ]Private letter in the possession of Lt.-Col. H. G. Ricardo.

[3 ]Letter to Major (as he then was) H. G. Ricardo.

[4 ]It seems more likely, however, that the additional three or six were stillborn: since in the case of the two (among the seventeen) who died in infancy there is a record of both birth and burial.

[1 ]There is in R.P. a bill of exchange for £60, dated Philadelphia 3 Dec. 1798, drawn by Joseph on David Ricardo, accepted by the latter and made by him payable at Forster Lubbock’s.

[2 ]Post Office Directory for 1815 and for 1816; cp. also above, VII, 15.

[3 ]The Trust deed is in R.P.

[1 ]Above, IX, 326–8; see also 306 and 335.

[2 ]For references see An Historical Sketch of the Origin, Progress, & Present State of Gas-lighting, by William Matthews, London, 1827, pp. 126–30, 160–2, 181–5.

[3 ]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1827, vol. ii, p. 189.

[4 ]ib. 1866, p. 610.

[5 ]The date is inferred from the obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1838, vol. ii, p. 338, which says she died aged 60.

[1 ]See Miscellanies of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Part iii, 1937, p. 92.

[2 ]Inferred from the announcement of his death ‘aged 54’ in Gentleman’s Magazine, April 1834, p. 455.

[3 ]Obituary of David Ricardo, signed ‘J.B.S.’, in Tablettes Universelles, 27 Sept. 1823, p. 26; reprinted in Say’s Mélanges, 1833, p. 90, and in his Œuvres diverses, 1848, p. 408.

[4 ]Scotsman, 18 June, 9 and 19 July 1823.

[5 ]Edinburgh Annual Register for 1823, p. 255.

[1 ]See L. H. Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875, 1927, pp. 50-1; and John Francis, Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange, 1850, pp. 284–92. Some correspondence of Jacob and Samson Ricardo with J. C. Hobhouse and others, 1825–26, referring to the affairs of Greece and in particular to the building of steam-vessels for the insurgents, is in the British Museum, Add. MSS 36,461–3.

[2 ]‘De la crise commerciale de l’Angleterre’, in Revue Encyclopédique, Oct. 1826, p. 43.

[3 ]Her death ‘aged 65’ was announced in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1847, vol. ii, p. 221.

[4 ]Cp. above, VII, 14.

[1 ]See the Table which follows p. 80 below.

[2 ]Letter of 8 Nov. 1818, above VII, 325.

[1 ]She is entered as married in the College of Arms genealogy of May 1814.

[2 ]Miscellanies of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Part V, 1948, p. 189.

[1 ]See above, VII, 268–9.

[2 ]Obituary in The Times, 8 Jan. 1881.

[3 ]Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, 1853, vol. iv, p. 95.

[1 ]See An Account of the Principal Branches of the Family of Clutterbuck, ed. by M. E. N. Witchell and C. R. Hudleston, Gloucester, privately printed, 1924.

[2 ]Entry for ii April 1822 in the unpublished diary of the Rev. Benjamin Newton, kindly supplied from the MS by Mr E. A. Crutchley.

[1 ]See R. P. Norwood, Brief History of the Parish of Kiddington, Long Compton, Shipston-on-Stour, 1934.