Richard Robert Madden
| Richard Robert Madden | |
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Richard Robert Madden in 1858
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| Born |
22 August 1798 Dublin |
| Died | 5 February 1886 (aged 87) Booterstown |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Known for |
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| 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.
Madden was born at Wormwood Gate Dublin on 22 August 1798 to Edward Madden, a silk manufacturer and his wife Elizabeth (born Corey) . His father had married twice and fathered twenty-one children. 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.
In 1828 he married Harriet Elmslie, herself coincidentally the youngest of twenty one children. Born in Marylebone in 1801 and baptised there into the Church of England, she was the last child of John Elmslie (1739 – 1822), a Scot who owned hundreds of slaves on his plantations in Jamaica, 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. 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.
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.
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