Richard Sharp (politician)

"Conversation" Sharp
Born	1759 Newfoundland
Died	30 March 1835 Dorchester
Resting place	Bunhill Fields, London.
Education	Rev. Dr Fell, Thaxted (private), Inner Temple
Occupation	hat maker, merchant, politician.
Known for	Conversation, Criticism, Wit
Children	Maria Kinnaird (adopted)

Richard Sharp, FRS, FSA (1759 – 30 March 1835), also known as "Conversation" Sharp, was a British hat-maker, banker, merchant, poet, critic, Member of Parliament, and conversationalist.

He was at various times known in London society as "Hatter Sharp", "Furrier Sharp", "Copenhagen Sharp" (after a famous speech that he gave as an MP castigating the British bombardment of Copenhagen) or, most famously of all, as "Conversation Sharp".

Richard Sharp is an example of a young man who inherited the wealth of previous generations of hard-working London merchants, and combined this birthright with features of his own character to make an intellectual career in the world of the Enlightenment. His grandfather, another Richard Sharp (circa 1690-1775), from a family of clothiers at Romsey, Hampshire, had been apprenticed in 1712 to George Baker, a freeman of the Goldsmiths’ Company of London, but a haberdasher of hats by trade. Richard completed his apprenticeship, and by the early 1730s he was George Baker’s partner in the successful hatting business on Fish Street Hill in the City of London. Baker & Sharp were frequent buyers of beaver at Hudson’s Bay Company sales, which they would have supplied to feltmakers who made the felt “hoods” from which finished hats were fashioned. Little is known of their customers, but they had dealings with merchants in South Carolina in the 1730s and 40s, and they may have specialized in the trade to the American colonies.

George Baker retired about 1747, and Richard Sharp carried on the business. He took a nephew, John Sharp, into partnership about 1760, but John died in 1766, and Richard Sharp now faced a crisis in securing the future of his firm. His only son, also called Richard, had obtained a commission as ensign in the 40th Regiment of Foot in 1756; was stationed at St John’s Newfoundland, where he married a local woman, Elizabeth Adams in 1759, and returned to England about 1763, dying in London two years later. They had two young sons, Richard (born 1759) and William. No doubt planning for his successor, the boys’ grandfather took into partnership another hatter, Thomas Cable Davis, who married the boys’ mother in 1769. Next year old Richard Sharp made his will, in which he recorded that Davis had agreed to take one of the grandsons as an apprentice when he was old enough, and eventually make him a partner in the hatting business for a three-sevenths share. In 1775, shortly before his death, Sharp added a codicil showing that Richard, the elder of the two boys, had become the apprentice. Provisions were also made to loan substantial sums from the estate to Thomas Cable Davis, who must not have had enough capital to maintain the business on his own, if old Sharp’s share was taken out by his executors. By his grandfather’s will, young Richard was to receive £1,500, to be held in trust for him by his uncles until he came of age. He was a partner with his stepfather, in the firm of Davis & Sharp, still at No. 6, Fish Street Hill, by 1782.

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