Thomas Richards (Tasmania)

Thomas Richards (1800 – 18 July 1877) was a Welsh surgeon and journalist who emigrated to Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. He was the editor of and main contributor to the Hobart Town Magazine and came to be seen as one of the founders of Tasmanian journalism.

Childhood

Thomas Richards was born in Dolgellau as the child of Thomas Richards, solicitor, and Elizabeth (née Highway) his wife. There is no record of the exact date of his birth but he was baptised in St Mary's Church, Dolgellau on 10 July 1800.

Family

He married Hannah Elsemere (née Adams) on 26 November 1828 in St Pancras, London; they had a son and three daughters.

Career

Following the death of his father, Richards was enrolled at Christ's Hospital, London between 1809 and 1815. He then became a doctor's apprentice and attended clinics at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He graduated with a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1823. Until his emigration to Tasmania, he worked as a doctor in London. He also contributed occasionally to several literary and antiquarian magazines, such as The Cambro-Briton, The Monthly Magazine and The British Register.

In 1832 Richards paid for his and his family's passage to Australia by working as a ship's doctor on an migrant ship. His wife and child went with him on the trip as the family wanted to settle in Australia at the end of the trip. He arrived in Hobart town in October 1832. He established a surgery in Elizabeth Town, Tasmania.

Shortly after Richards arrived in Tasmania, Henry Melville (1799–1873) founded the Hobart Town Magazine. Richards was the main editor and contributor to the magazine during its short life between March 1833 and 1834.

He continued as a medical practitioner until 1836, although he had been working as a clerk for the Hobart Town Surveyor's Department between 1834 and 1837. Between 1837 and 1847 he became the chief reporter of the Colonial Times newspaper. After a visit to Britain between 1847 and 1848 he returned to Tasmania working again as a doctor for a while. Later in his life he went back to journalism as a reporter and proofreader for the Hobart Mercury, continuing in the post until his death.

For his long contribution to journalism on the island, Richards is sometimes referred to as 'the father of the Tasmanian press'. However, other sources bestow that honour on the printer Andrew Bent.

Writer

Richards was Australia's first literary critic and a pioneer of the Tasmanian short story.

A significant volume of Richards' recognisable literary work was published in the Hobart Town Magazine. At least half of the magazine's content was poems, essays, reviews, sketches and short stories by him. It is difficult to estimate his complete critical, antiquarian and literary output as he often wrote under pseudonyms, in order to hide the extent of the content of the papers that had come from his pen. 'Mervinius', 'Edward Trevor Anwyl' and 'Peregrine' were among the names he would use. The majority of his short stories had a Welsh background and were set between Barmouth and Dolgellau in the county of his childhood, Merionethshire.

In 2017 Rita Singer collected and edited a selection of Richards's Welsh stories for the first time and published them as Rob the Red-Hand and Other Stories of Welsh Society and Scenery. In a review of the book, Bethan Jenkins wrote These stories are suffused with an almost unbearably aching melancholy; for a lost country, lost youth, and first love.

Death

According to his death certificate, Richards died of infirmity and old age at Portsea Place, Hobart aged 77.

Further reading

• Richards, Thomas (2017). Singer, Rita (ed.). Rob the Red-Hand and other Stories of Welsh Society and Scenery. Llyfrau Cantre'r Gwaelod. ISBN 9781891271274.