Author: Kennedy, Richard Hartley
Biography:
KENNEDY, Richard Hartley (1791-1865: ancestry.com)
He was born in India--probably in Bombay (Mumbai) but possibly in Surat--one of the four sons of Michael Kennedy, an Irish soldier, and his wife Eliza de Courtraye. He became a doctor and rose to be Chief of the Medical Staff of the Bombay Division of the Indian Army. In 1832 he married Isabella Morgan Valiant in Poona. It may have been through her family that he enjoyed a second career in banking and industry: he was a Director of the East Indian Railway and Deputy Chairman of the Oriental Bank (founded in 1842). The couple had two children, a daughter born in Cape Town in 1836 (his final volume of poetry having been published there in 1835) and a son born in Yorkshire about 1844. Besides historical drama and poetry, between 1828 and 1855 he published several histories and biographies based on his experience in India as well as a medical study, Notes on the Epidemic Cholera (1846, 2nd edn. 1849). By 1851 the family was settled in Bayswater, London. Kennedy became a London alderman and a major shareholder in a new joint-stock banking company, the Royal British Bank, founded by royal charter in 1849. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt in 1856 and several of the directors, including Kennedy and two Valiants, were charged with fraud in 1858 for misleading stockholders about the situation. Kennedy was judged guilty and sentenced to nine months in prison. In 1865 he was found dead at the Great Western Hotel in Paddington. Suicide seems likely, but the reports of the time give no details and he was permitted a Church of England burial at All Souls, Kensal Green. (ancestry.com 5 May 2021; Grace's Guide gracesguide.co.uk 5 May 2021; The Trial of the British Bank Directors [1858]; findagrave.com 5 May 2021)
Other Names:
- R. Hartley Kennedy