Author: Rickards, George Kettilby
Biography:
RICKARDS, George Kettilby (1812-89: ODNB)
He was born in London on 24 Jan. 1812 and baptised on 15 Feb. at St. George’s, Bloomsbury, the eldest son and second of five children of George Rickards (1778-1857), solicitor, and Frances Kettilby (1791-1855), daughter of Rev. Samuel Kettilby, DD, who had married in 1809. He was educated at Westminster (1823-4), Eton (1824-9), and Balliol College Oxford (matric. 1829) but migrated to Trinity (Scholar 1829-35, BA 1833, MA 1836) and then to Queen’s (Fellow 1836-43). He won the Newdigate prize for the poem listed here, The African Desert (1830). He entered the Inner Temple in 1831 and was called to the bar in 1837. He served as counsel to the Speaker of the House of Commons (1851-1882) and was knighted after his resignation. He was elected Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford in 1851 and published a course of Three Lectures (1852) and Population and Capital; A course of Lectures (1854). He published several legal works and gave a popular lecture, The House of Commons, its Struggles and Triumphs (1852). Besides his early poem, listed here, he translated the first six books of Virgil’s Aeneid in 1871 and the eleventh book in 1872. In 1873 he was elected a bencher at the Inner Temple. In 1884 he was elected chairman of the Ottoman Railway Co. In London he lived at various addresses in Marylebone and Kensington and from 1882 lived at Fyfield House, Oxford. He died at Hawkley Hurst, Liss, Hampshire, on 23 Sept. 1889, leaving an estate of just under £20,000. He married first Frances Phoebe Lefroy (1811-59), daughter of Rev. John Henry George Lefroy of Ewshott House, Hampshire, on 16 Aug. 1842 at All Saints, Crondall, Hampshire. They had seven children. He married secondly his first wife’s cousin, Julia Cassandra Lefroy (1816-84), daughter of Rev. Benjamin Lefroy, rector of Ashe, Hampshire, on 2 January 1861, at Monk Sherborne, Hampshire, with no further issue. (ODNB 12 Dec. 2023; DNB; ancestry.co.uk 12 Dec. 2023; OUCH 27 Aug. 1842; MA 26 Sept. 1859; Morning Post 5 Jan. 1861, 25 Sep. 1889) AA
Other Names:
- George K. Rickards