Richmond 'Dick' Thatcher was born in Brighton, England to Charles Robert Thatcher and Sophia Hornsby. He took up residence in Australia around 1861, marrying first Maria Blunt in 1872 with whom he had a son and daughter, and then Alice Emma Smith in 1881. Following ailing health in 1881 and a diagnosis of ague (possibly malaria) and nephritis in 1891, Thatcher died in Sydney, aged 49, and is buried at Waverly cemetery.
As a young man, Thatcher travelled throughout the British colonies as a midshipman, intermittently finding work for colonial newspapers. After settling in Sydney, Thatcher continued to work for various newspapers including as a journalist for Empire, The Evening News, and The Town and Country Journal, in addition to founding the Upper Hunter Courier and editing the Western Independent. Over his career as a litterateur, Thatcher published many works including articles, three novels, two anthologies of poetry and the biography The Life and Times of Jem Punch. During this time he developed a reputation as a 'facile and forcible journalist' with the 'easy racy writing style of a raconteur.'
Perhaps the most historically interesting work by Thatcher is his poem 'Battle of Minderoo,' which describes his first-hand account of the Flying Foam massacre of 1868, in which between 21 and 60 members of the Thalanyji people were killed by settlers as retribution for the death of Shepherd William Griffiths. While there has been some question over the authorship of the poem, it is now generally accepted that Thatcher was both author of the poem and participant in the 'battle.' However, one article which wrote about the massacre and published the poem retrospectively in 1918 attributed it to Charles Thatcher, Richmond’s older brother, who was also a poet. The poem is rife with the racist language common to that time, and glorifies the violence perpetrated during the massacre. The last lines of the poem suggest that 'by the murdering of the natives of this land a / lesson may be read / Whoso sheddeth blood of man by man / shall his blood be shed', foregrounding a commitment to violent responses to Aboriginal resistance to occupation. Despite one of his contemporaries naming Thatcher a 'rhyming war correspondent,' most of his other literary work featured more benign subject matter.
In addition to his work as a writer and journalist, Thatcher was also a theatre agent for popular actresses and performers Mary Frances Scott-Siddons and Miss Ada Ward, and represented an itinerant Australian minstrel troupe in England. Thatcher was also a founding member of the Australian branch of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes (a fraternal club akin to the freemasons).
This biography was researched and written by Arjun Rix.
Sources:
Anderson, Hugh. “Richmond Thatcher (1842–1891).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. Last modified 2020. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/thatcher-richmond-4939/text7799.
“Death of Richmond Thatcher.” The Town and Country Journal, 13 June, 1891. Trove, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71253681.
“‘Dick’ Thatcher.” The Bulletin, 7 July, 1888. Trove, https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-688502504/view?sectionId=nla.obj-704151724&partId=nla.obj-688504482#page/n4/mode/1up.
Gifford, Peter. “The Battle of Minderoo.” Studies in Western Australian History, no. 32 (2018): 89-94. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.828079266226726.
“The Late Richmond Thatcher.” Evening News, 12 June, 1891. Trove, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/113890444?searchTerm=%22Richmond%20Thatcher%22%20death.
“Pioneering in the Ashburton: The Battle of Minderoo - Perils and Hardships of the Past.” Sunday Times, 20 October, 1918. Trove, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/57996780.
“Sporting.” The Express and Telegraph, 26 January, 1886. Trove, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/208429715?searchTerm=%22Richmond%20Thatcher%22%20Australasian.
