(Sir) Arthur Rickard—Biography[1]
Arthur Rickard in the 1920's--at the height of his powers |
Arthur Rickard (1868-1948), real estate
developer, was born on 17 November 1868 at Currawang near Lake George , New South Wales ,
son of Cornish parents William Heath Rickard, miner, and his wife Mary, née
Bennett. At 13 he left Bathurst
Public School and found
employment with E. Webb & Co., hardware merchants.
Moving to Sydney aged 17, he worked
for Tillock & Co., wholesale grocers, as a commercial traveller. On 28
February 1889, at the age of 21, he married Annie Eliza Addy, at Waverley . Rickard divorced Annie in
December 1901 and gained custody of their son and daughter. On 19 March 1902 he
married Nellie Crudge, daughter of architect Thomas Rowe, at St Mark's, Darling
Point.
By 1893 Rickard had
set up as a mercantile broker and agent for Chaleyer Fisher & Co. Ltd, East
India merchants of Melbourne .
He himself began importing and about 1899 entered the wholesale grocery
business with S. A. Joseph. They secured some government contracts but had
trouble with imported foodstuffs infested with weevils.
In 1904 Governor Sir Harry Rawson
objected to Rickard's proposed appointment as Portuguese consul because Joseph
& Rickard had been found supplying goods 'unfit for human consumption' to
asylums. Late in the year, in financial difficulties, they broke up the
partnership.
A natural salesman,
Rickard sought a business requiring less capital than the grocery trade. In
January 1904 he registered Arthur Rickard & Co. Ltd, a real estate firm,
and developed inventive advertising strategies in contrast to most current
property advertising. His strikingly illustrated advertisements urged families
to buy rather than rent, availing themselves of 'Rickard's Easy Terms'.
In 1905 he subdivided
152 acres (62 ha) at Woy Woy into waterfront residential sites, poultry farms
and orchard blocks. A superb self-publicist, in 1909 he launched Rickard's
Realty Review, a quarterly (sometimes monthly) magazine which continued to
appear until 1927. 'Rickard's Solar System' described a map of Sydney with a series of radiating arcs and
dots pinpointing the extent of his land offerings. On his return from Europe in
1912 the Sun named him as 'Sydney 's
subdivisional specialist'.
By 1916 the 'Solar
System' extended to Wyong, the Blue Mountains
and Port Hacking. He even persuaded the railway commissioners to build stations
at Warrimoo (1918) and Bullaburra (1925) to service his estates. In July 1918
the Review declared that members of the firm were
'fowlanthropists'—specialists in poultry farmlets. Rickard House at 84 Pitt Street
opened about 1920.
Rickard was a foundation
president (1912-48) of the Millions Club, established in the belief that
accelerated British migration would make Sydney
the first Australian city to reach a population of one million. He used the
club (whose membership included many leading politicians and businessmen) as a
platform for pronouncements on immigration, socialism (he was vehemently
against it) and the economy. He published a pamphlet entitled Population:
the Cash Value (1915) in which he argued that the State's population should
be increased to nine million. He actively supported the war bond campaigns and
was appointed K.B.E. in 1920.
Rickard attacked the
failure of State governments to populate Australia and called on the
Commonwealth to take over migration. He was active on the executives of
organizations which aimed to foster migrants, including the State branches of
the New Settlers' League of Australia, the Big Brother Movement, Dr Barnardo's
Homes and the British Empire League.
In the 1920s
Rickard's business interests included many directorships and part-ownership of
the Hotel Sydney, Usher's Metropolitan Hotel and The Windsor, Melbourne . He was a director of Sydney
Hospital (1917-27), a council-member of the Sydney Regional Plan Convention
(1923-24), a fellow of the Royal Colonial Institute (1912), and of the Royal
Geographical Society of London (1924), vice-president of the Defence of
Australia League and president of the Japan-Australia Society—although he
considered the Japanese unsuitable immigrants, he admired their ambition and
social welfare system.
Sir Arthur Rickard (at Left) with Eric Campbell, photographed in Martin Place during the 1930's. Campbell was a notorious figure in right-wing NSW politics at the time. |
A member of the Sane Democracy League, he
worked for several taxpayers' associations advocating public economy and in
1935 attacked taxes on mortgages. Rather square-faced, with a dark, clipped
moustache, he enjoyed golf and motoring and belonged to the Imperial Service
Club. In 1928 he donated an elaborate floral clock to Taronga Zoological
Park .
One of Rickard's
advertisements in 1922 had proclaimed 'we are in business for all time'. He did
not, however, foresee the Depression nor how difficult it would be to sell his
landholdings on the urban fringe. Many of the blocks sold on 'Rickard's Easy
Terms' were returned to the company which had to pay rates on land which had no
immediate sales potential. Arthur Rickard & Co. Ltd went into voluntary
liquidation in 1930 with Rickard as liquidator.
In the same year, the
family's heavily mortgaged mansion—Berith
Park at Wahroonga—was
sold and they moved to a more modest home at Killara. Dowell O'Reilly wrote in 1913
that the country around Bankstown
had been cut up into lots 'suitable for anything from poultry-farming to the
residence of the Governor General'.
In a city preoccupied
with real estate Rickard was the outstanding land developer of his era, his
extroverted personality showed through most of his advertisements. He died in
the Scottish Hospital , Paddington, on 13 April 1948
and was cremated. His wife, their two sons and two daughters, and the children
of his first marriage survived him. His eldest son Lieutenant-Colonel A. L.
Rickard, M.C., D.S.O., served in both world wars and his youngest son Douglas was chairman of the Australian Postal Commission
in the 1970s. Sir Arthur left a modest estate valued for probate at £12,623.
His portrait by John Longstaff is held
by the successor to the Millions Club, the Sydney Club.”
[1] This
biography is entirely drawn from Spearritt, Peter’s contribution to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography
I am an historian and while researching for information regarding the Defence of Australia League I found the biography of Sir Arthur Rickard who I have not heard of previously. I was thoroughly shocked to see comments written about his first wife Anne Eliza Addy. She was described as a 'loose woman' or a drinker for despite giving birth to two children in the marriage she lost them. Where is the evidence to back up these assertions which may well be defamatory and slanderous. It is not enough to claim that these assertions are correct because her husband gained custody of those children. In those days a man could influence a court that the mother was without means abd ability to raise his children as he would wish. And your first assertion that he may have considered "Annie inferior to his ambitions" lends weight to that possibility.
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