Charles Lennox Richardson facts for kids
Charles Lennox Richardson (16 April 1833 – 14 September 1862) was a British merchant based in Shanghai, Qing Empire who was killed in Japan during the Namamugi Incident. His middle name is spelled Lenox in the census and family documents.
Contents
Merchant
Richardson was born in London in 1833. He relocated to Shanghai in 1853 to seek his fortune in the China trade. In 1862, Richardson announced his retirement, and was en route back to England when he stopped over at the treaty port of Yokohama in September 1862.
Namamugi Incident
After Richardson met Woodthorpe Charles Clarke, an old friend from Shanghai, they joined fellow merchant William Marshall, and Marshall's sister-in-law Margaret Watson Borradaile to go on a sightseeing ride via nearby Kanagawa town towards the temple of Kawasaki Daishi. While travelling on the Tōkaidō road – the Imperial highway – through the village of Namamugi (now part of Tsurumi ward, Yokohama), the party encountered the retinue of Satsuma regent daimyō Shimazu Hisamitsu (otherwise Shimazu Saburō) heading in the opposite direction. When Richardson approached Shimazu's palanquin too closely, the daimyō's bodyguard attacked the Englishman. Marshall and Clarke were also severely wounded in the incident. Grievously wounded, Richardson fell from his horse a short distance from the attack and was killed with a coup de grâce on the orders of Shimazu.
The British government demanded reparations following the Namamugi Incident but when Shimazu refused to pay the reparations, a squadron of Royal Navy ships bombarded Kagoshima during the brief Anglo-Satsuma War the following year.
Burial
Following an autopsy conducted by William Willis, who had joined the British mission in Japan in 1861, Richardson was buried in a private plot near the Yokohama Foreign Cemetery between the later graves of Marshall and Clarke.
See also
- Namamugi Incident
- Anglo-Satsuma War
- Anglo-Japanese relations
- Sakoku
- List of Westerners who visited Japan before 1868
