Alfred Bate Richards

[1] He was born on 17 February 1820 at Baskerville House, Worcestershire, the eldest son of John Richards of Wassell Grove near Stourbridge, who was M.P.

[2] Together with authors and journalists such as Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, Richards was a leading member of the Administrative Reform Association, founded in 1854.

[6] He was on the platform for the Association's meeting of 26 January 1856 that strongly criticised the failings of the British Government that had contributed to the fall of the Turkish fortress of Kars towards the end of the Crimean War.

[7] Richards was an advocate of enrolling of rifle corps throughout United Kingdom as a precaution against invasion; and while editor of The Daily Telegraph he publicised the subject.

A public meeting was held, through his efforts, in St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, on 16 April 1859; Admiral Sir Charles Napier presided, and, as a result, the War Office issued, on 12 May 1859, a circular which authorised the enrolling of rifle volunteers.

[12][13][14][15] Richards invited Maj-Gen William Ferguson Beatson of the Bengal Army to be the 3rd London RVC's honorary colonel.

Beatson took the salute at a parade in the Guildhall on 22 September 1860, but was under orders to return to India and was unable to accept the role permanently.

At the same time that he was raising the 3rd London RVC, Richards was also a member of the Garibaldi Special Fund, along with the journalist George Holyoake.

The Committee raised money to send a force of volunteers, the 'British Legion', to assist Giuseppe Garibaldi in his campaign to liberate the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from its Bourbon overlords.

[17] Richards died on 12 June 1876, in his fifty-seventh year, at 22 Brunswick Square, London, and was buried in St. Peter's churchyard, Croydon.

One of these, his tragedy of Norma, based on the libretto of Vincenzo Bellini's opera, was performed for the first time on 5 February 1875 at Belfast, with Miss Wallis in the title rôle.