Charles Lennox Richardson

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.

Following an autopsy conducted by William Willis,[1] 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.

Louis G. Perez, Professor of Japanese History at Illinois State University,[2][3][4] in Japan at War: An Encyclopaedia (2013), presents the following: per one account, Richardson and his party were turning their horses around to yield the road when the Satsuma retainers attacked preemptively to maintain the order of the procession.

"[5] John W. Denney, in Respect and Consideration: Britain in Japan 1853-1868 and Beyond (2011), also emphasises the differing accounts, noting that "the incontestable points are that Shimazu Saburō's samurai killed Richardson and severely wounded Marshall and Clarke".

On turning a corner, they recognised they were "twelve men deep into the procession and close to the daimyō", but as "none of the party had shouted or gesticulated at the Japanese in front of them", they were "confident that no hostile moves would be made by the samurai."

[7] In light of the "inexorable regulation" that "no casual passenger should continue to ride, either upon his horse or in any conveyance, during the occupancy of the road by a dignitary of high station", the Satsuma people felt that Richardson and his companions ought to have observed this.

[8] In a 2013 article,[9] historian Folker Reichert [de] claimed that according to Japanese reports at the time, he disrespectfully rode in the middle of the road and even tried to get between the regent's litter and his bodyguards.