Richard Thornton, 1776-1865: A Victorian Millionaire
Although unmentioned in modern reference books and works of economic history, Thornton was one of the greatest commercial figures of the day and, writes W.G. Hoskins, when he died, left “by far the largest fortune of the century to that date.”
Richard Thornton’s name means nothing today. He is not even briefly noticed in the Dictionary of National Biography, though in his day he rivalled the Barings and the Rothschilds in wealth.
I came across him by pure chance in the official index of wills for 1865, while looking for an impecunious artist. He appeared in the index as leaving personal estate of some £2,800,000, besides valuable real estate that was not valued for duty, by far the largest fortune of the century to that date.
One would have thought that a man who could leave some three million pounds in mid-Victorian days would have found his way into the standard works of reference, and into the economic histories of the period. In fact, he took a great deal of tracking down.
The pursuit of Richard Thornton and of his contemporaries and descendants opened up a whole world of lesser nineteenth-century characters.
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