Place Name
Richard Thornton (September 20, 1776 – June 20, 1865) is probably the richest man you’ve never heard of. On his death he left a fortune worth £2.8m (nearly £4bn in today’s money). His wealth, amassed through trading and insurance, represented 0.36 per cent of the national net income of the day. He lived at a large residence at Cannon Hill from about 1845 until he died. Born in Burton-in-Lonsdale, he was the son of a Yorkshire yeoman farmer. He was educated in London and then apprenticed to his uncle, a hop merchant, before branching out on his own in 1798. He was hugely successful and became a Liveryman of the Leathersellers’ Company. But it was during the Napoleonic Wars that his fortunes took on new levels of excess. During Napoleon’s ill-feted attack on Russia, the French army was stationed at Danzig (in today’s Poland) from where it guarded every Baltic port. The Danish were strong supporters of Napoleon and their hostility to English trade was considerable: captains of Danish ships were threatened with death should they engage in any form of commerce with England. This increased the value of Baltic goods in particular Baltic hemp used by the Royal Navy. In 1810 response, Thornton armed one of his own merchant ships, fought off a hostile Danish gunboat, and landed in the Baltic under an assumed German name. They secured the goods and returned to England. Such blockade-breaking actions repeated over the course of the war made him huge profits and earned the lasting sobriquet, the Duke of Danzig. But such trades described as “the most lucrative in the world” were as of nothing, compared to his next audacious business deal. In 1812, his brother who had been based in Danzig, learned that Napoleon had been defeated at Moscow and was on the retreat, remarkably he was able to get the news to Richard back in London before anyone else had heard. In. the four days before it became public the businessman secured a large contract for the delivery of Russian imports to Britain at peak wartime prices. After the war ended, Thornton redirected his trading efforts to the East Indies, and became a financier supporting Spanish loans. By the 1840s, he was the leading merchant, financier, ship owner and marine insurance broker in the City. He retired from active trading in the 1850s, and saw the fields around him turned to residential development. By 1859 Thornton Road was named after him. In his private life, he had no legitimate heirs, although he had a son – whom he named after the man who had helped secure his fortune. Richard Napoleon Lee, born sometime around 1833, was the result of an affair between Thornton and his housekeeper Alice Lee. The young man did very well for himself, studying law at Oxford and becoming a barrister. On his father’s death he changed his name to Thornton as a condition laid down in his father’s will.
