Emma Jane Richmond

Emma Jane Richmond (née Parris, 1845 – 9 October 1921) was a New Zealand community and religious worker. She was a pioneer of anthroposophy in New Zealand.

Early life and family Born in New Plymouth in 1845, Richmond was the daughter of Robert Reid Parris and his wife, Mary Whitmore, who had arrived in New Zealand in November 1842. Raised as an Anglican with a liberal interpretation of doctrine, she read widely and was active in musical pastimes as a young woman. Henry Richmond was a Unitarian and a widower, his first wife, Mary Blanche Hursthouse having died in 1864. Emma became stepmother to his two surviving children. The couple went on to have three children of their own, before Henry died in 1890. and was the first woman elected to the Taranaki Hospital Board.

It is thought that Richmond probably first encountered theosophical ideas during family discussions within the Atkinson–Richmond extended family, but it is known that she was a member of the Christchurch branch of the Theosophical Society in 1894, Richmond became president of the Wellington branch of the Theosophical Society after moving to that city in 1900, and served in that capacity for three years, giving over 60 public lectures. She was elected president of the sixth annual convention of the New Zealand Theosophical Society in 1901. Her funeral left St Paul's pro-cathedral in Wellington, and she was buried at Karori Cemetery.

Legacy After Richmond's death in 1921, the Crompton-Smiths took up the leadership of anthroposophy in New Zealand, eventually leading to the establishment of the Anthroposophical Society in New Zealand in 1933, and the country's first Rudolf Steiner school in Hastings in 1950.