Richard Robert Madden

Richard Robert Madden (22 August 1798 – 5 February 1886) was an Irish doctor, writer, abolitionist and historian of the United Irishmen. Madden took an active role in trying to impose anti-slavery rules in Jamaica on behalf of the British government.

Early life Madden was born at Wormwood Gate Dublin on 22 August 1798 to Edward Madden, a silk manufacturer and his wife Elizabeth (born Corey) . His father had married twice and fathered twenty-one children.

Madden attended private schools and was found a medical apprenticeship in Athboy, County Meath. He studied medicine in Paris, Italy, and St George's Hospital, London. While in Naples he became acquainted with Lady Blessington and her circle. From 1824 to 1827 he was in the Levant as a journalist, and later published accounts of his travels.

Abolitionism and government career Madden became a recruit to the abolitionist cause. The transatlantic slave trade had been illegal in the British Empire since 1807, but slavery itself remained legal.

From 1833, Madden was employed in the British civil service, first as a justice of the peace in Jamaica, where he was one of six Special Magistrates sent to oversee the eventual liberation of Jamaica's slave population, according to the terms of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. From 1835 he was Superintendent of the freed Africans in Havana, Cuba. In 1839 he left Cuba for New York, where he provided important evidence for the defense of the former slaves who had taken over the slave ship Amistad.

In 1840 Madden became Her Majesty's Special Commissioner of Inquiry into the British Settlements on the West Coast of Africa. His task was to investigate how the slave trade was continuing to operate on the west coast of Africa, despite the shipping of African slaves across the Atlantic Ocean now being illegal. Madden found that London-based merchants (including Whig MP Matthew Forster) were actively helping the slave traders, and that crudely disguised forms of slavery existed in all the coast settlements (he particularly condemned the actions of George Maclean, the Governor of Cape Coast Castle).

Madden also campaigned against slavery in Cuba, speaking to the General Anti-Slavery Convention in London on the topic of slavery in Cuba.

Death Madden died at his home in Booterstown, just south of Dublin city, in 1886 and is interred in Donnybrook Cemetery.

Published works

Besides several travel diaries (Travels in Turkey, Egypt etc. in 1824–27, 1829, and others (1833)), his works include the historically significant book The United Irishmen, their lives and times (1842–1860, 11 Vols.), which contains numerous details on the Irish Rebellion of 1798, including testimonies collected from veteran rebels and from family members of deceased United Irishmen.

His other books include: The Mussulman., London, H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830. 3 vol. . Available on Google Books: vol. 1, vol. 2 and vol. 3. The infirmities of genius illustrated by referring the anomalies in the literary character to the habits and constitutional peculiarities of men of genius., London, Saunders and Otley, 1833. 2 vol. . Available on Google Books: vol. 1 and vol. 2. A Twelvemonth’s Residence in the West Indies, during the transition from slavery to apprenticeship; with incidental notice of the state of society, prospects, and natural resources of Jamaica and other islands., Philadelphia, Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835. 2 vol. . Available on Google Books: vol. 1 and vol. 2. New edition, under the same title: Westport, Connecticut, Negro Universities Press, 1970. . Juan Francisco Manzano, Poems by a slave in the island of Cuba, recently liberated; translated from the Spanish, by R. R. Madden, M.D., with the history of the early life of the negro poet, written by himself; to which are prefixed two pieces descriptive of Cuban slavery and the slave-traffic, by R. R. M., London, T. Ward & Co., 1840. -188 p. Note that there is a new edition, under a shorter title: The Life and Poems of a Cuban Slave : Juan Francisco Manzano, 1797–1854 / edited by Edward J. Mullen, Hamden, Connecticut : Archon Books, 1981. vii, 237 p. . – Madden's name as editor and translator seems to be given inside the book. The Connexion between the Kingdom of Ireland and the Crown of England ... With an appendix of the Privy Council correspondence during ... 1811, 1812, 1816, 1817., Dublin : James Duffy, 1845. iii-340 p. The History of the Penal Laws Enacted Against Roman Catholics, London : Thomas Richardson and Son, 1847. 1 vol. (80 p.). Available on Internet Archive. The Life and Times of Robert Emmet, Esq., Dublin : James Duffy Publisher, 1847 (first edition), XV-VII-343 p. (available on Internet Archive. Second edition : Glasgow :Cameron, Ferguson & Co., 1902, 272 p. . The island of Cuba: its resources, progress, and prospects, considered in relation especially to the influence of its prosperity on the interests of the British West India Colonies., London, C. Gilpin; [etc., etc.] 1849. xxiv-252 p. The shrines and sepulchres of the Old and New World; records of pilgrimages in many lands and researches connected with the history of places remarkable for memorials of the dead, or monuments of a sacred character; including notices of the funeral customs of the principal nations, ancient and modern., London, T. C. Newby, 1851. 2 vol. The Life and Martyrdom of Savonarola, illustrative of the history of church and state connexion., London, T. C. Newby, 1853. 2 vol. . Available on Google Books: vol. 1 and vol. 2. The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington, London, T. C. Newby, 1855. 3 vol. . Available on Google Books: vol. 1, vol. 2 and vol. 3. New edition, under the same title: New York, AMS Press, 1973. 3 vol. . Phantasmata; or, Illusions and fanaticisms of Protean forms, productive of great evils., London, T. C. Newby, 1857. 2 vol. The Turkish Empire. In its Relations with Christianity and Civilization., London, T. C. Newby, 1862. 2 vol. . Available on Google Books: vol. 2. Galileo and the Inquisition, London: Burns & Lambert; Dublin: J. Mullany, 1863. vi-210 p. Historical Notice of Penal Laws Against Roman Catholics: Their Operation and Relaxation During the Past Century, of Partial Measures of Relief in 1779, 1782, 1793, 1829, and of Penal Laws which Remain Unrepealed, Or Have Been Rendered More Stringent by the Latest So-called Emancipation Act., London : Thomas Richarson and Son, 1865. 241 p. Available on Internet Archive. The history of Irish periodical literature, from the end of the 17th to the middle of the 19th century, its origin, progress, and results; with notices of remarkable persons connected with the press in Ireland during the past two centuries., London : T. C. Newby, 1867. 2 vol. (vii-338 p. + 531 p.). Available on Google Books: vol. 1 and vol. 2. The memoirs (chiefly autobiographical) from 1798 to 1886 of Richard Robert Madden. Edited by his son Thomas More Madden., London, Ward & Downey, 1891. 4-328 p.,

His time in Jamaica is also noticeable for his collection of letters and autobiographical accounts of several Muslim African slaves there at the time. These accounts are dealt with in his two-volume memoir, A Twelve Month's Residence in the West Indies. Some of his archives are held at McGill University in the Osler Library of the History of Medicine.

He also wrote poetry for The Nation.

Family Madden's wife was Harriet Elmslie (died 1888); they had three sons, among them Thomas More Madden. she was the child of John Elmslie (1739–1822), a Scot who owned hundreds of slaves on his plantations in Jamaica,