Richard Smith

Richard Smith (1707–1776) was an English merchant in the West Indies trade, and a director of the East India Company.

Life Smith was born in Whitehaven, then in Cumberland, or Appleby, Westmorland. He was a merchant and slave owner in the West Indies. When he moved back to England from Barbados, where he was a plantation owner, he brought five enslaved people with him.

Smith's business assets included a warehouse in Cheapside, and Lys Farm near Bramdean in Hampshire, once used for cattle-breeding. Having bought the farm in 1769, he began to transform it into a gentlemanly estate, Brockwood Park, building a country house; a wing was added to the house in 1774, and at the end of his life it was a family home. Since the 1960s Brockwood Park has been the site of the Krishnamurti Centre.

Smith died on 13 October 1776. The drafting of the will was intended to keep a substantial estate in trust for these grandchildren; but the effect was otherwise. This case has been suggested as one of the inspirations for Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Charles Dickens's Bleak House.

Benjamin Smith, the younger son, bought sugar plantations in 1781, to provide income from the trust arising from the will. Covered by the will was the advowson (the right to appoint clergy) for St Mary's Church, Islington, which Richard Smith had purchased in 1771.

Family With his first wife Elizabeth Crow, widow of Nathaniel Crow or Crowe of Barbados, Smith had three children: