How head’s son found fame half way around the world as PM ‘King Dick’

RICHARD John Seddon was born at Eccleston, St Helens, on June 22, 1845.

He was one of seven children born to local schoolmaster Thomas Seddon and his wife Jane, nee Lindsay.

Burscough-born Thomas was the Master of Eccleston Hill Grammar School and Jane was a local schoolmistress at the time of their marriage at Eccleston in 1842.

Richard John was named after his paternal grandfather, Richard Seddon, of Barrow Nook Hall, Bickerstaffe.

Richard senior farmed there during the early 19th century, raising his family in Sinacre Lane.

Eldest son Thomas left Bickerstaffe and took up the position of Master at Eccleston Hill Grammar in early 1842.

Richard John Seddon trained as a mechanic for an iron company, but in 1863 he worked his passage to Australia.

He was to go on to a new life in first the Australian goldfields and then the New Zealand Kumara goldfields and, through his strong belief in miners’ rights, he entered politics, representing Kumara in the New Zealand Parliament from 1881 and then becoming Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1893. He was known as “King Dick” during his premiership.

History records Richard John Seddon as the greatest New Zealand Prime Minster of all. He never lost his Lancashire accent and he always worked to support the working man.

Seddon was the leader of the first Colonial Government to commit troops to serve alongside the British during the 1st Boer War.

In May 1897, The Hon Richard John Seddon arrived in Liverpool with his family, via New York, to take his place in the celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee on June 22.

While he was in England for the Jubilee, he was made an Honorary Doctor of Law at Cambridge University.

Prime Minister Seddon died on board ship in the Tasmanian Sea in 1906. He was buried with a state funeral in Wellington, New Zealand.

New Zealand still celebrates its longest-serving prime minister, with a Seddon Weekend being held in November, 2016, on the 150th anniversary of his arrival in the country. Many West Lancashire Seddon families may well have a link to the same family as Richard John Seddon.

To find out if you have, contact the Ormskirk & District Family History Society at www.odfhs. website/ ordinary

Barrow Nook Hall,above, where Richard’s father, Thomas, grew up; PM Seddon, left at the opening of the LawrenceRoxburgh Railway Works, in New Zealand’s South Island; a statue of Seddon outside the New Zealand Parliament, right

Prime Minister Seddon, left, and, above, greeting the Duke and Duchess of York in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1902

The New Zealand 2nd Contingent marches down Cuba Street, Wellington, to join the Boer War in South Africa in January 1900