Richard Robert Madden 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 . His father had married twice and fathered twenty-one children. Madden attended private schools and was found a medical apprenticeship in Athboy, Co. 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. In 1828 Madden married Harriet Elmslie, daughter of John Elmslie of Jamaica, a slave-owner. He then for five years practised medicine in Mayfair, London.
Abolitionism and Government Career
Madden became a recruit to the abolitionist cause. The slave trade had been illegal in the British Empire since 1807, but slavery still existed. The slave trade continued, and many not actively involved were complicit with it. 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 Slavery Abolition Act 1833. From 1835 he was Superintendent of the freed Africans in Havana. 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 shipAmistad. 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 were actively helping the slave traders, and that crudely disguised forms of slavery existed in all the coast settlements. In 1847 he became the colonial secretary for Western Australia, and arrived in the colony in 1848. After receiving news of their oldest son's death back in Ireland, he and Harriet returned to Dublin in 1849. In 1850 he was named secretary of the Office for Loan Funds in Dublin. Madden also campaigned against slavery in Cuba, speaking to the General Anti-Slavery Convention in London on the topic of slavery in Cuba.
Besides several travel diaries, his works include the historically significant book The United Irishmen, their lives and times, 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: , and .
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: and .
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: and .
* 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 an ew 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 History of the Penal Laws Enacted Against Roman Catholics, London : Thomas Richardson and Son, 1847. 1 vol.. Available on .
The Life and Times of Robert Emmet, Esq., Dublin : James Duffy Publisher, 1847, XV-VII-343 p.. Available on Google Books: and .
The memoirs 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 ; they had three sons, among them Thomas More Madden. She was also the youngest of 21 children. Born in Marylebone in 1801 and baptised there into the Church of England, she was the child of John Elmslie, a Scot who owned hundreds of slaves on his plantations in Jamaica, and his wife Jane Wallace. Both Harriet's parents were of Quaker stock, but while living in Cuba she converted to Roman Catholicism.
