The Thomas Rickard whom Stephan Wanner is enquiring about is almost certainly the
father of Thomas Arthur Rickard (invariably referred to as "T.A.") who became first
editor of Mining Magazine when it began publication in 1909. There is a profile of the
son, T.A., in Chapter Eleven of "The Pick and the Pen", an outline of the history of
mining journalism, by Arthur J. Wilson, published by Mining Journal Books Ltd, London,
in 1979 (ISBN 0 900117 16 8).
Arthur Wilson writes:
"Thomas Rickard, his father, was the eldest of five brothers - William H., Richard W.,
Reuben and Alfred were the others - who all became mining engineers or metallurgists
.. His grandfather, James Rickard, was one of the first to go to California in the
summer of 1850 on behalf of John Taylor and Sons.....
"When T. A. was born his father was in charge of metallurgy at the silver-lead smelting
works of the Societa di Pertulosa [in Italy].. Two years after T.A's birth, his father
went to Andeer in Switzerland for John Taylor and Sons and, after two years more,
became manager for the Russian Copper Company, operating several groups of mines
and smelters in the Ural Mountains and across the border in western Siberia."
The description of T.A's career as a metallurgist/mining consultant (in one year he
covered 35,000 miles by ship and train) occupies 17 pages of Arthur Wilson's book.
As one can imagine, there have been many Rickards in the mining/metallurgical industry -
one, a geologist, was in recent years a member of council of the Institution of Mining and
Metallurgy.
In haste - I am expecting visitors any moment.
Tony Brewis
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