Leyton Price Richards (12 March 1879 – 22 August 1948) was an English Congregational minister and prominent pacifist.
Early life
Born in Ecclesall, Sheffield, in March 1879, Richards was a younger son of Charles Richards, a master clothier who in 1881 was employing 23 men there.[1] After leaving school, he was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he graduated MA in 1903. He then trained as a Congregational minister.[2]
Career
Richards ministered for some years in Aberdeenshire, then about 1911 migrated briefly to Melbourne, Australia, where he had concerns about the workings of the Australian Defence Act 1910.[3]
In 1925, Richards made a tour lasting three months of the United States, in the interests of better international understanding, speaking from many well-known pulpits on Sundays, and during the week speaking about world peace to various schools and societies throughout the US. In March he spoke at the Phillips Brooks House in Harvard Yard on behalf of the Fellowship of Youth for Peace, a recently-founded nationwide body.[9]
In 1907, at Whitby, Richards married Edith Ryley Pearson.[10] Their daughter Margaret Richards (1910—1996) was born in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. In January 1912, a second daughter was born while Richards and his family were living in Hawthorn, Victoria.[11] A third daughter was born in 1916 in Salford, Manchester.
Richards died at his house in Mortimer Common, near Reading, on 22 August 1948.[6] He left an estate valued at £8,755, and a widow, Edith Ryley Richards.[12] She moved to Betchworth, Surrey, where she died in 1963.[13]
Selected publications
The Christian's Contribution to Peace (1935)
The Christian's Alternative to War (1935)
Realistic Pacifism: the Ethics of War and the Politics of Peace (Chicago and New York: Willett, Clark & Co., 1935)
Conscription and Christian Obligations (1947)
Christian pacifism after two world wars (1948)
Kirisutokyō hisen heiwa shugi (Tokyo: Shinkyō Shuppansha, 1952) (in Japanese)
^“Richards, Leyton Price” in Harold Josephson, Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985)
^Martin Ceadel, Semi-detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement, p. 213
^Jeffrey Gros, John D. Rempel, The Fragmentation of the Church and its Unity in Peacemaking (2001), p. 122
^Stephen Parker, Faith on the Home Front: Aspects of Church Life and Popular Religion in Birmingham, 1939–1945 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005), p. 193
^ ab”The Rev. Leyton Richards” (obituary) in
Land & Liberty, September and October 1948, p. 181
^“No-Conscription Fellowship” in World War I: A Student Encyclopedia, vol. I (ABC-CLIO, 2005, ISBN9781851098798), pp. 1339–1340
^ abCyril Pearce, 'Typical' Conscientious Objectors — A Better Class of Conscience? No-Conscription Fellowship image management and the Manchester contribution 1916–1918 in Manchester Region History Review (2004)
^“Leyton Price Richards” in England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837–1915, ancestry.com, accessed 14 December 2021 (subscription required)
^”Births” in The Age (Melbourne, Australia), 30 January 1912, p. 1, col. 1
^“RICHARDS Leyton Price of Woodview Windmill-road Mortimer Common Berkshire” in Wills and Administrations (England & Wales) 1948 (1949), p. 695
^“RICHARDS Edith Ryley of 2 Morden Grange Betchworth Surrey” in Wills and Administrations (England & Wales) 1963 (1964), p. 194
Further reading
Edith Ryley Pearson Richards, Private view of a public man; the life of Leyton Richards (London: Allen and Unwin, 1950)
“Richards, Leyton Price” in Harold Josephson, Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985)