Osman Ricardo

1. Osman, b. 25 May 1795 at Kennington. He was educated at Charterhouse (1805) and at Trinity College, Cambridge (matriculated 1812, B.A. 1816). He married on 22 May 1817 Harriett, youngest daughter of Robert Harvey Mallory, of Woodcote, Warwickshire. On marriage they lived first at Hyde near Gatcomb Park and then from 1819 at Bromesberrow Place, Ledbury, where they were often visited by Ricardo. A daughter was born to them in February 1818, but died in une of the same year;1 whereafter they remained childless. He was Liberal M.P. for Worcester from 1847 to 1865, and ‘a magistrate and deputylieutenant for Worcestershire, and also a magistrate for the counties of Gloucester and Hereford’.2 He died at Bromesberrow on 2 Jan. 1881, leaving his estate to his nephew Frank Ricardo.

His wife Harriett (1799–1875) was a great favourite with Ricardo. Compliments and messages for her abound in the letters of Mill, who used to send her books to read, from the Nouvelle Héloïse to his own Political Economy. Tom Moore, after meeting her at a dinner-party in July 1823, wrote in his diary: ‘Mrs. R. is more than pretty, and may be called lovely; her manners, too, very agreeable’.3