Sir Richard Hotham (5 October 1722 – 13 March 1799) was an East India merchant,

property developer Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of developed land or parcels to others. ...

and politician who sat in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

from 1780 to 1784. He is especially noted for his development of the Sussex village of Bognor into a seaside resort. He was also sometimes called Hotham the Hatter, to mark his original trade.

Early life

Hotham was born the youngest of five children in

York York is a cathedral city with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many hist ...

in October 1722, but otherwise very little is known about his childhood. Having moved to London to become a

hatter Hat-making or millinery is the design, manufacture and sale of hats and other headwear. A person engaged in this trade is called a milliner or hatter. Historically, milliners, typically women shopkeepers, produced or imported an inventory of g ...

's apprentice, in 1743, at the age of 21 he married Frances Atkinson, the daughter of his employer, in the chapel of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. By 1746 he was trading as a hatter in his own right from premises in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn, a few years later moving to new premises in The Strand. Hotham's wife Frances died in 1760, and the next year, at the age of 39 he remarried, to Barbara Huddart. At this time he became involved with the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Sout ...

, later working up to having a number of ships under his control – records at the

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