Major-General Richard Clement Moody (13 February 1813 – 31 March 1887) was a British polymath who was the commander of the elite Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, as which he was the founder and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia. He was also the first British Governor of the Falkland Islands, of which he founded their capital Port Stanley, and Commanding Executive Officer of Malta during the Crimean War.
Moody was selected to "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific" by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton: who desired to send 'representatives of the best of British culture' who had 'courtesy, high breeding, and urbane knowledge of the world'. The British Government deemed Moody to be the definitive 'English gentleman and British Officer', and his Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, were selected for their 'superior discipline and intelligence'. Moody's original title was 'Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia' before he was redesignated the first lieutenant governor of British Columbia. He founded New Westminster (for which he has been described as 'the real father of New Westminster') and the Cariboo Road and Stanley Park; and named Burnaby Lake after his secretary Robert Burnaby, and Port Coquitlam's 400-foot 'Mary Hill' after his wife, Mary Susannah Hawks. Port Moody, and Moody Park and Moody Square in New Westminster, are named after him. Moody left his personal library behind to become the public library of New Westminster.
Moody Brook and Moody Creek in the Falkland Islands, and Moody Point in Antarctica, also are named after him.
Birth and ancestry
Richard Clement Moody was born on 13 February 1813 at St. Ann's Garrison, Barbados, into a high church landed gentry family with a history of military service in the Royal Engineers, and which included Jacobites and had ancestry in common with George Washington, the founder and first president of the United States of America.The Moody Family Record, by E. Grant Moody of Arizona, Published by the Dr. Thomas Moody Family Association, 1957, p.4Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire, ed. by J. W. Clay FSA, William Pollard & Co., The Printing Works, Exeter, 1899, p.235
He was the third of ten children of Colonel Thomas Moody, CRE WI, ADC, Kt. and Martha Clement (1784–1868): who was the daughter of the Napoleonic Wars veteran and Barbados landowner Richard Clement (1754–1829) after whom he was named, and the aunt of Belgravia cricketers Reynold Clement and Richard Clement. His father's English residences were 23 Bolton Street, Mayfair, and 13 Curzon Street, Mayfair.
His first-cousin was the high church clergyman, theologian, classicist, and freemason, Clement Moody, Vicar of Newcastle. His eldest paternal-uncle, Charles Moody, of Longtown, was a gentleman farmer who inherited the family's trade of foreign food-commodities. His paternal grandmother was Barbara Blamire of Cumberland, a cousin of William Blamire MP High Sheriff of Cumberland and of the poet Susanna Blamire.
Siblings His siblings included Major Thomas Moody (1809–1839);The Gentleman's Magazine, Volume XII, by Sylvanus Urban, July to December 1839, p.214 The Rev. James Leith Moody (1816–1896) (Chaplain to the Royal Navy in China, and to the British Army in the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Malta and Crimea); Colonel Hampden Clement Blamire Moody CB (1821–1869) (Commander of the Royal Engineers in China during the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion); and the Etonian sugar-manufacture expert Shute Barrington Moody (through whom his nephew was the artist Commander Thomas Barrington Moody (b. 1848) of the Royal Navy).
Education
He was educated by private tutors in the studia humanitatis and trained as a diplomat. Like his father, he was influenced by the works of Montesquieu, and was interested from a young age in 'political economy and in learning the character and peculiarities of the people amongst whom he was thrown'.The Royal Engineers Journal, Volume 101, September 1987, p.212 He has been described as a 'cultured theoretician', and as ‘a man sensitive to the beauties of nature and capable of expressing his sentiments in beautifully descriptive prose’, and as 'a visionary in a plain land' 'who could conceive of Edinburgh Castle in terms of a musical score', and as having ‘a fine sense of humour’.
He then was from the age of 14 years educated as a Gentleman Cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, at which he became head-of-school during his second year and graduated during his third year.
Like his father Colonel Thomas Moody, CRE WI, ADC, Kt., and like his brother Hampden Clement Blamire Moody, Richard Clement Moody was a polymath who excelled in engineering, architecture, and music. He planned the restoration of Edinburgh Castle using music, with which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were delighted, but his plan was not constructed.Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 90, Issue 1887, 1887, pp. 453–455, Obituary. Major-General Richard Clement Moody, R.E., 1813–1887.
Overview of military and civic career He trained on the Ordnance Survey in 1829, when he received an inheritance of £2000 (about £136,000 in 21st-century money) from his maternal grandfather Richard Clement (1754–1829).
He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1830. The Royal Engineers during the 19th century were a socially exclusive elite land-marine force, whose officers were drawn from the upper middle-class and landed gentry of British society, who performed, in addition to military engineering, 'reconnaissance work, led storming parties, demolished obstacles in assaults, carried out rear-guard actions in retreats and other hazardous tasks'.
Moody was promoted to Lieutenant 1835, to Second Captain in 1844, to Captain in 1847, to Major in January 1855,The London Gazette, 30 January 1855 to Lieutenant-Colonel in 1856, to Colonel in 1858, and to Major-General in 1866.
Moody worked on the Ordnance Survey in Ireland from 30 May 1832 until he became ill during 1833. He served on Saint Vincent (Antilles) from October 1833 to September 1837, where his elder brother Thomas died in 1839, until he contracted yellow fever. He subsequently during his sick-leave toured the United States, with Sir Charles Felix Smith, from 1837 to 1838. On his return from the USA, Moody was stationed at Devonport. Moody served as Professor of Fortifications at Royal Military Academy, Woolwich from July 1838 to October 1841.
Moody was in October 1841 appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Falkland-Islands: this office was renamed Governor of the Falkland Islands in June 1843, when he also became Commander-in-Chief of the Falkland Islands. He served in these offices until July 1848, when he left Stanley, and arrived in England in February 1849. Moody in 1848 received the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Military Merit of France.
He served as an aide-de-camp to the British Colonial Office, on special service, from August 1849. He served at Chatham Dockyard and at Plymouth during 1851. Moody was appointed Commanding Royal Engineer of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1852, as which he served until 1854. Moody was Executive Officer at Malta, during 1854, during the Crimean War, but was compelled to resign from this post in May 1855 as a consequence of yellow fever. He was appointed Commander of the Royal Engineers in Scotland in November 1855, and toured Germany in 1856.
Moody was appointed the Commander of the elite Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment; the Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia; and the first lieutenant governor of British Columbia, from December 1858 to July 1863.
Moody returned to England from British Columbia in December 1863, whilst he continued to own over 3049 acres of land in British Columbia.'Colonel Moody and the Royal Engineers in British Columbia', by Lillian Cope, 1940, Appendix IX 'Letter from Colonel R. C. Moody to Henry Pering Pellew Crease, 2 December 1873, List of land owned by Colonel Moody in British Columbia' Moody was Commanding Royal Engineer at Chatham Dockyard between March 1864 and January 1866. On 25 January 1866, he was promoted to Major-General, and he retired, at the age of 52 years, on full pay, later that month. He subsequently served as a Municipal Commissioner during 1868.
Avocational life Moody subsequent to his retirement lived 'in great seclusion until his death' in 1887. His friends included the biologist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the statesman and novelist Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (whose Rosicrucian novels he deemed to be decadently bourgeois), and the lawyer Sir Henry Pering Pellew Crease and his family.
Moody was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 23 April 1839, and was therefore one of its oldest members. He was also an Honorary Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Seventy-Sixth Session, 1855– 1856, p.133, 10 December 1855 and a Member of the Royal Agricultural Society.
Moody during his retirement lived at Burwarton, Shropshire; and at Caynham House, Ludlow, Shropshire; and at Woodfield, Weston under Penyard;'The Late Captain Moody', The Evening Express, 29 December 1900 and later at Fairfield House, Charmouth, Lyme Regis.
Moody died at The Royal Bath Hotel, Bournemouth, on 31 March 1887, whilst visiting Bournemouth with his daughter, and was buried at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth. He left over £24,000 in money (about £1.6 million in 21st-century money) in addition to his estates which included over 3049 acres in British Columbia.
Governor of the Falkland Islands (October 1841 – July 1848) Settlement In 1833, Great Britain asserted its dominion over the Falkland Islands. In 1841, Moody, who was aged only 28 years, was appointed, on the recommendation of Lord Vivian, to be the first lieutenant-governor of the Falkland Islands. It is likely that the lauded reputation, at the Colonial Office, of his father, Colonel Thomas Moody, CRE WI, ADC, Kt., contributed to the decision to appoint him at that unprecedentedly young age, and to grant him powers that were exceptional relative to those of other British Colonial Governors. Moody was directed by Lord John Russell to exercise an authority of 'influence, persuasion, and example'. He departed England, for the Falkland Islands, on the Hebe, on 01 October 1841. He inserted into a bottle, which he threw overboard off the Bill of Portland on his journey to the Falkland Islands, a letter to his sister Sophia Moody: the bottle and its letter was, after 34 days in the water, washed ashore at Blatchington, near Brighton, and delivered to Sophia Moody at Guernsey.The Norfolk Chronicle, 24 December 1841, p. 4
When Moody arrived, on the Hebe, at Port Louis on 16 January 1842, the Falklands was 'almost in a state of anarchy', but he used his powers 'with great wisdom and moderation' to develop the Islands' infrastructure. Moody's 'General Report' of the Falkland Islands for the British Government was completed on 14 April 1842 and was sent to London on 3 May. In his General Report, Moody recommended that the Government encourage settlers and promote extensive sheep farming. He estimated the population of sheep on the Falkland Islands to be 40,000 in 1842 and encouraged the Government to import quality livestock from Britain to be crossed with their local breeds: this policy was successfully implemented and adopted by future settlers.