Jessie Louisa Rickard


Jessie Louisa Rickard, also known as Mrs Victor Rickard, was an Irish literary novelist. During her lifetime she became a versatile writer who produced over forty novels, some of which found a large reading public. She preferred to be known as Mrs Victor Richard to avoid association with a young woman called Jessie Rickard, who was brutally murdered in an incident reported in the media as 'The Cornish Tragedy'Berks & Oxon Advertiser, 24 June 1904

Early life

She was born in Dublin as Jessica Louisa Moore, younger daughter of Canon Courtenay Moore M.A., V.P.R.S.A.I., then rector of Castletownroch and later of Brigown, Mitchelstown, co. Cork, a noted antiquarian, founder of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society and a Protestant Home Ruler, editor of the Church of Ireland Gazette and author of two novels. She spent her youth in Mitchelstown, and when only 18 wrote a series of hunting sketches which appeared in the Cork Examiner. They were so popular that she followed with a hunting story, The Price of a Friend, which was accepted as a series by the Irish Times. She married Robert Dudley Innes Ackland, by whom she had a daughter, and later divorced him, which caused a rift with her father.

Literary career

Not until 1912 however, when already aged 36, did she publish her first novel, Young Mr. Gibbs, a light and humorous work. Her next book, Dregs, which appeared in 1914, was a psychological study and was the forerunner of many romantic and sometimes sensational tales marked by great vitality. The word powerful can justly be applied to them and all had evocative titles: The Dark Stranger, Blindfold, Yesterdays Love, Old Sins Have Long Shadows, and A Reckless Puritan.
She had married Lieut. Colonel Victor Rickard, a professional officer of the 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers who featured prominently in the painting The Last Absolution of the Munsters by the war artist Matania, which depicts the second battalion of the Munsters halting at a wayside shrine at "Rue du Bois" on the eve of the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May 1915, in which Rickard, who led the regiment, was to die with many of his comrades.
Now widowed and with a son to support, she reverted to writing as a source of income. She first published The Story of the Munsters which provided the subject for this well-known Matania picture commissioned by her, depicting the Chaplain of the Munsters, Father Francis Gleeson, giving the Munsters their last absolution. She also published a series of articles in New Ireland during 1915 entitled The Irish at the Front, in which New Ireland claimed several soldiers received medals as a result.

Prolific writer

Beginning with Young Mr Gibbs to Shandon Hall she wrote over forty novels ranging in genre from light comedy to detective novels which earned her a living as a popular novelist. With a widening reputation, and together with Dorothy Sayers, G. K. Chesterton, Fr. Ronald Knox and others she was a founder member of the Detective Writers' Club. Having moved to England for some years, she was received into the Catholic Church in 1925 by Rev. Joseph Leonard C.M. who at that time was stationed with the Vincentians at Strawberry Hill, London. Most of her novels were published under the name "Mrs Victor Rickard", but she also achieved a reputation with others, as the author of The Pointing Man.

Later life

Illness and publishing difficulties due to the war brought an end to her industrious output. She came to live at Lower Montenotte in Cork city in 1948 where she wrote her last novel. She made her charming house a salon to which it was always delightful to be invited. It attracted a wide range of interesting people. Mrs. Rickard was a witty woman and a delightful hostess; kind to the young; invariably hospitable; a vivid personality. She was a close friend of Lady Hazel Lavery who was the subject of her novel A Bird of Strange Plumage. A debiliterating stroke in the nineteen-fifties left her paralysed on one side and she taught herself to write with her left hand, with characteristic courage. In her later years, she lived in the Montenotte home of Denis Gwynn whose wife was a daughter of Lady Lavery by her first marriage.
She died on 28 January 1963 at the age of 86 and is buried in Rathcooney Cemetery, Greater Cork.

Novels