Richard Charles Brooman White
Client
Richard Charles Brooman (1853–1928) was the son of Amelia Susannah Brooman (c. 1832–1903) from her first marriage to Richard Archibald Brooman (d. 1865), a London patent agent. 1 Following Mrs Brooman's second marriage in 1868 to the wealthy Glasgow chemical manufacturer John White of Arddarroch, Dunbartonshire, 2 he became Richard Charles Brooman White, or Brooman-White. He was educated at Harrow and Cambridge, and married Lily Geraldine Angela Schuster on 14 November 1882. 3 He lived at Arddarroch, and died there on 13 December 1928. 4
Brooman White was a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society and member of the Natural History Society of Glasgow. 5 He cultivated orchids at Arddarroch, and sponsored the orchid collector Albert Millican, who dedicated his 1891 book Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter to his patron, 'whose wealth and love of orchids have encouraged and supported the author in his journeys, and whose kindness has rendered the present publication possible'. 6 Sales of orchids from Arddarroch were held at Smith's Rooms, 79 George Street, Edinburgh, in 1893 and at the Royal Exchange sale rooms, Glasgow, in 1895. 7 He was also a member of the Royal Photographic Society, and showed photographs of Egyptian and Scottish subject in the Society's annual exhibitions in 1899 and 1911. 8
Notes:
1: Edward Walford, County Families of the United Kingdom, London: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co., 1919, p. 1419.
2: Glasgow Herald, 19 September 1868, p. 5. After John White's death in 1881, his widow entered into a third advantageous marriage with Lord Henry Gordon Lennox: he died in 1886, she lived on until 1903.
3: Edward Walford, County Families of the United Kingdom, London: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co., 1919, p. 1419; Morning Post, 15 November 1882, p. 5.
4: The Times, 14 December 1928, p. 1.
5: Glasgow Herald, 1 March 1889, p. 6.
6: Albert Millican, Travels and Adventures of an Orchid Hunter, London: Cassell & Co., 1891.
7: Glasgow Herald, 10 July 1893, p. 11; 22 April 1895, p. 14.
8: Exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society 1870–1915, http://erps.dmu.ac.uk/ [accessed 20 February 2013].
