When Richard Senior graduated from Oxford in 1981 with a degree in Modern Languages, he contemplated pursuing an academic career, but his head and his heart were in conflict.
Swayed by the sector’s lack of security, relatively low pay and the fact that “frankly, there were a lot of people better than me”, he instead qualified as an accountant and embarked on a successful career in investment banking. But a shocking confrontation with his own mortality in 2013 triggered a recalibration.
“I wasn’t expected to live – I had multiple organ failure caused by a gangrenous appendix. It makes you reappraise what you’re doing, because I was always chasing the next financial deal.”
Deciding to de-emphasise the day job, Richard flexed his long-dormant academic muscles by completing the final term of an undergraduate degree at Birkbeck, before pursuing a Master’s in 18th Century Studies at King’s College, London.
“It was while I was doing that that I realised I’d been thinking in silos. To me, academic was French, and business was finance. And I thought, you idiot! Why don’t you combine the two and study the finance?”
His interest in the 18th century, which had stemmed from his enjoyment of Voltaire as an undergraduate, had raised more questions than it answered on how finance functioned 300 years ago. While plenty of historical sources documented the use of banks in London, he found little evidence of how other regions would have managed their money.
“I thought – 89% of people didn’t live in London. I’m from Lincolnshire, where we didn’t have any banks until 1775. But people were still buying and selling and borrowing and lending – how did all of that work? No one seemed to have looked at it in any depth.”
Richard began his PhD at Darwin in 2019, supervised by Craig Muldrew, Fellow at Queens’ and Professor of Early Modern Economic and Social History.
“One of the real things I learned was how to do research. As an undergraduate you’re told ‘read that book’. I’d never been in an archive in my life. One of my main sources was the ledger of an 18th century merchant called Christopher Wilson who lived in Kendal. I’d come across a reference to it in somebody’s book, and the only thing that had been written about him was in 1988 by the local history society. I tried them, but they didn’t know anything about it; tried the archive but they’d never heard of it. And so, being an accountant, I had a brainwave and looked on Companies House, and there was a company called Rigmaden Park Farms, which was where he lived, and one of the directors was a Wilson. I wrote to this person and got a reply saying ‘yes, that’s our ancestor, and we know all about the ledger, but we can’t find it’.”
Two months later Richard had a call to say the ledger had been unearthed.
“I went there and photographed all 418 pages of it and then spent a long time reconstructing things. I could work out how he was getting paid, who was paying him, how the money moved, and so forth. And that was genuinely so satisfying.”
Pursuing his interest in financial history has also provided Richard with a ready-made network.
“One of the things that happens when you get into your 60s and you work in finance is your community disappears. People retire, they move to the country, they do other things. It used to be that I could go into the City 10, 15 years ago and just ring someone up and say let’s have lunch. Now there’s nobody there. So I now have a new community which is the economic and financial history community, and I go to lots of seminars.”
Seminars were also the key to Richard’s choice of College, as he had attended talks and lectures at Darwin before applying, and was attracted by the idea of a graduate College. He and his wife regularly have lunch in the Dining Hall, and the Study Centre provides a sense of seamless continuity with the beginning of his academic journey.
“It’s got a marvellous view, and I feel I’ve come full circle. I come from rural Lincolnshire and I used to sit in my bedroom doing my homework, looking out over a field with cows in it. Well, now I can still sit doing my work looking out over a field with cows in it.”
Richard will graduate on Saturday with a PhD in History.
