{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2023}} {{Use British English|date=May 2012}} '''Sir Richmond Thackeray Willoughby Ritchie''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|KCB|ISO}} (6 August 1854 – 12 October 1912) was a British civil servant. He spent most of his working life at the India Office, reaching the post of Permanent Under-Secretary of State for India.<ref name="ODNB">{{cite ODNB|id=35764|first=Chandrika|last=Kaul|title=Ritchie, Sir Richmond Thackeray Willoughby}}</ref>
==Life== He was born in Calcutta, British India, the third son of the jurist William Ritchie (1817–1862) and his wife, Augusta Charlotte Trimmer.<ref name="birth">''India, Select Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947''</ref> He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge (matriculated 1874; B.A. 1878).<ref name="ODNB"/><ref>{{acad|id=RTCY874RT|name=Ritchie, Richmond Thackeray Willoughby}}</ref>
In 1877 Ritchie entered the India Office through open competition, as a junior clerk. He acted as Private Secretary to a number Under-Secretaries of State, both Parliamentary and Permanent: from 1895 to 1902 he worked for Lord George Hamilton. He then was transferred to the post of Secretary in the Political and Secret Department.<ref name="ODNB"/>
Ritchie was knighted in 1907, and upon the retirement of Sir Arthur Godley in 1910 he became the Permanent Under-Secretary of State, a position he continued to hold until his death.<ref name="ODNB"/>
==Family== In 1877 Ritchie married his second cousin, Anne Isabella Thackeray, the eldest daughter of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, and a novelist and author in her own right.<ref name="ODNB"/> Their son William Thackeray Denis Ritchie married Margaret Paulina, daughter of Charles Booth.
==See also== * Thomas Holderness
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *{{Find a Grave|139786978}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ritchie, Richmond}} Category:1854 births Category:1912 deaths Category:People educated at Eton College Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:Permanent under-secretaries of state for India Category:Private secretaries in the British Civil Service Category:Companions of the Imperial Service Order Category:Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath