Richard Arman Gregory, 1864-1952

Richard Arman Gregory was born in Bristol on 29 January 1864. His father was John Gregory, the poet cobbler, whose memory is perpetuated in Bristol by a bust in the Kingsley Hall. His mother was Fanny Arman. His parents lived to celebrate their diamond wedding in July 1916. John Gregory was one of a pioneer band of social reformers, actively engaged in establishing the socialist and labour movements. Among others of that group were Ben Tillett, Jim O’Grady (afterwards Sir James O ’Grady, British High Commissioner to the Commonwealth of Australia), and Ramsay Macdonald. Richard Gregory remained, to the end of his life, a Radical friendly to the views of the political party that these men helped to found. His father— following his own Devonshire parent, a shoemaker of Bideford—was also an active and devoted Methodist, and Richard in his boyhood developed a keen interest in the local Wesleyan Sunday School and sang as a boy alto in the Wesleyan church choir. Later he moved away from the religious outlook of his childhood, as is shown by his Presidency of the Ethical Union and his Vice-Presidency of the Rationalist Press Association; but that his interest in religion had been maintained is clear from his membership of the National Unitarian Fellowship and his Vice-Presidency of the World Congress of Faiths, the body founded by Sir Francis Younghusband.