ABSTRACT
Richard Maddison lived with his family in a house he owned in the London suburb of Lewisham. He worked in the City as a clerk in the Moon Insurance Company and devoted his spare time to cycling and membership of the Special Constabulary. Holding decided ideas upon what was good for his family, Britain and the empire, he was a stiff, awkward, spiritually and morally crabbed man. Many of the ideas he held upon the wider world were at one with the Daily Trident, a paper he had adopted on the day of its first publication in 1896, in preference to the Morning Post:
the Daily Trident was Richard Maddison's only companion, of like mind with himself, in his house. It shared his inner life. Its pages, particularly the articles on the English countryside, bicycling, gardening, fishing and other sports and games, made him feel that he enjoyed a full life as he read … in the train to and from London Bridge, keeping the best of them for the armchair at night, together with the first pipe of the day. 1
