Richmal Crompton - Life

Life

Richmal Crompton Lamburn was born in Bury, Lancashire, the second child of the Rev. Edward John Sewell Lamburn (Classics teacher at the Bury Grammar School) and his wife Clara (née Crompton). Her brother, John Battersby Crompton Lamburn, also became a writer, remembered under the name John Lambourne for his fantasy novel The Kingdom That Was (1931) and under the name "John Crompton" for his books on natural history.

Richmal Crompton attended St. Elphin's boarding school for the daughters of the clergy. It was originally based in Warrington (Lancashire); she later moved with the school to a new location near Matlock, Derbyshire in 1904. In order to further her chosen career as a schoolteacher, she won a scholarship to the Royal Holloway College in London. Crompton graduated in 1914 with a BA Honours degree in Classics (II class). She also took part in the Women's Suffrage movement at the time. In 1914, she returned to St Elphin’s as a Classics mistress and later, at age 27, moved to Bromley High School in south-east London where she began her writing in earnest. Cadogan (1993) shows that she was an excellent and committed teacher at both schools. Having contracted poliomyelitis, she was left without the use of her right leg in 1923. She gave up her teaching career and began to write full-time. Later in her forties, she suffered from cancer and had a mastectomy.

She never married and had no children although she was aunt and great-aunt to other members of her family, including the actor Jonathan Massey. Her William stories and her other literature were extremely successful and, three years after she retired from teaching, Richmal was able to afford to have a house (The Glebe) built in Bromley Common for herself and her mother, Clara. In spite of her disabilities, during the Second World War she did voluntary work in the Fire Service. She died in 1969 at her home in Chislehurst, London Borough of Bromley.