Richard Watson Dickson was the first child of

and

and the elder brother of

. He was born at the Watson family's residence, Dale House in Warton, Lancashire, and named after his grandfather

. The estate

seems to exist to the present day,  the modern building, though, was erected some 80 years after R.W.Dickson's birth.

Having studied medicine (Medicinae Doctor), R.W.Dickson moved to London where he married his second wife Lucretia Morris in 1789. Russ McGillivray says that "in 1794 Richard was living at Charter House. Charterhouse was an almshouse (a home for gentlemen pensioners), hospital and boys school at Smithfield in London. The hospital was well regarded and it is possible that this reference means that Richard practiced medicine there."
 
Russ McGillivray continues: "The proximity of Charter House to St. Sepulchre ... suggests that Richard lived there from his marriage to about 1798. He then moved to Hendon, Middlesex, which is part of Greater London, 8 miles north-west of St. Pauls. ... Somehow Richard became an authority on agriculture. According to his cousin Jane Dickson, he had pursued this interest for 35 years, i.e. since about 1789.
 
In 1802 Richard contributed the section on agriculture in The New Cyclopedia; or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, by Abraham Rees. According to his cousin, he also contributed a number of articles to The English Encyclopedia: A Collection of Treatises Illustrative of the Arts and Sciences (10 vols), London: G. Kearsley of Fleet Street, 1802."
 
In the following years R.W.Dickson became an - even internationally - important and very productive author in gardening and agriculture, with a lot of publications - among them voluminous standard works - during the last two decades of his life (see also bottom of page).  From about 1815 he was a member of the London Board of Agriculture. A short

is shown on the next page.
 
However great his merits, his success or even prominence may have become he seems to have been no genius in earning money (or a greater one in spending it). As Russ McGillivray writes: "In August 1812 he was in the King's Bench debtors prison, located in Southwark, south London. Kings Bench had more amenities that other prisons, and was the preferred location for gentlemen insolvents. Most were allowed to live outside the walls of the prison as long as it was within three miles. This is possibly why Richard moved from Hendon to Kent Road in Southwark, near Camberwell, as recorded at the time of his death." The wealth of his wife's family seems to have been no help in this respect because - as Russ McGillivray shows - R.W.Dickson's and his wife

Richard Watson Dickson

Though it is predominantly Richard Dickson's voluminous literary and scientific

as an author that lives on for posterity, also an increasingly colourful impression of his private life is now emerging from the dark nothing of a remote past. This is mainly due to the skillful historical work being done by his Canadian descendant Russ McGillivray who in his new

(downloadable pdf file) of his ancestor draws a lively picture from what before had been single, dry facts, by smart compilation and new research in depth, by connecting loose ends and creating an integrated whole. Have a look at his interesting

and his

! We owe a lot of the information of this page to him though there is much more to be found in his original work.

In 1785 R.W.Dickson married Elizabeth Parkinson from Preston, but already in 1789 he married his second wife Lucretia Morris in London. In the meantime his first wife probably died (the burial records of Preston are missing for this period), and he finished his medical education at Aberdeen, Scotland (1787) after having studied somewhere in England first (see right).