Staniforth Ricketson was an Australian stockbroker, financier, and political figure.
22 Facts About Staniforth Ricketson
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Staniforth Ricketson was named after his paternal grandmother Georgina Staniforth.
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Staniforth Ricketson attended Prahran North State School, where he was dux in 1905.
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Staniforth Ricketson subsequently attended Wesley College for two years on scholarships, before leaving school in 1907.
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In 1909, Staniforth Ricketson moved to King Island with his brother Lancelot.
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Staniforth Ricketson enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in August 1914, as a private in the 5th Battalion.
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Staniforth Ricketson took part in the landing at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915 and was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his leadership that day, after all the officers and NCOs in his company became casualties.
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Staniforth Ricketson received a glancing bullet wound in June 1915 and a shell blast in August left him partially deaf.
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Staniforth Ricketson was evacuated to England for health reasons in October, and returned to Australia on leave in February 1916.
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Staniforth Ricketson arrived back in England in September and was promoted captain in January 1917, subsequently serving on the Western Front.
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Staniforth Ricketson's firm promoted and underwrote share offerings for many large companies.
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Staniforth Ricketson began a weekly sharemarket letter, expanded the brokerage interstate and opened a London office, and was a strong proponent of business ethics, opposing insider trading through a "rigid, underlined and emphasised insistence that share brokers could not be share traders".
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Staniforth Ricketson came to prominence politically during the Great Depression as an opponent of default on national debt and supporter of debt restructuring.
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Staniforth Ricketson had "grown increasingly impatient with the dysfunction of Labor's caucus through 1930".
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Staniforth Ricketson became the leader of the so-called "Group of Six" which helped convince Lyons to leave the ALP and eventually become the figurehead of the anti-Labor United Australia Party.
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Staniforth Ricketson had first met Lyons while in Tasmania in 1911.
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In May 1931, Staniforth Ricketson became the temporary secretary of the central council of the UAP's Victorian section.
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Staniforth Ricketson was a strong advocate of separating the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's central banking and commercial banking functions.
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Staniforth Ricketson married Mary Gwendolyn Brown in April 1916, while home on medical leave from the army.
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Staniforth Ricketson remarried in October 1946 to his secretary Edna Letitia Holmes, with whom he had another two children.
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Staniforth Ricketson died at his home in Kew on 6 December 1967, aged 76.
22.
Staniforth Ricketson's estate was valued for probate at $1,994,720.