Stephen Jordan Rigaud

A carte-de-visite portrait of the English clergyman and schoolmaster Stephen Jordan Rigaud (1816–1859), who briefly served as the Anglican Bishop of Antigua towards the end of his life.

Born in Westminster on 27 March 1816, Rigaud was the eldest son of the mathematical historian and astronomer Stephen Peter Rigaud. He was educated at Greenwich and at Exeter College, Oxford. In 1840 he became a deacon and in 1841 he was ordained a priest. In the same year he married Lucy Frances Sarah, only daughter of clockmaker Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy: they had at least four children.

In 1842 Rigaud was appointed a tutor of Exeter College. In 1846 he became his friend Henry Liddell’s senior assistant master at Westminster School and in 1850 he was elected headmaster at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Ipswich (today Ipswich School). He moved the school to new buildings outside of the town and a chapel was soon added by public subscription. He used his connections to recruit promising pupils whose fathers he knew. Despite his many lasting achievements there, Rigaud was unhappy at the school. In 1856 a prosecution was brought against him for punishing a pupil with undue severity. Although unsuccessful, the prosecution undermined his position, and the number of pupils declined.

In 1858 Rigaud was chosen to become the Bishop of Antigua in the West Indies. He was consecrated at Lambeth Palace on 2 February 1858 and went out to his diocese almost immediately. He died in Antigua of yellow fever on 17 May 1859. A large stone memorial marks his grave in the grounds of the cathedral there.

Photographed in 1856 by Joseph Stokes of Ipswich.