Richard Bithell (22 March 1821 – 4 December 1902) was an English agnostic philosopher and writer. Bithell was born at

Lewes Lewes () is the county town of East Sussex, England. The town is the administrative centre of the wider Lewes (district), district of the same name. It lies on the River Ouse, Sussex, River Ouse at the point where the river cuts through the Sou ...

, Sussex on 22 March 1821. When he was 11, he worked at his father's smithy in Lewes.Grayling, A. C; Pyle, Andrew; Goulder, Naomi. (2006). ''Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy''.

Bloomsbury Academic Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. Bloomsbury's head office is located on Bedford Square in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a US publishing office located in ...

. pp. 331–332. Due to ill health he later took up teaching. He took courses at the Borough Road Training College to become a teacher of

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

and mathematics. In 1843, he was appointed master of the British School in Chesterfield. He was transferred to Brighton, Wolverton and London. Bithell obtained a BSc from

London University The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...

and a PhD from

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

. He developed an interest in philosophy and authored a series of books on agnosticism. From 1865 he worked at the banking house of the

Rothschilds The Rothschild family ( , ) is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi Jewish noble banking family originally from Frankfurt. The family's documented history starts in 16th-century Frankfurt; its name is derived from the family house, Rothschild, ...

until his retirement in 1898.Lightman, Bernard. ''Ideology, Evolution and Late-Victorian Agnostic Popularizers''. In James R. Moore. (1989). ''History, Humanity and Evolution: Essays for John C. Greene''.

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

. pp. 285–310. His title-pages describe him as "B.Sc., Ph.D., Fellow of the Institute of Bankers". Bithell was a member of the

Rationalist Press Association The Rationalist Association was a charity in the United Kingdom which published '' New Humanist'' magazine between 1885 and 2025. Since 2025, the Rationalist Press has been the publishing imprint of Humanists UK. The original Rationalist Press ...

.McCabe, Joseph. (1920)
''A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists''
London: Watts & Co. pp. 77–78 Bithell has been cited as one of the early popularizers of agnosticism during the late 19th century.

Selected publications

*''A Counting-House Dictionary, containing an explanation of the technical terms used by merchants and bankers, etc.'' (1882; new ed., 1903) *''The Creed of a Modern Agnostic'' (1883)
''Agnostic Problems''
(1887) *''A Handbook of Scientific Agnosticism'' (1892)

References

1821 births 1902 deaths 19th-century English non-fiction writers 19th-century English philosophers 19th-century English essayists 20th-century English non-fiction writers 20th-century English philosophers 20th-century English essayists English agnostics English essayists English male non-fiction writers English sceptics Freethought writers People from Lewes Philosophers of culture English philosophers of religion English philosophers of science Philosophers of social science British philosophy writers Rationalists University of Göttingen alumni {{England-philosopher-stub