Dr Richard Greenup

(1803-1866)

MD
Registrar and Secretary to Senate: 1851

Richard Greenup was born on 15 March 1803 at Darcy Hay, near Halifax, England. In 1826 he entered Queens' College, Cambridge, and then practiced medicine in Salisbury. He was Visiting Physician to asylums in North Wiltshire for 10 years.

As surgeon on the ship "John Knox", he arrived in Sydney on 29 April 1850 with his family. He opened a private practice and was involved in organising the new University of Sydney, becoming the first Registrar and Secretary to Senate in 1851. From 1856 to 1866 he was an Examiner in Medicine, University of Sydney.

In 1852, Greenup was appointed medical superintendent at the Lunatic and Invalid Establishment at Parramatta. He instituted humane reform in the asylum, permitting exercise and visits for inmates as well as encouraging meaningful work such as gardening and dressmaking.

He became a Trustee of the Protestant Orphan School in May 1852, Medical Adviser to the Government in December 1854 and
Honorary Surgeon to Parramatta Rifle Corps in 1861. He joined the Board of Management of the Government Asylum for the Infirm and Destitute in 1862.

On 17 July 1866, during a routing inspection, he was stabbed by an inmate of the Lunatic and Invalid Establishment at Parramatta and died two days later.

Information taken from: Australian dictionary of biography, Vol. 4, 1972