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Richard Masters

Entrepreneur & Town Councillor

Keith Tankard
Knowledge4Africa.com
Updated: 14 October 2009
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OBITUARY: see the Daily Dispatch, 2.3.1917.

Richard Mechan Masters was born in Reading in 1849 and educated in London, Bath and Bristol.

He came to South Africa in 1872, first to Port Elizabeth, then Queenstown, and moved to East London in 1879.

He went into business with his brother-in-law, George Ulyate, in the firm Ulyate and Masters, butchers and general merchants. When the partnership was dissolved, Ulyate carried on the grocery business while Masters opened a drapery and millinery store in Oxford Street.

He also owned the Fighting Port -- a mail-order house -- and became chairman of the South African League.

Masters was elected to the Town Council unopposed for Ward 3 in August 1883 but left the Council in February 1885.

He died on 1 March 1917 at the age of 68, and was buried at East London.

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