How Did Richmond Lose Track of Some of Its Own War Dead?
Updated: Aug 30
RTSSG’s full member feature How Did Richmond Lose Track of Some of Its Own War Dead? opens the deeper historical investigation.
A Richmond Football Club medallion from 1888 eventually surfaced in a Hawthorn antique shop more than a century later. It had belonged to Alexander Salton, a Richmond player and later VFL goal umpire who enlisted in 1915 and died in France the following year.
For much of the twentieth century, Richmond’s official wartime remembrance did not capture every man connected to the club who died in service. Historical work has had to reconstruct parts of that story from records, objects and names that had drifted away from the club’s public memory.
How does that happen? What gets lost when a football club remembers only the names it already knows to look for?
What can a single medallion, a service record or a match-day connection recover that an honour roll missed? And when new evidence changes the list, does it also change the way Richmond understands its own history?
The real puzzle is not simply who was forgotten. It is how a club decides when its historical record is complete.
Read the full RTSSG investigation for the complete story.
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