Richey, Alexander George (1830–83), lawyer, historian, and editor, was born 22 October 1830 in Dublin, only son of Alexander Richey (d. 1852), land agent, of Mount Temple, Coolock, Co. Dublin, and his wife, Matilda (daughter of Dodwell Browne of Co. Mayo), aunt of the 3rd earl of Charlemont. Alexander Richey was educated at Dungannon Royal School, entered TCD (1848), was awarded a foundation scholarship (1851), was first gold medallist in classics (1853), and graduated BA in 1853/4 and LLB in 1855, in which year he was called to the Irish bar. He was appointed QC (March 1871), and received the degree of LLD (Dubl.) in 1873.
Almost from the beginning of his legal career, Richey was greatly interested in the study of ancient Irish law and history. The Commission for Publishing the Ancient Laws of Ireland asked him to edit the third and fourth volumes of The brehon laws, which were published in 1865 with introductions by Richey that impressed contemporaries as authoritative and knowledgeable; he was sufficiently learned in the European context of legal codes and custom to be able to adduce comparisons with ancient Irish law. His Lectures on the history of Ireland (1869, 1870) were delivered as eight lectures in 1869 at Alexandra College, Dublin, and in ten Hilary term lectures at TCD in 1870. They were embodied, with other writings, in the posthumous A short history of the Irish people down to the plantation of Ulster (1887), edited by R. R. Kane (qv), which was well received. Richey broke new ground in his study of early Ireland, and his legal training encouraged impartiality of analysis. In 1871 he was appointed deputy regius professor of feudal and English law at TCD. His treatise Irish land laws (1880) was quoted as an authority by Gladstone in the 1881 land bill debates in parliament. Richey contributed to Hermathena, to the Athenaeum (from 1875 until his death), and to the Saturday Review. Elected MRIA (1867), he served on the Academy's committee of polite literature and antiquities and as a council member (1869–80). He was vice-president of the RIA (1877–80).
During the 1882 police strike in Dublin Richey was one of the first to offer himself as a special constable. At the time of his death he was engaged on a history of Ireland, ‘a task for which he was perhaps more eminently suited than any other man then living’ (Kane, ‘Introduction’ to A short history . . ., 4). He wrote only one chapter; it was published in A short history. . .. He died 29 November 1883, aged 53, at his home, 27 Upper Pembroke St., Dublin, and was buried in Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin.
He married (date unknown) the elder daughter of Maj.-gen. Henry Smith and Elizabeth Smith (qv), of Baltiboys, Co. Wicklow; she survived him. They had three sons and two daughters.