Richard Nitschke
Richard Carl Wilhelm Nitschke (1863 – 2 June 1944) was a South Australian baritone and in later years a racehorse owner. History Nitschke was born in Adelaide the second son of Wilhelm Nitschke (c. 8 August 1816 – 3 August 1889) and his wife Elise Catharine Nitschke, née Mehrtens ( – 1909). Wilhelm Nitschke arrived in South Australia aboard Wilhelmina Maria from Germany in August 1849, and Elise Catharine Mehrtens arrived from Germany aboard Herder in September 1851 with her four sisters. They married in 1853. Prior to leaving Europe Wilhelm was a coppersmith involved in construction of distillation plants. He was the first person in the colony to manufacture ice, and set up an ice manufactory in Mauritius which with his house was destroyed by fire, and unfortunately for Nitschke, uninsured. After some fifteen years of building stills for wineries, set up his own business "Nitschke & Co." at 109 Hindley Street, producing grape spirit. He founded a distillery in Kent Town which by 1877 was producing prize-winning brandies and other spirits, and around that time moved to Hackney, between the Hackney Bridge and St Peter's College and became well known as the Hackney Distillery. He was one of