Richard Betham, LL.D., Collector of Customs at Douglas, and the first English customs officer to take charge of the Manx customs.

His appointment was the one exception the government made. On completing the purchase of the Island in 1765 it agreed, at the Duke of Atholl's requisition, to retain every officer of the Duke's appointment except the Collector of the Customs, and that office was conferred on Betham. He was sworn in as Water Bailiff at the same period, appearing with Charles Lutwidge before Governor John Wood in 1765 to take the oath of office, and his signature as Water Bailiff stands at Castle Rushen on 28 May 1770 beside those of John Quayle the Clerk of the Rolls, the Attorney-General Charles Searle, and the Deemsters Peter John Heywood and Daniel Mylrea.

He lived at the Hague, near Douglas. David Robertson, writing his tour of the Island shortly after Betham's death, called him a gentleman whose erudition was truly respectable, and to whose politeness and friendship he was highly indebted. He was well connected outside the Island as well. His wife Mary was the sister of Duncan Campbell, the London shipowner in the West India trade.

His health failed at the end of the 1780s. In May 1789 Hugh Cosnahan, writing to the Duke's agent about the chances of office on the Island, observed that the present collector was not well and in a declining state, and that if he should be shortly called away there would be no want of applications to succeed him. Betham died that year.

His daughter carried the family into a famous story. Elizabeth Betham, whose baptism is recorded at Glasgow on 7 March 1754, married Captain William Bligh at Kirk Onchan on 4 February 1781.