sion were two shillings boxes, one shilling pit, and sixpence gallery.
A careful and abstemious man, Richardson put by money which enabled him, after expending a good deal in charity, to leave over 20,000l. At St. Albans, on one occasion, a fire occurred, in the extinction of which Richardson and his company took a gallant part. A subscription was raised for the sufferers, and Richardson, dressed as usual in a seedy black coat, red waistcoat, corduroy breeches, and worsted stockings, handed in a subscription of 100l. ‘What name?’ asked the clerk, receiving the reply, ‘Richardson, the penny showman.’ For his services and liberality he received a permission to play constantly in St. Albans during, and for three days after, the fair. Richardson bought and furnished ‘handsomely’ a cottage in Horsemonger Lane, Southwark, but preferred to live in his caravan. Three days before his death he was, reluctantly, removed, by order of his medical attendant, into the house, where, at the reputed age of seventy, he died on 14 Nov. 1837. He desired in his will to be buried in Marlow churchyard, in the same grave as a spotted boy who, twenty years previously, had proved an attraction. To the two Reeds, musicians, he left 1,000l. each, and the same sum to the landlord of the Mazeppa public-house, Horsleydown. Some other legacies were left to members of his company, and the remainder of his fortune went to two nephews and a niece.
[All that is known concerning Richardson is given in Gent. Mag. for 1837, i. 326–7. Portions have been copied into the Records of a Stage Veteran, 1836, and the Cornhill Mag. for 1865, whence they have been reprinted in Mr. Clark Russell's Representative Actors. In the Era Almanack for 1869 John Oxenford gives a vivacious account of the performances which he witnessed.]
RICHARDSON, Sir JOHN (1771–1841), judge, third son of Anthony Richardson, merchant, of London, was born in Copthall Court, Lothbury, on 3 March 1771. He was educated at Harrow and Oxford, where he matriculated from University College on 26 Jan. 1789, graduated B.A. in 1792, taking the same year the Latin verse prize (subject, ‘Mary Queen of Scots’), and proceeded M.A. in 1795. He was admitted in June 1793 a student at Lincoln's Inn, where, after practising for some years as a special pleader below the bar, he was called to it in June 1803. In early life he was closely associated with William Stevens, treasurer of Queen Anne's Bounty, by whom he was assisted with money while at college, and with whom he laboured for the repeal of the penal laws against the Scottish episcopal church. Richardson was an original member of the Nobody's Club, founded in his honour.
Richardson was counsel for Cobbett on his trial, 24 May 1804, for printing and publishing libels on the lord-lieutenant of Ireland and other officials, and also in the concurrent civil action of a similar nature brought against him by William Conyngham Plunket [q. v.] The author of the libel on the Irish officials was an Irish judge, Robert Johnson, on whose indictment at Westminster in June of the following year Richardson argued with much ingenuity an unsubstantial plea to the jurisdiction, viz. that, the union notwithstanding, the court of king's bench had no cognisance of offences done by Irishmen in Ireland. The plea being disallowed, Richardson appeared for Johnson in the trial which followed, and which ended in a nolle prosequi. About the same time he found congenial occupation in converting the defence of Henry Delahay Symonds on his trial for libelling Dr. John Thomas Troy [q. v.], Roman catholic archbishop of Dublin, into an attack upon the catholic religion. Not long afterwards he was chosen to fill the post of ‘devil’ to the attorney-general; and on 30 Nov. 1818 he succeeded Sir Robert Dallas [q. v.] as puisne judge of the court of common pleas, being at the same time made serjeant-at-law. On 3 June 1819 he was knighted by the prince regent at Carlton House. His tenure of office was brief, ill-health compelling his retirement in May 1824, when he had already given proof of high judicial capacity. Great part of his later life was passed at Malta, where he amused himself by editing ‘The Harlequin, or Anglo-Maltese Miscellany,’ and drafting a code of laws for the island. He died at his house in Bedford Square, London, on 19 March 1841. By his wife Harriet (d. 1839), Richardson had issue a son, John Joseph, who was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1832.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Parke's Life of William Stevens, 1859, pp. 29, 115, 125, 175; Howell's State Trials, xxix. 2, 54, 394, 423; Gent. Mag. 1839 pt. i. p. 442, 1841 pt. ii. p. 94; London Gazette, 8 June 1819; Ann. Reg. 1818 Chron. p. 196, 1819 Chron. p. 113, 1841 App. to Chron. p. 191; Times, 20 March 1841; Foss's Lives of the Judges; Henderson's Recollections of John Adolphus, p. 220.]
RICHARDSON, JOHN (1780–1864), solicitor, was born 9 May 1780, at Gilmerton in Midlothian, where his father had a small property in land. His father died when he was eight months, and his mother when he was a few years old. By his mother's side he was related to the Brougham family, and
