Joseph Richardson (1755–1803)
English author and politician
Joseph Richardson (1755–1803) was an English author and politician.
Life
Born at Hexham, Northumberland, he was the only child of Joseph Richardson, a tradesman. He was educated at Haydon Bridge school and admitted as a sizar at St John's College, Cambridge, on 4 July 1774. His father's finances were not adequate to fully support his son's education, and the cost of his residence at college was borne by a titled lady of Northumberland who discovered his talents, but in 1778, she cut off her contributions. Although he was readmitted as a pensioner on 25 September 1780, he left the university without taking a degree.
Richardson, intended as he was for the church, entered the Middle Temple on 24 March 1781, where he was duly called to the bar. In London, he in fact concentrated on journalism, and after appearing as counsel in a few contested election petitions, gave up the legal profession.
Richardson's earliest journalistic post was on the staff of The Morning Post, then still a Whig paper, and he later became one of its proprietors. While connected with the Post, he fought a duel in Hyde Park with Sir Henry Bate Dudley and was wounded in the right arm. He also contributed letters, signed "Englishman", to a paper called The Citizen.
“Joseph Richardson (1755–1803)” enters the record as english author and politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Joseph, Richardson and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Joseph Richardson (1755–1803)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Joseph, Richardson and English provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q17299955. The first chronological checks are 1755, 1803, 1774 and 1778.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Richardson (1755–1803)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.