Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/239

 1836, 8vo) he charged Evans with treating him with gross tyranny. The matter was made a subject of inquiry by the House of Commons, and the result not satisfying Richardson, he returned to the charge in his ‘Personal Memoirs’ (Montreal, 1838, 8vo). He also proposed to [q. v.] to continue his ‘Jack Brag,’ with the object of lampooning Evans and other officers. Hook approved of the idea, but no publisher would take it up (, Life of Hook, 1877, pp. 201–2).

Meanwhile, Richardson's tory politics recommended him to the ‘Times,’ and in 1838 he accepted an offer from that journal to proceed as its correspondent to Canada, where Papineau's rebellion was in progress. In this capacity Richardson so vigorously supported Lord Durham's arbitrary administration that his engagement was promptly terminated [see, first ].

In 1840 he established at Brockville, Ontario, a newspaper, the ‘New Era,’ which lasted two years, and in 1843 he began to publish at Kingston the ‘Native Canadian,’ in which he strongly supported Metcalfe's government [see ]. He afterwards removed to the United States, and continued to write for the press until his death in 1863. His other works are: ‘Wacousta, or the Prophecy,’ 1832; ‘Eight Years in Canada,’ Montreal, 1847, chiefly a record of Richardson's grievances and opinions; ‘The Guards in Canada,’ Montreal, 1848; ‘The Monk Knight of St. John, a Tale of the Crusaders,’ New York, 1850; ‘Matilda Montgomerie,’ New York, 1851; and ‘Wau-nan-gee … a Romance of the American Revolution,’ New York, 1852.



RICHARDSON, JOHN (1787–1865), arctic explorer and naturalist, was born at Nith Place, Dumfries, on 5 Nov. 1787. His father, Gabriel Richardson, for some time provost of Dumfries and a justice of the peace for the county, was a friend of Robert Burns, who from 1790 to 1796 spent his Sunday evenings at Nith Place. Richardson's mother was Anne, daughter of Peter Mundell of Rosebank, near Dumfries (Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xv. p. xxxvii).

Richardson was the eldest of twelve children, and was so precocious as to read well when four years old. Burns lent him Spenser's ‘Faerie Queen,’ and when, at the age of eight, he entered Dumfries grammar school, on the same day as the poet's eldest son, Robert, Burns is reported to have said to Gabriel Richardson, ‘I wonder which of them will be the greatest man.’ To the rough sports of his schooldays Richardson attributed the fact that even beyond the middle term of life he scarcely knew what fatigue was. In 1800 he was apprenticed to his uncle, James Mundell, a surgeon in Dumfries, and in 1801 he entered the university of Edinburgh. In 1804 he was appointed house-surgeon to the Dumfries Infirmary, but returned to Edinburgh in 1806; and in February 1807, having qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, was gazetted assistant-surgeon on the frigate Nymphe, which accompanied Lord Gambier's fleet to the bombardment of Copenhagen. He was present in August 1808 at the blockade of the Russian fleet in the Tagus, and was then transferred in quick succession to the Hibernia, the Hercule, and the Blossom. As surgeon on the latter sloop he was sent to Madeira and Cape Coast Castle, and in 1809 was engaged on convoy duty to Spain and to Quebec. Having in 1810 exchanged into the Bombay, he served at the siege of Tarragona, but then obtained leave of absence in order to study anatomy in London. His last service afloat was on the Cruiser in the Baltic fleet during 1813.

In February 1814 he was appointed surgeon to the first battalion of marines, then in North America, and he was with Sir George Cockburn at the taking of Cumberland Island and of St. Mary's, Georgia, in 1815. He then retired on half-pay, and returned to the university of Edinburgh, devoting considerable attention to botany, and studying mineralogy under Jamieson. He graduated M.D. in 1816 (his thesis dealing with yellow fever), and he then began, though with little success, to practise as a physician in Leith. In 1818 Richardson married for the first time, and in 1819 he was appointed surgeon and naturalist to Franklin's polar expedition, being specially commissioned to collect minerals, plants, and animals [see ]. This appointment introduced him to Sir Joseph Banks, and through him to Dr. John Edward Gray. After passing the winter of 1819 at Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan and traversing one thousand three hundred and fifty miles during 1820, they wintered at Fort Enterprise, and in June 1821 started down the Coppermine River in birch-bark canoes. They reached the coast on 18 July, and penetrated Bathurst's Inlet and Melville Sound as far east as Cape Turnagain, 6½° east of the river mouth. In the Barren Grounds