Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/255

 was born at Darlington on 15 Sept. 1771. He was second cousin of [q. v.] After a scanty education at home, Thomas was apprenticed to a grocer in Sunderland. His cousin, [q. v.], gave him money for a passage to London and an introduction to Messrs. Smith, Wright, & Gray, the quaker bankers of Lombard Street, who engaged him as messenger at a salary of 40l. a year. He rose to be clerk and confidential manager. In 1806, with his friend John Overend, a Yorkshireman, and also a bank clerk, he started bill-broking in a small upstairs room in Finch Lane, Cornhill. Their system of charging commission to the borrower only was original. They were soon joined by [q. v.], moved to Lombard Street (part of the premises now occupied by Glyn, Mills, & Currie's bank), and rose rapidly to financial power and pre-eminence. In 1810 Richardson twice gave evidence before the bullion committee of the House of Commons. He retired from business in 1830. The firm, after being converted into a limited liability company (Overend, Gurney, & Co.), suddenly stopped payment on ‘Black Friday,’ 1866, spreading ruin far and wide. The directors were tried for conspiracy and fraud, but were acquitted.

Richardson built himself a handsome house at Stamford Hill, and another at Great Ayton, Yorkshire, where he interested himself in establishing an agricultural school for the north of England, to be managed by Friends. To this he contributed about 11,000l. He owned a third house at Allonby, Cumberland, and he was a generous benefactor to the neighbouring Friends' school at Wigton. The railway enterprises of [q. v.] and the Peases received his substantial support, and he was one of the six who purchased the estate which developed into the town of Middlesborough.

Richardson died at Redcar on 25 April 1855, leaving by his will money for educational purposes in the Society of Friends. He married Martha Beeby of Allonby, but left no children. An engraved portrait, with the title ‘A Friend in Lombard Street,’ is at Devonshire House.

 RICHARDSON, THOMAS (1816–1867), industrial chemist, born on 8 Oct. 1816 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, was educated in that town and at Glasgow, whither he went at an early age to study chemistry under Dr. (1773–1852) [q. v.]; he then proceeded to Giessen, where, under the guidance of Justus von Liebig, he carried out researches on the composition of coal and the use of lead chromate in organic analysis (Philosophical Magazine, xiii. 121, 1838, xv. 23, 1839), and graduated Ph.D. He afterwards went to Paris with Thomson, and completed his studies under J. Pelouze, with whom he published, in 1838, a research on the action of water on cyanogen and the consequent formation of azulmic acid (Comptes Rendus, vi. 187). On his return to Newcastle he devoted himself almost entirely to manufacturing chemistry, taking out a number of patents for various processes. In 1840 he began, at Blaydon, near Newcastle, to remove the impurities, consisting chiefly of antimony, from ‘hard’ lead, and thus to convert it into ‘soft’ lead, by means of a current of air driven over the molten metal; the impurities were oxidised, floated to the surface, and were then skimmed off. Practical improvements introduced into the process by George Burnett soon after led to the annual importation of several thousand tons of Spanish hard lead into the Tyne district, where it was purified. (1817–1889) [q. v.] (who appears to have had an animus against Richardson) quotes a letter from James Leathart declaring that Richardson was not the inventor of this process, and states that a patent for it was granted to Walter Hall in 1814.

In 1844 Richardson began at Blaydon the manufacture of superphosphates, as suggested by Liebig, and commenced, in 1842 in the south of England, by Mr. (now Sir) John Lawes. In 1847, together with [q. v.], he began to translate Knapp's ‘Technological Chemistry,’ which was published between 1848 and 1851. A second edition, in five parts, published in 1855, was rewritten so as to form a new work. (1815–1884) [q. v.] replaced Ronalds as Richardson's collaborator for the last three of the five parts; and the book, which was recognised as a standard work, has been incorporated by Charles Edward Groves and William Thorp in their ‘Chemical Technology.’

In 1848 Richardson patented a method for condensing ‘lead-fume’ by means of steam, originally suggested by Bishop (1737–1816) [q. v.] (, Metallurgy of Lead, p. 446). In the winter session of 1848 Richardson became lecturer on chemistry in the Newcastle school of medicine and surgery. After the temporary disruption of the school in 1851, he joined the school continued by the majority of the lec-