Author: Richardson, George Fleming
Biography:
RICHARDSON, George Fleming (1796-1848: ODNB)
He was born on 8 Dec. 1796 in Lewes, Sussex, and baptised at St. Nicholas, Brighton, on 18 Dec., the son of George Richardson, linen draper and lodging-house keeper, and his wife Martha Fleming, who had married the previous year. He entered his father’s business but read widely and mastered several European languages. He acquired sufficient German to translate a life of Körner in 1827 and Bouterweck’s History of German Literature (left unfinished at his death). In 1825 he published his Poetic Hours, which included translations from Horace and Anacreon, and was also instrumental in setting up the Brighton Mechanics’ Institution. In 1836 he became the first librarian and curator of the fossil museum of Dr. Gideon Algernon Mantell (1790-1852) which had moved to Brighton in 1833. Despite his energetic promotion of the museum and a wide range of other activities, he was always in debt and was listed as an insolvent debtor in 1832 and 1836. In 1838 the British Museum purchased the collection and Richardson moved to London to oversee it and was appointed Assistant in the Mineral Department. He continued his literary activity with Sketches in Prose and Verse (1838) and edited Mantell’s lectures as Wonders of Geology (1838). He was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1839 and began to lecture widely to supplement his income. When he published his Geology for Beginners (1842), Mantell regarded it as “scandalous piracy” and the dispute harmed his reputation, book sales, and lecture income. He fell into debt again and was in the midst of insolvency proceedings when he committed suicide “in a fit of despondency” by cutting his throat in front of a mirror, at 2 Charrington Street, Somers Town, probably on 30 June 1848. He was buried at St. Nicholas, Brighton, on 6 July. (ODNB 11 May 2021; findmypast.co.uk 11 May 2021; Brighton Gazette 29 Nov. 1832; Brighton Patriot 9 Feb. 1836; Globe 6 July 1848; GM May 1849, 550) AA
Other Names:
- G. F. Richardson