A skilled linguist, he was in later life an educator, serving as professor of English at Hindu College, where he inspired the Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutta.

He, Violet and their three surviving children died when their ship, the Lord Nelson was lost in a storm around 21 or 22 November 1808 en route from Madras to England.

He appears to have been wealthy; an uncle, Colonel Sherwood, is reported to have commented in connection with Richardson's aspiration to visit England, "You are the richest ensign in India.

[5] In 1827, he founded the London Weekly Review, a literary journal which he edited with James Augustus St. John, and on which he expended a considerable amount of his patrimony.

The offer was rejected; but a downturn in publishing and hence in advertising revenue for literary journals, and a need on Richard's part to return to his employers in India led him to enter into an agreement under which Henry Colburn would assume control of the journal in return for Richardson receiving a share in the profits of sales of the London Weekly Review.

Secure that they would find in his favour, Richardson once again threw himself into literary pursuits and in 1830 re-joined the company, being made a member of the Arsenal Committee in Calcutta, and shortly after promoted to captaincy.

[7] In the early part of 1835 he was appointed aide-de camp to Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General of Bengal, but on Bentinck retiring from the post later in the year, Richardson was elected Professor of Literature at the Hindu College, apparently at the urging of Thomas Babington Macaulay;[8] and at much the same time was commissioned by Macaulay and the Education Board to write a text-book - Selections from the British Poets... - to support his teaching, for which he was promised a subscription of 2,000 copies from the Board.