David Thomas Richardson

In 1779 he became an East India Company cadet, later serving under Colonel (later General) Thomas Wyndham Goddard in the 5th battalion of Sepoys, during the First Anglo-Maratha War; thereafter he transferred to the 3rd Bengal European Regiment.

[1][2] Richardson appears to have been transferred to military intelligence work, arising out of his knowledge of Persian and Hindustani; he is noted, later in his career, as a language examiner for the company's staff training college.

In this context, he is notable as the apparent instigator of, and companion on, a trip to Europe made between 1799 and 1802 by Mirza Abu Taleb Khan, a tax-collector and Persian scholar associated with Oudh State during a period in which the company was increasing its control of that territory.

He served as an occasional external examiner in languages at the company's staff college in Fort William,[4] and established and acted as principal of a new staff college at Barasat from 1802; he is recorded as compiling a Hindustani dictionary, but that never saw publication;[5] and there are occasional references to translations of Indian verse by Richardson in the Calcutta literary journals.

[6] By 1808, after 30 years of Indian service, Richardson determined to return to England, retiring on 29 September 1808 departing Madras on 26 October on Lord Nelson.