was brought up in the protestant religion, but a perusal of the controversial works of the jesuit father Henry Fitzsimon [q. v.] led him to join the Roman catholic church (Hogan, Life of Fitzsimon, 1881, p. 224). He began life as a gentleman farmer, and, not meeting with success, he opened a linendraper's shop in Dublin, but failed in that business also. About this period his wife died, and, finding himself a widower with a family of four children—three boys and a girl—he took holy orders, it is said, in the church of Rome, sent his three sons for education to the college of Lombard in Paris, and his daughter to a convent, where she soon afterwards died. The statement that he entered the priesthood is open to doubt. He now came to London, and Charles Molloy (d. 1767) [q. v.], who had been a political writer against Sir Robert Walpole, left him a legacy of 300l. This enabled him to open a school for catholic youth at Kensington Gravel Pits in partnership with John Walker (1732–1807) [q. v.], author of the ‘Pronouncing Dictionary,’ who was also a convert. Walker subsequently withdrew from the undertaking, and Usher became sole master of the school, which he conducted until his death in 1772.
His works are: 1. ‘A New System of Philosophy, founded on the Universal Operations of Nature,’ London, 1764, 8vo. 2. ‘A Free Examination of the common Methods employed to prevent the growth of Popery,’ London, 1766. This work appeared originally as a series of letters signed ‘A Free Thinker’ in the ‘Public Ledger.’ It elicited replies from Benjamin Pye (1767) and D. Grant, vicar of Hutton Rudby, Yorkshire (1771). 3. ‘Clio: or a Discourse on Taste, addressed to a Young Lady’ (anon.), London, 1767, 8vo; 2nd edit., with large additions, Dublin, 1770, 8vo; 3rd edit., Dublin, 1772, 8vo; new edition, with notes, anecdotes, and quotations by J. Mathew, London, 1803, reprinted 1809, 8vo. 4. ‘An Introduction to the Theory of the Human Mind. By J. U., author of Clio,’ London, 1771, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1773. 5. ‘An Elegy’ (sine anno); privately reprinted 1860.
[European Mag., March 1796, xxix. 151; Green's Diary of a Lover of Literature, 1810, p. 128; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn); Milner's Life of Challoner, 1798, pp. 41–4.]
USHER, RICHARD (1785–1843), clown, was born in 1785. His father, the proprietor of a mechanical exhibition, travelled in the north of England and in Ireland. The son at an early age took a share in the management of the exhibition, and inherited his father's talent in the construction of curious contrivances. A spirit of adventure soon induced him to start on his own account, and with a friend he gave exhibitions in Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, and other large towns. At Christmas 1807 he appeared as a clown at the Liverpool Amphitheatre under Mr. Banks's management. His success was immediate, his readiness in the circle supplied a fund of jokes, and no contrivance was too difficult for his inventive powers. In 1809, under John Astley's rule, he came out at Astley's Amphitheatre, London, where for many years he remained a great favourite. His annual benefit was an occasion on which extraordinary performances took place both in and out of the theatre. The most remarkable of these feats occurred in 1828, when in a washing-tub drawn by geese he sailed down the Thames from Westminster to Waterloo Bridge. He was then to have proceeded in a car drawn by eight cats to the Coburg Theatre, but the crowd in the Waterloo Road made this impossible, and he was carried to the theatre on the shoulders of several watermen. On boxing night 1828 he was at Drury Lane in W. Barrymore's pantomime, ‘Harlequin Cock Robin, or the Babes in the Wood.’ There were two clowns, Usher and Southby; Barnes was pantaloon, Howell harlequin, and Miss Ryall columbine. There were six scenes in the opening burlesque, eleven in the harlequinade, and the performance lasted from half-past six until midnight.
Usher was known in the profession as the John Kemble of his art, and in the ring was the counterpart of Grimaldi on the stage, never descending to coarseness or vulgarity; his manner was irresistibly comic, and his jokes remarkable for their point and originality. He was the writer and inventor of several stock pantomimes. With increasing years he gave up clowning, and confined himself to invention and design. When William Batty purchased Astley's and rebuilt the house in 1842, he refused to employ any architect, and the extensive buildings were constructed from Usher's plans and models. Usher died at Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, London, on 23 Sept. 1843. He married, first, Mrs. Pincott (the mother of Leonora Pincott, the wife of Alfred Sydney Wigan [q. v.]); and, secondly, a sister of James William Wallack [q. v.], who survived him with a family.
[Gent. Mag. 1843, ii. 549–50; Stirling's Old Drury Lane, 1881, ii. 206–8.]
USK, Adam of (fl. 1400), chronicler. [See Adam.]
