Richard Abbott was baptised on 23 May 1771 at Castle Donington, the son of Luke (a ‘gentleman’) and Elizabeth.  He was apprenticed to Charles Roebuck, a Sheffield knife maker, in 1791.  He became a Freeman in 1799.  In the previous year, he had married at the parish church Miss Elizabeth Wilson, of Neepsend. 

He was in partnership as a pen knife cutler with Joseph Hinchliffe (unidentified), but this was dissolved in 1803.  In later directories, Richard Abbott traded as a pen and pocket knife cutler at Queen Street (1811) and Harvest Lane (1816, 1818).  However, he was bankrupt in 1821, when he was sued alongside Charles Morris.  Richard Abbott was described as late of Southey Green, Yorkshire, heretofore of Beighton, Derbyshire, and formerly of Sheffield, cutler  (London Gazette, 17 April 1821).  His later life is untraced.