Randolph Routh , Sir Randolf Isham Routh * Born: 1785? * Entered commissariat department of the army: Nov 1805 * Married at Paris, Adáele Josâephine Laminiáere, daughter of one of Bonaparte's civil officers: 26 Dec 1815 * Deputy commissary-general: 9 March 1812 * Commissary-general: 15 Aug 1826 * Married at Quebec, Marie Louise (1810-1891), daughter of Judge Taschereau and sister of Cardinal Taschereau: 1830 * Knighted: 1841 * Head of Commissariat branch of the army in Ireland : (pre) 1846 - ??? * Chairman, temporary Relief Commission: Nov 1845 * Member, Relief Commission ('Soup Kitchen Act', Feb 1847): 1847 - Oct 1848 * K.C.B.: 29 Apr 1848 * Died: 29 Nov. 1858 * Literature: DNB 1846: August In the first week of August, the potato plants turn from luxuriant harvest to putrefying vegetation. Not a green field remains from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear, from Limerick to Dublin. Randolph Routh, head of the Relief Commission, describes an extraordinarily dense fog which descends over the blighted areas, 'cold, damp and close without any wind'. There are violent thunderstorms and electricity playing over the blackened fields. Heavy rainfall. Dublin is flooded.... It is Government policy to allow the 'laisser faire' economic system to operate to the fullest. That is, there is to be no government intervention in the operation of free trade. It is considered imperative that traders should be allowed to make their profits when the opportunity, as it does now, presents itself. When the Government corn becomes available, it is not to undersell the independent traders. Randolph Routh, head of the Relief Commission says "...high price is the only criterion by which consumption can be economized." ...November 3rd: Randolph Routh writes to Trevelyan of 'a spirit of revolution abroad, and the only way to check it is to have a supply of food.' He only obtains a promise of 3,000 barrels of barley for sometime in the future. " From the Army LIst: " COMMISSARIAT DEPARTMENT - BRITISH ARMY 1851 --------------------------------------------- ROUTH Randolph Asst Comm-General 26Dec1846 [Posting]Limerick" Commissary General Randolph Routh CB. GRO ref. 1862 June Births ROUTH Randolph Henry Felix Marylebone 1a 460 - Was this his son? "he line the government would take became clear from the reception Sir Randolph Routh, the commissary-general for relief, accorded to a delegation from Achill, off the coast of Mayo, in autumn of 1846. The delegation explained to Routh that because the merchants charged high prices, the people could not buy the corn, and they asked him to sell food at a lower price. His reply was that "it was essential to the success of commerce that the mercantile interest should not be interfered with." Astounded, Father Monahan, the leader of the delegation, reminded him that in the previous year the government had sold at a cheaper rate in order to keep down the price. Routh responded that that was "a mistake, for it gave bad habits to the people, and that the government was now determined not to interfere with the merchants but to act in accordance with the enlightened principles of political economy." Father Monahan asked how, in such a crisis as this, the government could be fettered by notions of political economy; political economy might be very well in its way but the people of Achill knew nothing about it. With his astonished reply, Monahan put his finger on a central issue of the Famine--how could a government insist on enforcing the principles of 'political economy,' or free trade, if its people starved? Yet the government persisted in its policy and the result was a catastrophe. " " One of Berthollet's less illustrious fellow bureaucrats was an unknown named Laminiáere. All else I can find on this person was that in 1815 his daughter, Adáele, became the first wife of the son of the chief justice of Newfoundland, one Randolph Isham Routh, who had been the senior British commissariat officer at Waterloo when things went nasty for Napoleon. After Adáele's unfortunate early death, Routh married the cousin of the chief justice of Canada (was Routh a courtroom groupie?), and they had a son, Edward. Who ended up lecturer at Peterhouse, Cambridge, did dynamic stuff on dynamics and has to have been the greatest math teacher ever. Between 1862 and 1888 an unbroken line of 22 of his pupils won the top annual math prize. In 1865 the winner was John William Strutt, who would go on to become Lord Rayleigh and a very big cheese: Privy Council, Royal Society, Rumford medal, chancellor of Cambridge, Nobel for isolating argon, and a lot besides. "
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