Sir Richard Strachey (24 July 1817 – 12 February 1908) was a British soldier and Indian administrator, the third son of Edward Strachey and grandson of
Sir Henry Strachey, 1st Baronet
Sir Henry Strachey, 1st Baronet (23 May 1736 – 3 January 1810) was a British civil servant and politician who sat in the House of Commons for 39 years from 1768 to 1807.
Life
Strachey was the eldest son of Henry Strachey, of Sutton Court, S ...
.
Early life
He was born on 24 July 1817, at
Sutton Court
Sutton Court is an English house remodelled by Thomas Henry Wyatt in the 1850s from a manor house built in the 15th and 16th centuries around a 14th-century fortified pele tower and surrounding buildings. The house has been designated as Grad ...
,
Stowey, Somerset. From
Addiscombe Military Seminary he passed into the
Bengal Engineers
The Bengal Engineer Group (BEG) (informally the Bengal Sappers or Bengal Engineers) is a military engineering regiment in the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army. The unit was originally part of the Bengal Army of the East India Company's B ...
in 1836, and was employed for some years on
irrigation
Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow Crop, crops, Landscape plant, landscape plants, and Lawn, lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,00 ...
works in the
North-Western Provinces
The North-Western Provinces was an administrative region in British India. The North-Western Provinces were established in 1836, through merging the administrative divisions of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces. In 1858, the nawab-ruled kingdom ...
. So many members of the family were in the Indian government that sarcastic mentions were made of the "Government of the Stracheys".
[Holdich, T. H. (1908) Obituary: General Sir Richard Strachey, GCSI, FRS, LLD. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Mar. 1908), pp. 342–344.]
Career
Strachey served in the
First Anglo-Sikh War
The First Anglo-Sikh War was fought between the Sikh Empire and the British East India Company in 1845 and 1846 in and around the Ferozepur district of Punjab. It resulted in defeat and partial subjugation of the Sikh empire and cession of ...
of 1845–46, and was at the battles of
Aliwal and
Sobraon
Sobraon is a village in Punjab, India. It is located west to Harike village in Tarn Taran district. The Sutlej river is to the south of this village. The village is located at 31°10'39N 74°51'10E with an altitude of 192 metres (633 feet).
H ...
, was mentioned in dispatches, and received a
brevet
Brevet may refer to:
Military
* Brevet (military), higher rank that rewards merit or gallantry, but without higher pay
* Brevet d'état-major, a military distinction in France and Belgium awarded to officers passing military staff college
* Aircre ...
-majority.
In 1848, with J. E. Winterbottom, he entered Tibet to explore Lakes
Manasarovar
Lake Manasarovar (Sanskrit: मानसरोवर), also called Mapam Yutso (;) locally, is a high altitude freshwater lake fed by the Kailash Glaciers near Mount Kailash in Burang County, Ngari Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region, China. The l ...
and
Rakshastal, which his brother
Henry Strachey had visited in 1846. In 1849, the two brothers briefly re-entered Tibet by following the
Niti Pass out of
Garhwal Garhwal may refer to the following topics associated with Uttarakhand, India:
Places
*Garhwal Himalaya, a sub-range of the Himalayas
*Garhwal Kingdom, a former kingdom
* Garhwal District (British Garhwal), a former district of British India
*Gar ...
.
From 1858 to 1865 he was chiefly employed in the public works department, either as acting or permanent secretary to the
government of India
The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...
, and from 1867 to 1871 he filled the post of director-general of irrigation, then specially created. It was thought that he would be made secretary to the department of agriculture but
Allan Octavian Hume
Allan Octavian Hume, CB ICS (4 June 1829 – 31 July 1912) was a British civil servant, political reformer, ornithologist and botanist who worked in British India. He was the founder of the Indian National Congress. A notable ornithologist, Hum ...
was appointed to it in 1870.
During this period the entire administration of public works was reorganised to adapt it to the increasing magnitude of the interests with which this department had to deal since its establishment by
Lord Dalhousie
James Andrew Broun-Ramsay, 1st Marquess of Dalhousie (22 April 1812 – 19 December 1860), also known as Lord Dalhousie, styled Lord Ramsay until 1838 and known as The Earl of Dalhousie between 1838 and 1849, was a Scottish statesman and co ...
in 1854. For this reorganisation, under which the accounts were placed on a proper footing and the forest administration greatly developed, Strachey was chiefly responsible. His work in connection with Indian finance was important. In 1867 he prepared a scheme in considerable detail for decentralising the financial administration of India, which formed the basis of the policy afterwards carried into effect by his brother
Sir John Strachey under
Lord Mayo
Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo, (; ; 21 February 1822 – 8 February 1872) styled Lord Naas (; ) from 1842 to 1867 and Lord Mayo in India, was a British statesman and prominent member of the British Conservative Party who se ...
and
Lord Lytton.
He left India in 1871, but in 1877 he was sent there to confer with the government on the purchase of the
East Indian railway
The East Indian Railway Company, operating as the East Indian Railway (reporting mark EIR), introduced railways to East India and North India, while the Companies such as the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, South Indian Railway, Bombay, Barod ...
, and was then selected as president of the commission of inquiry into Indian famines. In 1878 he was appointed to act for six months as financial member of the governor-general's council, when he made proposals for meeting the difficulties arising from the depreciation of the
rupee
Rupee is the common name for the currencies of
India, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka, and of former currencies of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (as the Gulf rupee), British East Africa, B ...
, then just beginning to be serious. These proposals did not meet with the support of the secretary of state. From that time he continued to take an active part in the efforts made to bring the currencies of India and England into harmony, until in 1892 he was appointed a member of
Lord Herschell's committee, which arrived at conclusions in accordance with the views put forward by him in 1878.
In 1892, Strachey attended the
International Monetary Conference The international monetary conferences were a series of assemblies held in the second half of the 19th century. They were held with a view to reaching agreement on matters relating to international relationships between national currency systems.
B ...
at
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
as delegate for
British India
The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
. He was a member of the council of the secretary of state for India from 1875 to 1889, when he resigned his seat to accept the post of chairman of the East Indian Railway Company.
![StracheyDedication](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/StracheyDedication.png)
Strachey's scientific labours in connection with the geology,
botany
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
and physical geography of the
Himalayas
The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...
were considerable. He devoted much time to
meteorological
Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences (which include atmospheric chemistry and physics) with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not ...
research, was largely instrumental in the formation of the
Indian meteorological department
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is an agency of the Ministry of Earth Sciences of the Government of India. It is the principal agency responsible for meteorological observations, weather forecasting and seismology. IMD is headquarter ...
, and became chairman of the meteorological council of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
in 1883. From 1888 to 1890 he was president of the
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...
. In 1897 he was awarded one of the
Royal Medal
The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important ...
s of the Royal Society, of which he became a fellow in 1854; and in the same year he was created
GCSI
The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria in 1861. The Order includes members of three classes:
# Knight Grand Commander (GCSI)
# Knight Commander ( KCSI)
# Companion ( CSI)
No appointments ...
. He died on 12 February 1908.
Strachey did much good work for the Royal Society, served on its council four times, from 1872 to 1874, 1880 to 1881, 1884 to 1886, and 1890 to 1891, and was twice a vice-president ; he was a member of its meteorological committee (which controlled the meteorological office) in 1867, and he was a member of the council which replaced the committee in 1876, and from 1883 to 1895 was its chairman. From 1873 he was on the committee of the Royal Society for managing the Kew observatory. The royal medal of the society was bestowed upon him in 1897 for his researches in physical and botanical geography and in meteorology, and the Royal Meteorological Society awarded him the Symons medal in 1906. His most important scientific contributions to knowledge were made in meteorology. He laid the foundations of the scientific study of Indian meteorology, organising a department whose labours have been of use in assisting to forecast droughts and consequent scarcity and of no little advantage to meteorologists generally. For years he served on the committee of solar physics. A sound mathematician, Strachey delighted in mechanical inventions and especially in designing instruments to give graphic expression to formulas he had devised for working out meteorological problems. In 1884 he designed an instrument called the 'sine curve developer' to show in a graphic form the results obtained by applying to hourly readings of barograms and thermograms his formula for the calculation of harmonic coefficients. In 1888 and 1890 he designed two 'slide rules,' one to facilitate the computation of the amplitude and time of maximum of harmonic constants from values obtained by applying his formula to hourly readings of barograms and thermograms ; the other to obtain the height of clouds from measurements of two photographs taken simultaneously with cameras placed at the ends of a base line half a mile in length. A further invention was a portable and very simple instrument, called a '
nephoscope
A nephoscope is a 19th-century instrument for measuring the altitude, direction, and velocity of clouds, using transit-time measurement. This is different from a nephometer, which is an instrument used in measuring the amount of cloudiness.
Des ...
,' for observing the direction of motion of high cirrus clouds, whose movement is generally too slow to allow of its direction being determined by the unaided eye.
Personal life
![StracheyFamily](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/StracheyFamily.jpg)
Strachey was about 37 years old when he married Caroline Bowles, who died in 1855, within a year of their wedding.
Nearly four years were to pass before he married again. On 4 January 1859, the 42-year-old Richard married 18-year-old
Jane Maria Grant, to be known henceforth as Jane, Lady Strachey (1840–1928). His wife was to become a well-known author and supporter of
women's suffrage
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...
, who would co-lead the
Mud March of 1907 in London. Sir Richard and Lady Strachey were the parents of thirteen children, of whom ten survived to adulthood; among them were:
[Rita McWilliams Tullberg, ‘Strachey, (Joan) Pernel (1876–1951)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200]
accessed 6 March 2017
/ref>
*Dorothy Bussy
Dorothy Bussy ( Strachey; 24 July 1865 – 1 May 1960) was an English novelist and translator, close to the Bloomsbury Group.
Family background and childhood
Dorothy Bussy was a member of the Strachey family, one of ten children of Jane ...
(née Strachey) (1865–1960), wife of French painter Simon Bussy; she wrote exactly one novel, ''Olivia Olivia may refer to:
People
* Olivia (name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
* Olivia (singer) (Olivia Longott, born 1981), American singer
* Olívia (basketball) (Carlos Henrique Rodrigues do Nascimento, born 19 ...
,'' about a lesbian relationship
*Pippa Strachey
Philippa Strachey, CBE (19 April 1872 – 23 August 1968) was a British suffragist. She organised major suffrage demonstrations and went on to lead the Fawcett Society.
Life
Pippa was born in Knightsbridge as the fifth child of the large St ...
(1872–1968), suffragist
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...
and feminist
*Oliver Strachey
Oliver Strachey CBE (3 November 1874 – 14 May 1960), a British civil servant in the Foreign Office, was a cryptographer from World War I to World War II.
Life and work
Strachey was a son of Sir Richard Strachey, colonial administrator and Ja ...
(1874–1960), writer and cryptoanalyst; worked at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...
during WWII
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. His wives were Ruby Mayers and the feminist Ray Costelloe Strachey (1887–1940).
*Pernel Strachey
Pernel Strachey or Joan Pernel Strachey (4 March 1876 – 19 December 1951) was an English scholar of French and Principal of Newnham College.
Life
Strachey was born in Clapham Common in London in 1876. She came from a large family led by Lieuten ...
(1876–1951), scholar and educationist; principal of Newnham College, Cambridge
Newnham College is a women's Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sid ...
*Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...
(1880–1932), writer and thinker; among his prominent works are ''Eminent Victorians
''Eminent Victorians'' is a book by Lytton Strachey (one of the older members of the Bloomsbury Group), first published in 1918, and consisting of biographies of four leading figures from the Victorian era. Its fame rests on the irreverence and ...
'' and a celebrated biography of Queen Victoria
* Marjorie Strachey (1882–1964), Newnham graduate and author
*James Strachey
James Beaumont Strachey (; 26 September 1887, London25 April 1967, High Wycombe) was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English. He is perhaps best known as the general editor of ''The Standard ...
(1887–1967), psychoanalyst and biographer of Sigmund Freud; husband of psychoanalyst Alix Strachey
Alix Strachey (4 June 1892 – 28 April 1973), née Sargant-Florence, was an American-born British psychoanalyst and, with her husband, the translator into English of ''The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud''. ...
(1892–1973)
See also
*Strachey baronets
The Strachey baronetcy, of Sutton Court in the County of Somerset, England, is a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. This family was originally seated at Walden, Essex, where William Strachey was living under the rule of Edward VI. L ...
Notes
Other sources
*
*
* Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (2005) The Financial Foundations of the British Raj. Orient Longman. .
* Barbara Caine (2005) Bombay to Bloomsbury: A Biography of the Strachey Family. Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
. .
External links
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Strachey, Richard
1817 births
1908 deaths
Administrators in British India
Bengal Engineers officers
British Indian Army generals
British meteorologists
British military personnel of the First Anglo-Sikh War
Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society
Knights Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India
People from Bath and North East Somerset
Presidents of the Royal Geographical Society
Royal Medal winners
Richard
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Frankish language, Old Frankish and is a Compound (linguistics), compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic language, Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' an ...
Members of the Council of the Governor General of India
Members of the Council of India