The legacy left by the British in Chennai continues to linger in the form of institutions, grand buildings, infrastructural schemes and plans that have been the foundations for various modernisation initiatives that are being envisaged for the city’s growth and development. There are also the various street names that connect us to our colonial past. Several of these are of men long forgotten, their contributions buried in time. But now with the internet, information on some of them is available, literally a fingertip away.

Ritherdon Road in the Purasaiwalkam-Vepery area has long intrigued me. The question of who this Ritherdon could be and what was his connection to Chennai kept recurring. A search on the web for a clue led my trail to Major General Augustus Ritherdon. No more information on the life and times of this gentleman was readily available. By an intensive hunt for information, I found that Ritherdons were from Devon and Somerset in England. At the end of the 16th century, migration seems to have happened to the city of London and the surrounding areas. A number of Ritherdons served in the English East India Company but notable among them were two cousins who rose to hold high positions in the military in Madras. Both the cousins shared a common ancestor – Robert Ritherdon, a goldsmith in the city of London.

So, this brings us the question as to after which of these cousins the road would have been named. There are a number of photos of these two men in the “Hulton Deutsch Collection”, now in the ownership of Getty Images. Most of the family photos with references to Madras are to be found around a house. There are notes of a grand palatial mansion named “Ritherdon House” that used to be a landmark building. Dewan Bahadur T. Rangachariar, one of the legal giants of the Madras High Court, was one of the later owners of the residence and he is the grandfather of yesteryear Tamil actor and producer K. Balaji. The road leading to this family house of the Ritherdons was hence named after the occupants as it was the general practice in those times.

General Augustus Ritherdon (born 1823) joined the 28th Regiment of the Madras Native Infantry in 1840. He rose in the army ranks and voluntarily opted to serve in the Second Anglo Burmese War in 1852-53. Soon after the war, he was made in-charge of various stations throughout the Madras Presidency. From 1861, he served with the Madras Staff Corps winding up as General in 1891. He died in 1899 at Isle of Wight aged 76. He seems to have had an Indian born daughter Annie Louise and appeared to have been widowed in 1881 as per census records. However, he seems to have married Kate Elizabeth Cleeve in the year 1882, to whom he left a bequest of 3942 Pounds in his will.

The other cousin was Major General Augustus William Ritherdon (born 1825) who had an equally distinguished military career. He followed the footsteps of his older cousin by joining the Madras Infantry in 1843. Maj Gen Augustus served as an Executive Engineer, Class III, in the Department of Public Works at Secunderabad. He seems to have returned to England on a twenty months’ furlough in the year 1862 and re-joined the Madras Infantry on his return in 1864. He went on to become the Officer Commanding of the infantry’s 10th regiment before returning home to England again on a two years’ leave of absence on account of private affairs. He retired from active military service in 1879. In 1880 he was decorated as Major General of the Madras Staff Corps. His marraige to Flora Ellen was solemnised in the Secunderabad Catholic Church on December 6, 1853. Before he died in 1888, he left his widow an estate worth 2313 Pounds.

While plans are being floated by the Corporation of Chennai time and again to rename roads named after British personalities, Ritherdon Road has eluded them. I hope it remains that way. But then in our city where old habits die hard, name changes hardly have any impact and, even if they do, the process takes ages.