William Scoresby Routledge (1859-1939)
William Scorseby Routledge was an intrepid explorer who married one of the first women to be awarded a degree, who for twenty years jointly explored and recorded the world.
The only son of William Routledge (1829-1891) and Ann Sophia Twycross (1821-1893), William Scoresby Routledge was born at Melbourne Australia in 1859. The middle name came from a family friend. Ann was the third daughter of James Twycross. His parents were to move back to England and he had three sisters; Elizabeth, Agnes & Annie. His mother Ann Sophia was the granddaughter of John Twycross (1747-1840), who was also the grandfather of Rebecca Burchatt, the future wife of Henry Hatch Reffell. He was a first cousin of John (Earthquake) Milne, inventor of the seismograph.
William was educated at Christ Church Oxford where he graduated with a masters degree and at University College Hospital London. He then traveled around the world. On 6 August 1906 he married Katherine Maria Pease at the Skinnergate Quaker Meeting House Darlington, and he continued his travels with her. These are a few of the places that they visited; Newfoundland, East Africa, Easter Island, Polynesia and Jamaica.
During 1928 Katherine imprisoned herself in a 17 roomed house in Hyde Park Gardens, dismissed all the servants and pinned a notice on the door that she was ‘in a struggle with death by poison’. She had removed herself to live in one room, cooking on an oil stove. In February 1929 she was committed to Ticehurst Hospital in Sussex. She died here nearly seven years later on 13 December 1935. Her body was to be cremated and her will stated that no memorial was to be erected. It unknown where her ashes were dispersed. There were no children of the marriage.
After Katherine’s death, William had moved to Cyprus, but he died on 31 July 1939 at Paddington whilst on a business trip. His will directed that he was to be buried in a rough deal coffin of the least possible cost and to be buried in a mass of quick lime. There was to be no religious ceremony nor to be interred in consecrated ground. Therefore he was buried in an unconsecrated part of Putney Vale Cemetery London.