Randolph Spencer Churchill (1849-1895)

Politician. Born Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, a younger son of Sir John Winston Spencer Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough and Lady Frances Anne Emily Vane. He attended Eton and Merton College, Oxford. He sat as Member of Parliament for Woodstock between 1874 and 1885 making his mark as a dissenter, a co-founder of the so called fourth party, and an advocate of democratic Toryism. He married American, Jennie Jerome, in April 1874 at the British Embassy, Paris followed by the birth of his first son, Winston Leonard, the following November. A second son, John Strange, was born in 1880. Churchill held the office of Secretary of State for India between 1885 and 1886. He sat as Member of Parliament for Paddington between 1885 and 1895 and held the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1886. He fell ill due to exhaustion recuperation, traveling through Cape Colony, the Transvaal, and Rhodesia, which resulted in the memoir 'Men, Mines and Animals in South Africa.' During the last years of his life his health deteriorated and his behavior altered possibly due to the effects of dementia paralytica, or the development of a left brain tumor. His last speech in the House was delivered in June 1894 and was a painful failure. A journey around the world was undertaken in the autumn of 1894 in the hope that a change of climate might be healthful. He and his wife progressed as far as Cairo before his health failed and they quickly returned to England, arriving shortly before Christmas. He died in London in January at the age of forty-five.

Bio by: Iola