Robert Reid Rentoul

Robert Reid Rentoul (died shortly before October 1925[1]) was a prominent figure in medical politics, as well as a raciologist.

A Doctor of Medicine in Liverpool, educated at Edinburgh, Dublin, Belfast and London, he was a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (England) (1879), Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh (1877), Member of the Medico-Legal Society, London, Member of the Society for the Study of Inebriety, Hon. Member of the Manchester Medico-Ethical Association. He was a very active member of the British Medical Association, and was sometime a member of their Parliamentary Bills Committee. In 1897 he was a direct representative for England on the General Medical Council, on which council he also served as a member of the Education Committee.[2]

Rentoul was a eugenicist, whose books, notably his "classic racial suicide work" Race Culture; or Race Suicide? (1906) assisted in bringing him to public attention. In this, he denounced the "terrible monstrosities" created by racial intermarriage and points out that Americans are "poor patriots" [of the Anglo-Saxon race] for repealing their racial miscegenation statutes.[3]

He was also a witness before the House of Commons Select Committees on 'Death Certification', the Registration of Midwives, and laid evidence before the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded.