René Hérault

René Hérault, Seigneur de Fontaine-l'Abbé et de Vaucresson (23 April 1691 – 2 August 1740), simply known as René Hérault, and sometimes as René Hérault de Vaucresson, was a French magistrate and administrator who served as Lieutenant General of Police of Paris from 1725 to 1739.

Born in Rouen, he was the son of a tax collector, Louis Hérault (1645-1724), and his wife Jeanne Charlotte Guillard de la Vacherie.

René Hérault started his career in 1712, at the age of 21, as King's Advocate (a position similar to Advocate General) at the Châtelet of Paris, the city's civil and criminal court. On 3 February 1718 he became Chief Prosecutor (procureur général) at the Grand Conseil, a higher court of justice. He also became maître des requêtes, and on 23 March 1722 he was appointed intendant of the généralité of Tours. He showed his administrative ability during a famine in his généralité, and so on 28 August 1725 he was appointed Lieutenant General of Police of Paris, i.e. head of the Paris Police, succeeding Nicolas Ravot d'Ombreval, who succeeded him as intendant of the généralité of Tours.

As Lieutenant General of Police, René Hérault ordered that the sewage works and refuse dumps be relocated from the city of Paris into suburbs further afield. He also initiated the practice of sprinkling streets with water during summer heat waves to prevent fires.

In 1728, he ordered for the first time in History that street name signs be posted at the corner of streets. This was generalized by his decree of 30 July 1729, which demanded that all owners with houses at the beginning and end of the streets put stone tablets engraved with the street names on the exterior walls of their houses. The stone tablets were sealed within the facades. He also tried to introduce a numbering system for houses and buildings, but this failed due to opposition from the aristocracy whose members refused to have the front gate of their imposing mansions "disfigured" by number plaques and who also argued that numbering aristocratic mansions and the dwellings of lower-class people alike was a repulsive egalitarian measure which infringed on the status of the privileged classes.

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