- Also known as
-
Percy Amaury Talbot
-
primary name: Talbot, P Amaury
- Details
- individual; anthropologist; official; academic/intellectual; collector; British; Male
- Life dates
- 26 Jun 1877-28 Dec 1945
- Address
- 67 Cambridge Mansions, Battersea Park (in 1905)
Bishopton, Stratford-on-Avon (1931)
- Biography
- British colonial district officer in southern Nigeria between 1902 and 1931, botanist, anthropologist, researcher;
1902: Assistant Commissioner on Anglo-Liberian Boundary Commission
1904: Alexander Gosling Expedition to Lake Chad
1905: Assistant District Commissioner, S. Nigeria in Colonial Administrative Service
1910: member of Expedition to N. Cameroon and French Central Africa with his wife, Dorothy Amaury Talbot and Olive Macleaod
1911: District Commissioner in S. Nigeria
1912: he and his wife accompanied Olive Macleod on her expedition across Africa to her fiancé's grave.
1920: Census Commissioner for 1921 Census of Southern provinces of Nigeria
1921-1931: Resident (Provincial Commissioner) in S. Nigeria
Educated at Oxford University; on return to England formed a private museum in his country house.
Donor to the Pitt-Rivers Museum and to the BM in 1905, 1914 [1916,0616 a series from the Ibibio], 1923, 1931. He gave a very large collection to the BM in 1916, and it remained on deposit for many years awaiting a description that never came: see H J Braunholtz, BMQ 18 1953 p.119, fn.13 ‘Incorporation of this last and biggest collection was suspended until 1950 in the expectation, unhappily not realised, of receiving fuller information from the donor'. It was eventually registered in 1950 after his death (see Af1950,45.1 to 889).
Also a donor to the BM Natural History.
Awarded the silver medal of the Royal African Society in 1923; member of the Royal Anthropological Institute
- Bibliography
- (wrote)
In the shadow of the bush, 1912 (on the Ekoi)
Life in Southern Nigeria : the magic, beliefs, and customs of the Ibibio tribe, 1923
The peoples of Southern Nigeria, a sketch of their history, ethnology and languages, 3 vols, 1926 (vol.III on ethnology)
Some Nigerian fertility cults, 1927
Tribes of the Niger Delta, their religions and customs, 1932
Journal of the African Society, XV p.305, on the fanatical Elijah II in Kalabari whose iconoclastic campaign destroyed much local culture.
OBITUARIES
Meek, C. K. "5. Amaury Talbot: 1877-1945." Man. 47 (1947): 13-14.
Talbot, Percy Amaury, (26 June 1877–28 Dec. 1945). WHO'S WHO & WHO WAS WHO.
