Frederick Marshman Bailey (3 February 1882,

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second List of cities in Pakistan by population, most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th List of largest cities, most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is th ...

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

– 17 April 1967,

Stiffkey Stiffkey () is a village and civil parish on the north coast of the English county of Norfolk. It is situated on the A149 coast road, some east of Wells-next-the-Sea, west of Blakeney, and north-west of the city of Norwich.Ordnance Survey ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nor ...

) was a British political officer and one of the last protagonists of ''

The Great Game The Great Game is the name for a set of political, diplomatic and military confrontations that occurred through most of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century – involving the rivalry of the British Empire and the Russian Empi ...

.'' His expeditions in

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

and

Assam Himalaya Assam Himalaya is a traditional designation for the portion of the Himalaya range between the eastern border of Bhutan, on the west, and the Great Bend of the Tsangpo River, on the east. The highest peak of this range is Namcha Barwa. Other hi ...

gave him many opportunities to pursue his hobbies of

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...

, butterfly collecting, and

trophy hunting Trophy hunting is a form of hunting for sport in which parts of the hunted wild animals are kept and displayed as trophies. The animal being targeted, known as the " game", is typically a mature male specimen from a popular species of collectab ...

in the high Tibetan region. Over 2000 of his bird specimens were presented to the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

, although his personal collection is now held in the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 int ...

, New York.Anon. (1967) Obituary: Lt.-Col. F. M. Bailey, C. I. E. 1882-1967. The Geographical Journal 133: 427-428. His papers and extensive photograph collections are held in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...

, London.

Early life

Born in

, India on 3 February 1882, Bailey was the son of Lt Col Frederick Bailey of the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is head ...

of the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkha ...

, Head of the Indian Forestry Service, and his wife, Florence Agnes Marshman. The younger Bailey was usually called "Eric". His family returned to Britain in 1890 and they lived at 7 Drummond Place in Edinburgh's Second New Town. He was educated nearby at

Edinburgh Academy The Edinburgh Academy is an independent day school in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was opened in 1824. The original building, on Henderson Row in the city's New Town, is now part of the Senior School. The Junior School is located on Arboretum Ro ...

. He later studied at

Wellington College Wellington College may refer to: * Wellington College, Berkshire, an independent school in Crowthorne, Berkshire, England ** Wellington College International Shanghai ** Wellington College International Tianjin *Wellington College, Wellington, New ...

(1895-1899) and the

Royal Military College, Sandhurst The Royal Military College (RMC), founded in 1801 and established in 1802 at Great Marlow and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, but moved in October 1812 to Sandhurst, Berkshire, was a British Army military academy for training infant ...

, from where he was commissioned onto the Unattached List of the

Indian Army The Indian Army is the Land warfare, land-based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Commander-in-Chief, Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head is the Chief of Arm ...

on 28 July 1900. He was admitted to the Indian Army on 26 October 1901 and was attached to the 17th Bengal Lancers. He was promoted to lieutenant on 28 October 1902 and transferred to the

32nd Sikh Pioneers The 32nd Sikh Pioneers was a regiment of the Indian Army during British rule. The regiment was founded in 1857 as the ''Punjab Sappers (Pioneers)''. After a series of names changes, it became the ''32nd Punjab Pioneers'' in 1901 and the ''32nd Si ...

on 1 March 1903. He obtained a transfer to the Foreign and Political Department on 24 January 1906. During a mission in Sikhim, he began to study

Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken diale ...

and became so proficient that he accompanied Francis Younghusband in his 1904 invasion of Tibet. He then served as the British Trade Agent in

Gyantse Gyantse, officially Gyangzê Town (also spelled Gyangtse; ; ), is a town located in Gyantse County, Shigatse Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region, China. It was historically considered the third largest and most prominent town in the Tibet regio ...

(Tibet) at intervals between December 1905 and December 1909.

Explorer

1913 North-Eastern Frontier and Tibet by Morshead and Bailey from RE Journal 1921

He later travelled in unknown parts of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

and Tibet, was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

in October 1906 (seconded by his father, Colonel F Bailey, who had joined the society in 1880) and eventually earned the

Patron's Medal The Royal Geographical Society's Gold Medal consists of two separate awards: the Founder's Medal 1830 and the Patron's Medal 1838. Together they form the most prestigious of the society's awards. They are given for "the encouragement and promoti ...

from the

Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...

for his discoveries. He also contributed notes on big game to the Journal of the

Bombay Natural History Society The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), founded on 15 September 1883, is one of the largest non-governmental organisations in India engaged in conservation and biodiversity research. It supports many research efforts through grants and publ ...

. He was promoted Captain 28 July 1908 and served during the operations in the Abor Country from 1911 to 1912. Bailey transferred himself from the Indian Army to the Political Department to get appointments on the Tibetan frontier. In 1911, he crossed China and southern Tibet to Assam in a failed attempt to reach the 150 ft falls on the

Yarlung Tsangpo The Yarlung Tsangpo, also called Yarlung Zangbo () is the upper stream of the Brahmaputra River located in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China. It is the longest river of Tibet and the fifth longest in China. The upper section is also called D ...

, which had been reported by the Indian

pundit A pundit is a person who offers mass media opinion or commentary on a particular subject area (most typically politics, the social sciences, technology or sport). Origins The term originates from the Sanskrit term ('' '' ), meaning "knowledg ...

Kinthup. In 1913 he made an unauthorised exploration to the Tsangpo Gorges with Captain Henry Morshead of the Survey of India. Morshead was later a surveyor for the initial

1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition The 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition set off to explore how it might be possible to get to the vicinity of Mount Everest, to reconnoitre possible routes for ascending the mountain, and – if possible – make the first asc ...

, along with

George Mallory George Herbert Leigh Mallory (18 June 1886 – 8 or 9 June 1924) was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s. Born in Cheshire, Mallory became a student at Winche ...

. Their adventures led them to the Rong Chu Valley, a gorge on the Upper Tsangpo. It was in that valley that Bailey spotted a tall blue poppy at the margin of the forest and pressed it in his notebook, now called '' Meconopsis baileyi''. They reached Kintup's Falls at the monastery of Pemakochung and were greatly disappointed to find the falls to be about 30 ft. In 1914, Bailey was honoured with the

MacGregor Medal The MacGregor Medal (also referred to as the MacGregor Memorial Medal) is awarded for valuable military intelligence through reconnaissance, exploration, survey or other similar activities of national importance. Awardees have included Survey o ...

for "recces and surveys (with Capt. T.M. Morshead) and separately, Tsangpo valley, Dihang & Dibang valleys,1911- 12."

First World War

On 4 September 1914 Bailey was appointed as a captain with the 6th Reserve Regiment of Cavalry at Dublin. He served on the

Western Front Western Front or West Front may refer to: Military frontiers * Western Front (World War I), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (World War II), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (Russian Empire), a maj ...

in March to April 1915 with the

34th Sikh Pioneers The 34th Royal Sikh Pioneers was an infantry regiment of the British Indian Army. They could trace their origins to 1857, when they were raised as the Punjab Sappers. The regiment recruited the Mazhabi Sikhs and Ramdasia Sikhs of Punjab provi ...

, and he was shot in the arm. He was serving in the Indian Expeditionary Forces as one of the few

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Battle of Gallipoli in September 1915. He served with the 5th Gurkhas, and he was wounded twice more. He was appointed a Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire on 1 January 1915 and was transferred to the Supernumerary List on 24 December 1915. He was sent back to India, where he served as Political Officer on the North-West Frontier during the Mohmand Operations January 1916 to March 1917. In December 1917, he was sent to South Persia, where he served until February 1918 as a political officer and was then in Chinese and Russian Turkistan from 1918 to 1920. He was a temporary lieutenant-colonel from 1 April 1918 to 30 May 1920.

Mission to Tashkent

One of Bailey's more well-known adventures occurred in 1918, when he travelled to

Tashkent Tashkent (, uz, Toshkent, Тошкент/, ) (from russian: Ташкент), or Toshkent (; ), also historically known as Chach is the capital and largest city of Uzbekistan. It is the most populous city in Central Asia, with a population of 2 ...

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the fo ...

on a mission to discover the intentions of the new

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

government, specifically in relation to India. During the mission, he also shadowed

Raja Mahendra Pratap Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh (1 December 1886 – 29 April 1979) was an Indian freedom fighter, journalist, writer, revolutionary, President in the Provisional Government of India, which served as the Indian Government in exile during World War ...

, an Indian nationalist who had established the

Provisional Government of India The Provisional Government of India was a provisional government-in-exile established in Kabul, Afghanistan on December 1, 1915 by the Indian Independence Committee during World War I with support from the Central Powers. Its purpose was to enr ...

in Kabul in 1915. Pratap was liaising with Germany and Bolshevik authorities for a joint Soviet-German assault into India through Afghanistan. It was then that the first plans for the Soviet '' Kalmyk Project'' was first considered. Bailey eventually had to flee for his life from the city and escaped only by taking on the guise of an Austrian prisoner-of-war and joining the Cheka with an assignment to find a rogue British agent, himself. Upon his return to England, he was a national hero. Bailey later recorded his exploits in his book ''Mission to Tashkent''.

Later life

Miru Gyalwa, Mrs Bailey, Major Vance, Colonel Bailey

In 1921 Bailey married Hon. Irma, daughter of Baron Cozens-Hardy. He was the Political Officer for Sikkim and Tibet, stationed in Gangtok (Sikkim) from June 1921 to October 1928, and he made annual visits to Tibet to inspect the Gyantse Trade Agency and visited Lhasa from 16 July to 16 August 1924, accompanied by the Medical Officer, Major J. Hislop IMS. He helped

Frank Kingdon-Ward Francis Kingdon-Ward, born Francis Kingdon Ward OBE, (6 November 1885 in Manchester – 8 April 1958) was an English botanist, explorer, plant collector and author. He published most of his books as Frank Kingdon-Ward and this hyphenated for ...

and Lord Cawdor in 1924 when he was a Political Officer in Gangtok, Sikkim. Bailey arranged passports and encouraged them to search the 40 mi unexplored gap of the river to solve the ''riddles of the Tsangpo Gorges''. Kingdon-Ward wrote a book by the same name documenting that expedition. He was among the earliest to import the

Lhasa Apso The Lhasa Apso ( ) is a non-sporting dog breed originating in Tibet. It has traditionally been used as an interior sentinel. Etymology Lhasa is the capital city of Tibet, and ''apso'' is a word from the Tibetan language. There is some deba ...

breed of dog into Britain. He was in contact with others interested in Central Asia, including

Richard Meinertzhagen Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, CBE, DSO (3 March 1878 – 17 June 1967) was a British soldier, intelligence officer, and ornithologist. He had a decorated military career spanning Africa and the Middle East. He was credited with creating and ...

. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel 28 July 1926. He was the Resident at Baroda, Central India from 1930 to 32 and was the Resident in Kashmir in 1932 to 1933. In February 1935, he was appointed His Majesty's

Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary An envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, usually known as a minister, was a diplomatic head of mission who was ranked below ambassador. A diplomatic mission headed by an envoy was known as a legation rather than an embassy. Under the ...

at Kathmandu. He held this appointment until retiring in 1938. He retired from the Indian Army on 3 February 1937 and, during the Second World War, served as a King's Messenger to Central and South America between 1942 and 1943.

Works

*Bailey, F. M. "From the outposts: A quiet day in Tibet", in: ''

Blackwood's Magazine ''Blackwood's Magazine'' was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the ''Edinburgh Monthly Magazine''. The first number appeared in April 1817 ...

'', 181;1144:270-5 * *Bailey, F. M.
China-Tibet-Assam: A Journey, 1911
' (London: Cape, 1945) *Bailey F. M.
Mission to Tashkent
' (London: Jonathan Cape, 1946; republished by Oxford University Press, 1992 and 2002,

Peter Hopkirk Peter Stuart Hopkirk (15 December 1930 – 22 August 2014) was a British journalist, author and historian who wrote six books about the British Empire, Russia and Central Asia. Biography Peter Hopkirk was born in Nottingham, the son of Frank St ...

, ed.) *Bailey, F. M.
No Passport to Tibet
' (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957)

Legacy

Bailey is commemorated in the scientific names of three species: a Tibetan snake ('' Thermophis baileyi''); a species of mammal, the red goral ('' Naemorhedus baileyi'');Pocock R. I. (1914) Description of a new species of goral (''Naemorhedus'') shot by Captain F. M. Bailey. and the renowned Himalayan blue poppy ('' Meconopsis baileyi'').

References

External links

* *
Bailey, Frederick Marshman, (1882-1967), Lieutenant Colonel, Lepidopterist
at National Archives
Memorial plaque at Wiveton church
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, Frederick Markham 1882 births 1967 deaths 20th-century British zoologists Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Nepal British Indian Army officers British military personnel of the British expedition to Tibet British spies against the Soviet Union Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire English lepidopterists Explorers of the Himalayas Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst Indian Army personnel of World War I Military personnel from Lahore People educated at Edinburgh Academy Recipients of the MacGregor Medal