Hildegarde Beatrice Hinde ( Ginsburg) (1871 – 20 February 1959) was an English writer and linguist. She wrote two books about East African languages and collaborated with her husband,

Sidney Langford Hinde Sidney Langford Hinde, (23 July 1863 – 18 October 1930) was a medical doctor and colonial administrator in East Africa. He was involved in the Congo–Arab War in the service of King Leopold II of Belgium. He is commemorated in the scientific na ...

, on a book about the

Maasai people The Maasai (; sw, Wamasai) are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting northern, central and southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are among the best-known local populations internationally due to their residence near the many game parks of t ...

. She is commemorated in the names of three African mammals.

Family

She was a daughter of the biblical scholar Christian David Ginsburg and his second wife, Emilie Hausburg. Her older sister Emilie Catherine married the geographer

Halford Mackinder Sir Halford John Mackinder (15 February 1861 – 6 March 1947) was an English geographer, academic and politician, who is regarded as one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics and geostrategy. He was the first Principal of University Ext ...

in 1889. In 1897 Hildegarde married

, a colonial administrator in British East Africa. He was

resident Resident may refer to: People and functions * Resident minister, a representative of a government in a foreign country * Resident (medicine), a stage of postgraduate medical training * Resident (pharmacy), a stage of postgraduate pharmaceutic ...

to the Maasai chief and collector of

Maasailand The Maasai (; sw, Wamasai) are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting northern, central and southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are among the best-known local populations internationally due to their residence near the many game parks of t ...

Writing

Hildegarde and Sidney Hinde were joint authors of ''The Last of the Masai'', a book published by William Heinemann in 1901. It contains field notes describing some East African animals and birds and photographs including one showing a "lion shot by Mrs. S.L. Hinde". In 1901

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...

published Hildegarde Hinde's book ''The Masai language: grammatical notes together with a vocabulary''. In a preface, she acknowledged that she had "no special philological qualifications", but that she had learned the language "directly from the Masai". A review in the anthropological journal '' Man'' by

Robert Needham Cust Robert Needham Cust (24 February 1821 – 27 October 1909) was a British administrator and judge in colonial India apart from being an Anglican evangelist and linguist. He was part of the Orientalism movement and active within the British and F ...

described it as "an addition to our knowledge of an African language brought up to date, and to be depended upon, as derived from original sources". Cambridge University Press published her ''Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa'' in 1904 . A review in ''Man'' remarked that this "admirable" book "should be in the hands of all travelling or settling in the regions where these dialects are spoken". In 1907 ''The Empire Review'' published an article entitled "Empire in the making", in which she described the difficulty for colonial administrators in East Africa of dealing with "peoples recognising no supreme chief, peoples who maintain a condition of individual equality, where everyone is as good as his neighbour, and where, as a result, anarchy reigns". Her article "Magic among certain East African Tribes" was published in the ''Empire Review'' in 1906. In 1926

Williams and Norgate Williams and Norgate were publishers and book importers in London and Edinburgh. They specialized in both British and foreign scholarly and scientific literature. Williams & Norgate was founded in the winter of 1842 by Edmund Sydney Williams (181 ...

published ''Some Problems of East Africa'', in which she set out "to put forward what seems to be a possible solution to the grievous political difficulties that have arisen in recent years".

Naturalist and collector

She was an amateur naturalist who contributed collections of bats and rodents to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. Three species of small African mammal were named in her honour by

Oldfield Thomas Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (21 February 1858 – 16 June 1929) was a British zoologist. Career Thomas worked at the Natural History Museum on mammals, describing about 2,000 new species and subspecies for the first time. He was appoin ...

; these were Hildegarde's tomb bat (''Taphozous hildegardeae''),

Hildegarde's broad-headed mouse Hildegarde's broad-headed mouse (''Zelotomys hildegardeae'') or Hildegarde's zelotomys, is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. It is found in Central Africa. Taxonomy This mouse was first described in 1902 by the British zoologist Ol ...

(''Zelotomys hildegardeae'') and Hildegarde's shrew (''Crocidura hildegardeae'').

Later life

From 1914 to 1940 she lived with her widowed mother and her sister Emilie Mackinder on

Capri Capri ( , ; ; ) is an island located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrento Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. The main town of Capri that is located on the island shares the name. It has been ...

. They moved to Switzerland in 1940. She died there on 2 February 1959.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hinde, Hildegarde British anthropologists British women anthropologists 1871 births 1959 deaths