James Gray Kyd CBE FFA

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

(1882–1968) was a Scottish actuary who was

Registrar General for Scotland The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) ( gd, Oifis Choitcheann a' Chlàraidh na h-Alba) was a non-ministerial directorate of the Scottish Government that administered the registration of births, deaths, marriages, divorces and adopti ...

from 1937 to 1949 and president of the

Faculty of Actuaries The Faculty of Actuaries in Scotland was the professional body representing actuaries in Scotland. The Faculty of Actuaries was one of two actuarial bodies in the UK, the other was the Institute of Actuaries, which was a separate body in Englan ...

from 1944 to 1946.

Life

He was born in

Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...

on 9 August 1882, the son of Thomas Kyd, actuary, and later manager of the Northern assurance company. The family lived at 74 Queen's Road in Aberdeen. Kyd attended Aberdeen Grammar School. He then joined his father's firm at the Northern Assurance and enrolled as an actuary student in 1903. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries in 1907. In 1912, he left to join the Civil Service. This in turn led him to a job in the Irish Insurance Commission in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

where he stayed until 1921. He moved to

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1926 and rose to be Principal Actuary in the Civil Service. In 1937, he returned to Scotland as Registrar General in place of Andrew Froude who had retired due to ill-health. In 1940, he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were

John Alexander Inglis John Alexander Inglis of Auchendinny and Redhall FRSE KC LLB (1873 – 1941) was a Scottish landowner, advocate and historian. He specialised in family histories of Scotland’s gentry. Life He was born at Montpelier Lawn in Cheltenham in En ...

, Alexander Aitken, Sir John Jeffrey and Alexander Graham Donald. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1942. His diverse interests led him to be both chairman (and co-founder) of the Scots Ancestry Research Society from 1945 to 1968 and honorary president of the Scottish Rights of Way Society from 1959 to 1962. His time given to these activities increased following retirement in 1948. He died on 25 June 1968 at

Hurstpierpoint Hurstpierpoint is a village in West Sussex, England, southwest of Burgess Hill, and west of Hassocks railway station. It sits in the civil parish of Hurstpierpoint and Sayers Common which has an area of 2029.88 ha and a population ...

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

Family

In 1912, he married Marjorie Amey Chalmers.

Publications

*''The Mortality Experience of Scotland 1930-32'' (1937) *''Scottish Population Statistics'' (1952) *''Drove Roads and Bridal Paths Around Braemar'' (1958)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kyd, James Gray 1882 births 1968 deaths People from Aberdeen British actuaries Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh