Reginald Edward Enthoven (1869– 21 May 1952) was an administrator in the

Indian Civil Service The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British Raj, British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947. Its members ruled over more than 3 ...

of the

British Raj The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

and an author of publications related to India, including the three volumes entitled ''The Tribes and Castes of Bombay'' that formed a part of the Ethnographic Survey of India.

Biography

Reginald Enthoven was born in Hastings, Sussex, England, on 23 November 1869, the fifth son of James and Miriam Enthoven.Oxford Men (1893), p. 193. He attended Wellington College and then, using his family connections as a great-nephew of

James Joseph Sylvester James Joseph Sylvester (3 September 1814 – 15 March 1897) was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory, and combinatorics. He played a leadership ...

, he was able to secure a place at

New College, Oxford New College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by Bishop William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as New College's feeder school, New College was one of the first col ...

reserved for students intending to pursue a career in the Indian Civil Service. In 1887, the same year that he

matriculated Matriculation is the formal process of entering a university, or of becoming eligible to enter by fulfilling certain academic requirements such as a matriculation examination. Australia In Australia, the term ''matriculation'' is seldom used now ...

at New College, he was appointed to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) upon passing the

competitive examination An examination (exam or evaluation) or test is an educational assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics (e.g., beliefs). A test may be administered verba ...

. He arrived in India on 1 December 1889.India List, p. 488. Initially appointed in

Bombay Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...

as an Assistant

District collector The district magistrate, also known as the district collector or deputy commissioner, is a career civil servant who serves as the executive head of a district's administration in India. The specific name depends on the state or union territo ...

and Assistant Magistrate, as well as an Inspector of Factories, by June 1896 Enthoven was promoted to Second Assistant. From 1900 until 1902 he served as First Assistant and Under-Secretary, being a Provincial Superintendent in Bombay for the 1901 census of India. Thereafter he was appointed to superintend the revision of the ''Imperial Gazetteer'' and was Director-General of Statistics. He was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

in 1904. Enthoven was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire on 1 January 1910, at which time he was Secretary to the Government of Bombay, General, Educational, Marine, and Ecclesiastical Departments. Enthoven had contributed the General Index to the 34 volumes of the ''Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency'' that had been compiled by Sir James M. Campbell. In his later ''Tribes and Castes of Bombay'', Enthoven placed much reliance on the work of Campbell, which Crispin Bates has described as being "compendious but unsystematic ethnographic researches". Kumar Suresh Singh has noted that the survey, conducted between 1901 and 1909, suffered from a shortage of funding, relied on amateur data collectors and used content from Campbell's ''Gazetteer'' without acknowledgement, thus leading to claims of plagiarism. In retirement and living at Vale House, Wootton, Berkshire by 1935, Enthoven was an Ordinary Member of the Council of the

Royal Asiatic Society The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society, was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encourag ...

and also one of its Honorary Auditors. He had been a member of the Society since 1907.JRAS (1935), pp. 2, 3, 10.

Publications

* * * * * * – three volumes, published between 1920–1922 * *

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * * * * * * * * *

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Enthoven, Reginald Edward 1869 births 1952 deaths British Indologists Indian Civil Service (British India) officers Alumni of New College, Oxford Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society People educated at Wellington College, Berkshire British demographers Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire English anthropologists People from Hastings English folklorists British people in colonial India