Hildegarde Beatrice Hinde
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2019}}
{{short description|British anthropologist}}
Hildegarde Beatrice Hinde ({{nee}} Ginsburg) (1871 – 20 February 1959) was an English anthropologist, linguist, writer and an amateur naturalist. She wrote two books about East African languages and collaborated with her husband, Sidney Langford Hinde, on a book about the Maasai people. 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.{{cite news |title=Dr. Ginsburg |work=The Times |issue=40466 |date=9 March 1914 |location=London}} Her older sister Emilie Catherine married the geographer Halford Mackinder in 1889. In 1897, Hildegarde married Sidney Langford Hinde, a colonial administrator in British East Africa.{{Cite book| publisher = Oxford University Press| isbn = 978-0-19-923011-2| last = Kearns| first = Gerry| title = Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder| date = 2009}}{{rp|116}} He was resident to the Maasai chief and collector of Maasailand.{{Cite book| publisher = London, W. Heinemann| last1 = Hinde| first1 = Sidney Langford| last2 = Hinde| first2 = Hildegarde Beatrice (Ginsburg)| title = The last of the Masai| accessdate = 2022-01-31| date = 1901| url = http://archive.org/details/lastofmasai00hind | via = Internet Archive}}{{rp|xi}}
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".{{rp|157}}
In 1901, Cambridge University Press 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".{{cite book |last1=Hinde |first1=Hildegarde |title=The Masai language: grammatical notes together with a vocabulary |date=1901 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |page=v |url=https://archive.org/details/masailanguagegra00hindrich |access-date=7 February 2022 | via=Internet Archive}} A review in the anthropological journal Man by Robert Needham Cust 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".{{Cite journal| volume = 1| page = 92| last = Cust| first = R. N.| title = The Masai Language, Grammatical Notes, with a Vocabulary. By Hildegarde Hinde| journal = Man| date = 1901}}
Cambridge University Press published her Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa in 1904.{{cite book |last1=Hinde |first1=Hildegarde |title=Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa |date=1904 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |url=https://archive.org/details/vocabulariesofka00hindiala |access-date=7 February 2022 | via = Internet Archive}} 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".{{Cite journal | volume = 4| pages = 189| last = R. W. F| title = Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa. By Hildegarde Hinde| journal = Man| date = 1904}}
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".{{cite journal |last1=Hinde |first1=Hildegarde |title=Empire in the making |journal=The Empire Review |date=1907 |volume=XIV |issue=81 |pages=175–180 |url=https://archive.org/details/commonwealthempi14londuoft/page/174/mode/2up?q=Hinde |via = Internet Archive | access-date=8 February 2022}} Her article "Magic among certain East African Tribes" was published in the Empire Review in 1906.{{cite journal |last1=Hinde |first1=Hildegarde |title=Magic among certain East African tribes |journal=The Empire Review |date=1906 |volume=XII |issue=68 |via=Internet Archive | pages=150–154 |url=https://archive.org/details/commonwealthempi12londuoft/page/150/mode/2up?q=%22hildegarde+hinde%22 |access-date=8 February 2022}}
In 1926, Williams and Norgate 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".{{cite book |last1=Hinde |first1=Hildegarde |title=Some Problems of East Africa |date=1926 |publisher=Williams and Norgate |location=London |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yGMMAQAAIAAJ |access-date=8 February 2022 |quote=The main problem — the government of the country, primarily for the benefit of the natives and secondarily to enable peaceful settlement for non-natives — remains unsolved.}}
Naturalist and collector
She was an amateur naturalist who contributed collections of bats and rodents to the British Museum.{{cite journal |last1=Thomas |first1=Oldfield |author1-link=Oldfield Thomas |title=New bats from British East Africa collected by Mrs. Hinde, and from the Cameroons by Mr. G . L. Bates |journal=Annals and Magazine of Natural History |date=1904 |volume=XIII |issue=LXXV |pages=206–210 |doi=10.1080/00222930408678899 | via=Internet Archive |url=https://archive.org/details/annalsmagazineof7131904lond/page/208/mode/2up?q=%22hildegarde+hinde%22 |access-date=8 February 2022 |quote=This very beautiful bat I have much pleasure in naming in honour of its discoverer Mrs. Hildegarde Hinde, to whom the British Museum is indebted for so many interesting Chiroptera and Rodentia.}}
Three species of small African mammal were named in her honour by Oldfield Thomas; these were Hildegarde's tomb bat (Taphozous hildegardeae), Hildegarde's broad-headed mouse (Zelotomys hildegardeae) and Hildegarde's shrew (Crocidura hildegardeae).{{cite book|author1=Beolens, Bo|author2=Watkins, Michael |author3=Grayson, Michael |title=The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I-kSmWLc6vYC&pg=PA189 |year=2009 |publisher=JHU Press |isbn=978-0-8018-9533-3 |page=189}}
Later life
From 1914 to 1940, she lived with her widowed mother and her sister Emilie Mackinder on Capri. They moved to Switzerland in 1940.{{rp|122}} She died there on 2 February 1959.{{cite web |title=Hinde, Hildegarde Beatrice, Mrs. |url=http://www.europeansineastafrica.co.uk/_site/custom/database/default.asp?a=viewIndividual&pid=2&person=21732 |website=Europeans in East Africa |access-date=8 February 2022}}
References
{{reflist}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hinde, Hildegarde}}
Category:British anthropologists