Walter Edmund Roth
Walter Edmund Roth
| Walter Edmund Roth SM, MRCS | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | |||||||||
| Born | 1861 | ||||||||
| Died | 1933 | ||||||||
| Residence |
Brisbane, Queensland [1905] Marlborough, Pomeroon River, Georgetown, British Guiana [1906] Christianburg, Demerara River, Georgetown, British Guiana [1919] The Museum, Georgetown, British Guiana [1931] | ||||||||
| Occupation |
anthropologist medical museum work | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Contents
Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
1903.02.10 The name of Mr W.E. Roth was recommended to the Executive Committee for consideration
1904.03.08 the following gentlemen, having been duly proposed & seconded, were appointed Local Correspondents of the Institute for five years, the appointments to lapse at the Annual Meeting of 1909: ... And Mr W.E. Roth MRCS – Queensland
1931.05.19 The following were nominated as Honorary Fellows: Dr Davidson Black, Dr W.E. Roth, Dr Bach, Tompa, Karl Furst, S. Sergi, Count Begouen, Dr Sapir, Dr Wissler
death noted in Report of the Council 1932-1933
Notes From Elsewhere
Walter Edmund Roth (2 April 1861 – 5 April 1933) was an English anthropologist and physician, active in Australia. He and his brother, Henry Ling Roth, are the subject of The Roth Family, Anthropology, and Colonial Administration
Roth was appointed the first Northern Protector of Aborigines in 1898 and was based in Cooktown, Queensland. From 1904 to 1906 he was Chief Protector and part of his duties was to record Aboriginal cultures.
The first three of his Bulletins on North Queensland ethnography were published in 1901, numbers 4 to 8 appearing between 1902 and 1906. In 1905 he was appointed a royal commissioner to inquire into the condition of the aborigines of Western Australia, and in 1906 he was made government medical officer, stipendiary magistrate. The remainder of Roth's bulletins on North Queensland ethnology, began to appear in the Records of the Australian Museum at Sydney in 1905; and numbers 9 to 18 will be found in volumes VI to VIII. He was given charge of the Demerara River, Rupununi, and north-western districts in 1915.
In 1906 Roth was made protector of Indians in the Pomeroon district of British Guiana. In 1924 his valuable An Introductory Study of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana Indians was published at the government printing office at Washington, U.S.A., appended to the Thirty-eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Though called an introductory study this is an elaborate work of well over 300,000 words with hundreds of illustrations. A volume of Additional Studies of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana Indians was published in 1929 as Bulletin No. 91 of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Roth retired from the government service in 1928, and became curator of the Georgetown museum of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society, and government archivist. Towards the end of his life he translated and edited Richard Schomburgh's Travels in British Guiana.[2]
The Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology in Georgetown, Guyana has been named in his honour.
According to Barrie Reynolds of James Cook University:
"Roth proved a vigorous Protector...earn[ing] for himself the hostility of the local European residents of north Queensland that was to erupt in 1905 in a public petition for his dismissal." [3]
Roth was involved in an incident where he "paid" an Aboriginal couple to demonstrate a sexual position of which he then took photographs. In 1904 and 1905, speeches in the Queensland Parliament on this and other aspects of his work were said to form "a pile as high as the Eiffel Tower".[4]:7-8
“Hansard teemed with speeches delivered against the administration of Dr Roth until they had a pile as high as the Eiffel Tower, and the Minister brushed everything aside as he would a fly from his aristocratic nose.”.[5]
Although Roth defended his actions by stating the photograph was taken for purely scientific purposes only,[6] the controversy led to his resignation on the grounds of ill health and departure for British Guiana (as it was then known) in 1906.
Dr Pringle writes of the episode that in her view:
Forcing, or persuading, Aborigines to perform sexual acts like performing bears for a white male audience fits squarely even within then current criteria of enslavement, a heinous crime that shocks the conscience of mankind then and now.[4]:28
Publications
External Publications
Roth, Walter E. (1897). Ethnological Studies Among the North-west-central Queensland Aborigines
Roth, Walter E. (1901). The structure of the Koko-Yimidir language
House Publications
Some Technological Notes from the Pomeroon District, British Guiana
