Francis Henry Skrine

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Francis Henry Bennett Skrine (1847–1933) was an English traveller, orientalist and official in British India.

Life[edit]

He was the son of the Rev. Clarmont Skrine of Warleigh Lodge, Wimbledon, previously an army officer, and his wife Mary Anne Auchmuty Bennett, daughter of Major Charles Butson Bennett.[1] He was educated at Blackheath School and entered the Indian Civil Service in 1868.[2]

In 1870 Skrine was appointed assistant magistrate and collector in Nadia district.[3] He worked on famine relief in Bihar during 1874, and in Madras in 1877–8. He was officiating commissioner of Bhagalpur in 1893–4.[4] He became collector of customs at Calcutta in 1895, and commissioner of Chittagong division, retiring in 1897.[2]

Subsequently Skrine travelled in Central Asia.[5]

Works[edit]

  • Memorandum on the Material Condition of the Lower Orders in Bengal During the Ten Years from 1881–82 to 1891–92 (1892), an investigation covering the condition of agricultural workers.[6] In 1891 Skrine had compiled a census report for Shahabad district.[7]
  • Laborious Days: Leaves from the Indian Record of Sir Charles Alfred Elliott (1892)[8]
  • An Indian Journalist: being the life, letters and correspondence of Dr. Sambhu C. Mookerjee, late editor of "Reis and rayyet" Calcutta (1895)[2]
  • The Life of Sir William Wilson Hunter, K.C.S.I (1901),[2] on William Wilson Hunter, an authorised biography.[9][10]
  • The Heart of Asia: a History of Russian Turkestan and the Central Asian Khanates (1899) with Denison Ross[11] Annette Meakin questioned some of the reporting of this book on Central Asian women.[12]
  • The Expansion of Russia, 1815–1900 (1904)[13]
  • Fontenoy and Great Britain's Share in the War of the Austrian Succession, 1741–48 (1906)[14]
  • Bahaism, the religion of brotherhood and its place in the evolution of creeds (1912)[15]
  • Gossip about Dr Johnson and Others being Characters from the Memoirs of Miss Laetitia Matilda Hawkins (1926),[16] from Laetitia Matilda Hawkins.[17]

Family[edit]

Skrine married Helen Lucy Stewart, and was the father of Clarmont Percival Skrine.[18]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Fox-Davies, Arthur Charles (1905). Armorial Families (5th ed.). Edinburgh: T. C. & E. C. Jack. p. 1242.
  2. ^ a b c d Dictionary of Indian Biography. Ardent Media. 1971. pp. 392–. GGKEY:BDL52T227UN.
  3. ^ Major General H. G. Hart (1876). The New Army List, Militia List and Indian Civil Service List. p. 481.
  4. ^ Great Britain. India Office (1819). The India List and India Office List for ... Harrison and Sons. p. 614.
  5. ^ s:The Indian Biographical Dictionary (1915)/Skrine, Francis Henry
  6. ^ Bindeshwar Ram (1 January 1997). Land and Society in India: Agrarian Relations in Colonial North Bihar. Orient Blackswan. p. 179. ISBN 978-81-250-0643-5.
  7. ^ Peter Gottschalk (2013). Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India. OUP USA. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-19-539301-9.
  8. ^ Francis Henry Skrine (1892). Laborious Days: Leaves from the Indian Record of Sir Charles Alfred Elliott. J. Larkins.
  9. ^ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1901). "Hunter, William Wilson" . Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). Vol. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  10. ^ "Review of Life of Sir W. W. Hunter by F. H. Skrine". Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art. 93 (2418): 266–267. 1 March 1902.
  11. ^ Ghani (5 September 2013). Iran & The West. Routledge. p. 344. ISBN 978-1-136-14458-5.
  12. ^ Nile Green (2 January 2014). Writing Travel in Central Asian History. Indiana University Press. p. 197. ISBN 978-0-253-01148-0.
  13. ^ Francis Henry Skrine (1904). The Expansion of Russia, 1815–1900. University Press.
  14. ^ Ira D. Gruber (25 October 2010). Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution. Univ of North Carolina Press. p. 318. ISBN 978-0-8078-9940-3.
  15. ^ Catalog of copyright entries: Books. Part, group 1. Library of Congress, Copyright Office. 1912. p. 310.
  16. ^ Ian Bartlett; Robert J. Bruce (18 January 2011). William Boyce: A Tercentenary Sourcebook and Compendium. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 319. ISBN 978-1-4438-2807-9.
  17. ^ Pat Rogers (1996). The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-313-29411-2.
  18. ^ John F. Riddick (1 January 1998). Who was who in British India. Greenwood Press. p. 333. ISBN 978-0-313-29232-3.

External links[edit]

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