Walter Roth
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Walter Edmund Roth (2 April 1861 – 5 April 1933) was an English anthropologist and physician, active in Australia.
Roth was born in London, sixth child of Mathias Roth (a naturalised Hungarian refugee) and his wife Anna Maria. He was educated initially in France and Germany and, like his brothers Henry Ling Roth and Reuter Emerich Roth, at University College School. He studied biology at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a contemporary of Sir Baldwin Spencer, and undertook medical training at St Thomas's Hospital, London.
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[edit] Early career
Roth came to Australia in late 1887 and in 1889 taught at Brisbane Grammar School and Brisbane Technical College before becoming the first director of the South Australian School of Mines and Industries (1889-90). In 1890 he was assistant master at Sydney Grammar School, then returned to London (1891) to complete his medical training (M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., 1892).
By mid-1892 Roth was serving as a locum for his brother Reuter in Sydney. He then practised medicine in north-west Queensland from 1894, being appointed government medical officer at Normanton (1896-97). He was interested in numismatics and published a series of articles for The Queenslander in 1895; his collection was eventually sold to the Australian Museum, Sydney.
[edit] Protector of Aborigines
His interest in Aboriginal anthropology was firmly established by 1894. He developed, however, essentially as an ethnographer, recording the cultures he observed rather than theorising about them.
He was appointed the first Northern Protector of Aborigines in 1898 and was based in Cooktown, Queensland. In 1904-06 he was Chief Protector and part of his duties was to record Aboriginal cultures.
Roth published 18 ethnographic bulletins, based on his official reports, on various aspects of Aboriginal culture. His monograph of 1897, Ethnological Studies Among North-West Central Queensland Aborigines, was the first of its kind in Australia and established his international reputation. [1]
[edit] Professional recognition and awards
In 1902 Roth was president of the anthropology section of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1904 he was elected to the anthropological societies of Berlin and of Florence and was appointed Queensland correspondent for the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (honorary fellow, 1931). The Royal Society of New South Wales awarded him the (W. B.) Clarke medal in 1909. [1]
The Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology in Georgetown, Guyana has been named in his honour.
[edit] Controversies
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." [2]
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".[3]
- “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.”[4].
Although Roth defended his actions by stating the photograph was taken for purely scientific purposes only, [5] 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.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Barrie Reynolds, 'Roth, Walter Edmund (1861 - 1933)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, Melbourne University Press, 1988, pp 463-464.
- ^ Roth, W. (1984) The Queensland Aborigines, 1984 facsimile edition, Queensland Government Printer, originally published as Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines (1897).
- ^ Dr Helen Pringle, The Fabrication of Female Genital Mutilation: The UN, Walter Roth and Ethno-Pornography, http://www.adelaide.edu.au/apsa/docs_papers/Others/Pringle.pdf
- ^ Mr Lesina, Queensland Parliamentary Debates (QPD), 24 November 1905, 1810
- ^ According to Roth: "The description and illustration of the posture assumed in the sexual act was of the highest anthropological interest in that it in large measure defended my thesis that the mutilation known as Sturt's terrible rite, or sub-incision (by Professor Stirling) or intro-cision (by myself) did not act as had hitherto been supposed as a preventive to procreation...The photograph was taken for purely scientific purposes only and is one of a series (defecation, micturition, tree climbing, sitting, standing) of natural postures which every anthropologist makes inquiry about, with a view to ascertaining the connections (if any) between the highest apes and the lowest types of man." Roth to Bishop White, 19 June 1904, QSA A/58850, tabled in QPD, xcii, 13 July 1904, 585. Bishop White wrote to Roth on 3 June 1904, and Roth’s reply is dated 19 June 1904. White telegrammed that he was satisfied with Roth’s explanation, letter of 8 July 1904.
