Jim Corbett

Edward James Corbett CIE VD (25 July 1875 – 19 April 1955) was a British hunter, tracker, naturalist, and author who hunted a number of man-eating tigers and leopards in India. He held the rank of colonel in the British Indian Army and was frequently called upon by the Government of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, now the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, to kill man-eating tigers and leopards that were preying on people in the nearby villages of the Kumaon-Garhwal Regions.
He authored Man-Eaters of Kumaon, Jungle Lore, and other books recounting his hunts and experiences, which enjoyed critical acclaim and commercial success. He became an avid photographer and spoke out for the need to protect India's wildlife from extermination.
Corbett was born of British ancestry in the town of Nainital in the Kumaon of the Himalaya (now in the Indian state of Uttarakhand). He grew up in a large family of sixteen children and was the eighth child of Christopher William Corbett and his wife Mary Jane (née Prussia) who had previously married Dr Charles James Doyle of Agra, who died at Etawah in 1857. His parents had moved to Nainital in 1862, after Christopher Corbett had quit military service and been appointed the town's postmaster. In winters the family used to move to the foothills, where they owned a cottage named "Arundel" in the village now known as Kaladhungi.
Corbett House at Corbett Museum, Kaladhungi, Uttarakhand. Mary Jane was very influential in Nainital social life among Europeans and she became a kind of real estate agent for European settlers. Christopher William retired from the position of postmaster in 1878. He died a few weeks after a heart attack on 21 April 1881. Jim was then aged six and his eldest brother Tom took over as postmaster of Nainital. From a very early age, Jim was fascinated by the forests and wildlife around his home in Kaladhungi. Through frequent excursions, he learned to identify most animals and birds by their calls. Over time he became a good tracker and hunter. He studied at Oak Openings School, which merged with Philander Smith College in Nainital (later known as Halett War School, and now known as Birla Vidya Mandir, Nainital). Before he was nineteen he quit school and found employment with the Bengal and North Western Railway, initially working as a fuel inspector at Manakpur in the Punjab, and subsequently as a contractor for the trans-shipment of goods across the Ganges at Mokameh Ghat in Bihar.