"A story of sport and adventure...by C.E. Gouldsbury...contains the sporting reminiscences of Digby Davies...whose reputation as a hunter of big game was so great...appointed...Tiger Slayer to the Presidency." -Boston Evening Transcript, Sept. 29, 1915
"Gouldsbury is a retired member of the Imperial Police...most readable works which have had a wide and deserved recognition." -Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 21, 1921
"The number of tigers I have shot cannot be much under three hundred in all." - Digby Davies
"A writer whose experience in the tracking of criminals and tigers in India lends unusual interest to his narrative." -Quarterly Bulletin, 1917
"His accounts of the big game shooting which was part and parcel of his appointment are of sustained interest." Outlook London, 1916
Did numerous rampages by man-eating tigers in the 1870s finally compel the government of Bombay to appoint highly regarded big game hunter Digby Davies to an official position of "Tiger Slayer"?
In his intriguing 1901 book "Tiger Slayer by Order," Charles Elphinstone Gouldsbury (1849-1920) who interviewed his former co-worker in the Bombay Police, Digby Davies, writes of Davies' tiger hunting experiences as official "Tiger Slayer" in India beginning in 1870.
Gouldsbury's work contains Davies' experiences as a Police Officer, and Bhil Agent-coupled with the unique office of Tiger Slayer to the Government of Bombay.
Mr. Digby Davies served for over thirty years in that Presidency, and during this long period many and exceptional opportunities of indulging his great taste for sport, especially when carrying out his duties as 'Tiger Slayer.'
Mr. Digby Davies in performing his duties has shot to his own rifle over 260 tigers and has assisted at the destruction of many others.
In describing the huge problem of man-eating tigers that Davies had to combat, Gouldsbury relates that Davies said:
"In the later sixties, when man-eaters were quite common in, and in districts adjacent to, Seonee. On practically the whole length of this road, but particularly at a long pass or crossing of three miles, called the Korai Ghat, a party of what I may call professional man-eating tigers, had taken up their quarters, who, lying in wait in small hillocks above the road, would pounce suddenly on drivers of bullock carts and carry them off into the jungle below.
"During the three years that Colonel W was stationed at Sconce, this Ghat was often held up for so long as three months at a time by these man-eaters, one of whom was credited with having killed and eaten seven hundred human victims before he was eventually destroyed."
About the author:
Charles Elphinstone Gouldsbury was born in Calcutta, West Bengal, India on January 10, 1849, and died December 28, 1920, in Sussex, England. He was a retired member of the Indian Imperial Police and author of Life in the Indian Police; Dulall, the Forest Guard; and Tiger Slayer by Order. For his famous book Tiger Slayer by Order, Gouldsbury interviewed the tiger slayer Digby Davies.
