Person

Aitken, Edward Hamilton, 1851-1909

1851-1909

Edward Hamilton Aitken was born on August 16, 1851, in Satara, India, the son of the Rev. James Aitken (1815-), a missionary of the Free Church of Scotland.

He was a civil servant and writer, known for his humorist writings on natural history in India and as a founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society. He was well known to Anglo-Indians by the pen-name of Eha. He received his education from his father in India and graduated from Bombay University with a B.A. and M.A., winning the Homejee Cursetjee prize with a poem in 1880. From 1870 to 1876, he taught Latin at the Deccan College in Pune. He was also proficient in Greek and was known to be able to read the Greek Testament without the aid of a dictionary. Although he grew up in India, he only visited England for the first time later in life, finding the weather of Edinburgh severe. In 1876, he joined the Customs and Salt Department of the Government of Bombay and served in Kharaghoda (referred to as Dustypore in The Tribes on my Frontier), Uran, Uttara Kannada and Goa Frontier, Ratnagiri, and Bombay itself. In 1903, he was appointed Chief Collector of Customs and Salt Revenue at Karachi, and in 1905, he was made Superintendent in charge of the District Gazetteer of Sind. He retired from the service in August 1906 and moved to Edinburgh. He explored the jungles on the hills near Vihar around Bombay and wrote "The Naturalist on the Prowl" (1894). He also published the books "The Common Birds of Bombay" (1900) and "A Naturalist on the Prowl or in the Jungle" (1923).

In 1883, he married Isabella Mary Blake (1858-1924). He died on April 11, 1909, in Edinburgh, Scotland.