Christy collection of photographs on Africa

Contains loose photographs relating to various of Christy's travels; some photographs are his own and some are by professional photographers. Subjects include: Scenes on the Nile including pyramids; Railway views in Kenya; Rubber trees and cultivation in Nigeria, Uganda and the Cameroons; Scenes in the Congo including sufferers of sleeping sickness; scenes in India; scenes from travels in Norway, Argentina, France, The Canaries, Madeira, Tenerife, England and reproductions of photographs in Egypt, Ceylon and Bombay.

Cuthbert Christy was born in 1863 and qualified in medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In the early 1890s he travelled to South America and the West Indies. From 1898-1900 he was senior medical officer to the Second Battalion West African Field Force in northern Nigeria, after which he served for a brief time in India. He was a member of the First Uganda Sleeping Sickness Commission in 1902 and a medical expedition to the Congo in 1903. He travelled in Ceylon, East Africa, Uganda, southern Nigeria, the Gold Coast and the Cameroons. After official posts in the Congo and the Sudan he served in the First World War in Africa and Mesopotamia. After the War he explored in the Sudan, Nyasaland and Tanganyika, and was a member of a League of Nations Commission enquiring into slavery and forced labour in Liberia. On 29 May 1932, when he was nearly 70, he died as a result of being gored by a buffalo while on a zoological investigation in the Congo.

Unless restrictions apply, the collection is open for consultation by researchers using the Manuscripts Reading Room at Cambridge University Library. For further details on conditions governing access please contact mss@lib.cam.ac.uk. Information about opening hours and obtaining a Cambridge University Library reader's ticket is available from the Library's website (www.lib.cam.ac.uk).

Presented with other material by the Royal African Society in 1972.

Includes index.

A catalogue of the collection can be found on ArchiveSearch.

This collection is available on microfiche: Africa, fiche number 1-6.

Views relating to Christy's time in India are at Y3022V.

Y304A/62-120 are reproduced in: Christy, Cuthbert (1911). The African rubber industry and Funtumia elastica (kickxia), London : J. Bale, Sons and Danielsson. Y304A/141-Y304A/245 are reproduced in: Christy, Cuthbert (1924). Big game and Pygmies: experiences of a naturalist in Central African forests in quest of the Okapi, London: Macmillan.

PJ. Details of the Mau Escarpment verified: Mau Escarpment Encyclopædia Britannica http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=52745> [Accessed August 6, 2002].

Christy, Cuthbert, 1863-1932, explorer and zoologist