Image and Narrative contributed by Chris Longrigg, UK
My father J.H Longrigg (seated in Black) was brought up in North London and was a graduate of Cambridge University. During the British reign and with high popularity, demand and pay for British officers in India he decided to join the Indian Forest Service in 1912. In 1924, while vacationing in Switzerland on a skiing holiday he met my mother, they fell in love and got married quite quickly.
Like many other officers, my father too wrote some of his experiences down. In one of the notes written in 1921 my father recounts going for rounds in the Mudumalai Forest (Nilgiri Wyannad), and encountering an Indian Black Panther who escaped after grabbing a piglet as prey and climbing the tree with it. According to his notes, climbing the tree was normal, but with prey, was something he had not seen or heard of before.
In 1937, my father become the Principal of the Madras Forestry College in Coimbatore. This photograph was taken at the time when the college was closed for the duration of the World War II, between 1939-1945. The little boy standing in the photo is me and I was about three years old at the time. While my father worked in Coimbatore that was relatively hotter and dustier, in the plains, my siblings and I was more or less brought up in Ooty which had better climate with schools & clubs and it was only a few hours away. My mother spent her time playing tennis, attending parties, looking after us children and she also helped in running the forest academy hostel. The college was renamed to South Forest Rangers’ College and then again to Tamil Nadu Forest Academy.
My father served the college as Principal from 1937-1939 as the eighth and the last European Principal of the college. He was succeeded by C.R. Ranganathan, the first Indian Principal of the college. After World War II ended, in 1945, my father was sent to Germany to advise on Forestry matters, and then he retired at the age of 55.
When my family and I left India, I was about eight years old and my father had by then served in India as an officer and educator for more than 30 years. I remember my brother, sister and I, spending our time playing around the Campus and one of my vivid memories is rolling a car tyre down hill in the Botanical gardens. In 2009, my sister and I returned to revisit our old haunts and we were so warmed to receive a very big welcome from the College who still remembered my father and my family.
One Response
Please put me in touch with Chris Longrigg as I would very much like to ask him a question about his mother – in particular was she Mary Hewett before she married John Helmsley Longrigg. What year did they marry?