Biographical entry: Edge-Partington, Thomas W.

Details

The son of James Edge-Partington, a noted writer on Pacific material culture, Thomas joined the BSIP administration in 1904 when he was posted as District Magistrate (an early title for District Officers) at Gizo. In 1909, he was transferred to open the first government base at Auki, on Malaita. He lived there until he took a year's leave in 1912, returned in 1913 joined by his wife, and left at the end of 1914 when he resigned from the public service in frustration because he was making no progress with disarming Malaitans, and felt he was receiving insufficient support from his superiors. He was interested in ethnography and wrote several academic articles. He also took photographs of early Gizo and Malaita, which are deposited in the British Museum. (Welsch 1998, 53-54)

Published resources

Edited Books

  • Welsch, Robert L. (ed.), An American Anthropologist in Melanesia: A.B. Lewis and the Joseph N. Field South Pacific Expedition, 1909-1913, University of Hawai`i Press, Honolulu, 1998. Details