52 Facts About Jim Corbett

Jim Corbett gained fame through hunting and killing several man-eating tigers and leopards in Northern India, as detailed in his bestselling 1944 memoir Man-Eaters of Kumaon.

Jim Corbett shot his first man-eater in 1907 and continued to hunt and kill such animals over the next four decades.

Jim Corbett increasingly disdained what he saw as the rapacious extermination of India's forests and wildlife, and fervently promoted wildlife photography as an alternative to trophy hunting.

Jim Corbett played a major role in the creation of India's first wildlife reserve in 1934; it was renamed Jim Corbett National Park after his death.

For many years, Jim Corbett earned a living working for the railway companies, and for twenty-two years supervised the transport of goods across the Ganges at Mokameh Ghat.

Jim Corbett served as an instructor in jungle survival for troops of the Burma Campaign during the Second World War.

Jim Corbett married Mary Anne Morrow in December 1845, and they had three children before her early death.

Jim Corbett had had four children with Charles James Doyle of Agra, who had been killed in the rebellion.

Edward James Jim Corbett, the eighth and penultimate child of Christopher William and Mary Jane, was born on 25 July 1875 in Naini Tal.

Jim Corbett spent much of his childhood exploring the jungles around Gurney House; from these explorations, and from willing adults such as his eldest brother Tom, and a nearby headman named Kunwar Singh, he gained intimate knowledge of the habits of the local wildlife.

Jim Corbett began hunting, first with projectile weapons such as a catapult and a pellet bow, until being gifted an old muzzle-loading shotgun at the age of eight.

Jim Corbett knew that it would be his responsibility to look after his mother and two sisters in later years.

Jim Corbett spent the two years of his contract near Bakhtiarpur, in charge of a sizeable labour force which collected timber to be used as locomotive fuel.

Jim Corbett was then appointed, in 1895, to the contract of transporting goods across the Ganges at Mokameh Ghat: by structuring his workforce efficiently and forming strong friendships with his subordinates, Corbett managed to clear the preexisting backlog, to the surprise of his superiors.

Jim Corbett would remain in control of shipping goods at Mokhameh Ghat for the following twenty-two years.

Jim Corbett trained new arrivals from Britain whom the railways had recruited there.

At Mokameh Ghat, Jim Corbett had come to view himself as more Indian than any other identity, but he retained his patriotism for Britain.

Jim Corbett attempted to enlist when the Second Boer War broke out, but the railway authorities refused to release him from his contract, believing he was too valuable in his position at Mokameh Ghat.

Jim Corbett, now promoted to the rank of Major, explored London for a day before departing from Tilbury, visiting the pyramids of Giza on his way back home to India.

Jim Corbett was involved in subduing tribes in Zhob district and Waziristan.

Jim Corbett became close friends with Percy Wyndham, the Kumaon District Commissioner, and with him fought banditry in the jungles; they invested together in East African coffee.

Wyndham retired in 1924 to the farm they had invested in near Majengo, and Jim Corbett travelled to East Africa most years to inspect his investment and see his friend.

Jim Corbett built a house for himself and Maggie in Kaladhungi, although he normally eschewed what was nominally his bedroom and preferred to sleep in a tent in the garden; when the house was later converted into a museum in his honour, staff erected a bust of him on the normal site of his tent.

In 1920, Jim Corbett retook the position of vice-chairman of the Naini Tal municipal board, which he had vacated a decade earlier due to local inactivity.

Jim Corbett passed laws against excessive fishing and deforestation, and unsuccessfully campaigned for power lines to be placed underground.

Jim Corbett was increaingly called upon to coordinate hunting events.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Jim Corbett, who had retained his rank of major in the reserve army, immediately volunteered again.

Jim Corbett inspected the Burmese forests in March 1944 and returned to India on his first flight, courtesy of American airmen he had befriended.

Jim Corbett's students were taught how to orient themselves, how to pinpoint sounds, and how to keep maximum visual awareness.

Jim Corbett displayed how tracking skills allowed him to assess how many enemy soldiers passed on a track, how long ago, how fast they were travelling, and even whether their guns were loaded.

One of the soldiers he trained later noted that "Jim Corbett appeared to be a cross between a magician and a master detective".

In 1907, Jim Corbett was approached by the deputy commissioner of Naini Tal, who asked him to hunt the Champawat Tiger.

Jim Corbett established her territory around Lohaghat in early 1903 and doubled her total over the next four years, claiming a victim once every three weeks on average.

Jim Corbett accepted the task, and hunted the tigress for a number of days.

Jim Corbett tackled them both in 1910, tracking and killing the tiger in the spring; he was forced to abort his initial attempt to kill the leopard in April because of his work at Mokameh Ghat, but returned in September and killed the animal in a nighttime hunt.

Jim Corbett hunted the leopard for ten weeks in the autumn of 1925, sometimes with Ibbotson and sometimes alone, on some occasions coming close and on one terrifying occasion being hunted himself, before reaching the limits of his endurance and returning home.

Jim Corbett returned early the next year, and again searched for several weeks.

Jim Corbett shot his final man-eater at the age of 71 after the Second World War.

On his trips to East Africa in the 1920s, Jim Corbett began to compare the untouched grasslands there to the increasingly exploited forests in India.

Jim Corbett likely bought his first camera in Britain or Bombay on his way back from the Western Front.

Jim Corbett was in possession of one by the time he went on a hike with an Eton College schoolmaster in September 1921.

Jim Corbett was fascinated by the photography of his acquaintance Frederick Walter Champion, who devised ways of recording tigers on cine film.

Jim Corbett began writing to newspapers to condemn over-shooting and ruthless deforestation.

In 1902, she and Maggie, who was similarly jealous of any potential wife for Jim Corbett, managed to obstruct his courtship of a holidaying English girl he had fallen in love with.

Jim Corbett formed a number of close friendships with Indians, most notably his bearers, who served as a mix of army batmen and butlers.

Jim Corbett forged a close friendship and business relationship with Bahadar Shah Khan, the Muslim headman of Chhoti Haldwani, who was an intermediary between Corbett and the village's inhabitants, and who on occasion served as Corbett's bearer or even advisor.

Jim Corbett received the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal in the 1928 New Year Honours.

Jim Corbett was made a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in the King's 1946 Birthday Honours.

Jim Corbett continued to write and sound the alarm about the declining numbers of wild cats and other wildlife.

Jim Corbett died of a heart attack a few days after he finished his sixth book, Tree Tops, and was buried at St Peter's Anglican Church in Nyeri.

Jim Corbett is known to have said that "the best actor was the tiger".

An IMAX movie India: Kingdom of the Tiger, based on Jim Corbett's books, was made in 2002 starring Christopher Heyerdahl as Jim Corbett.