G.I. Jones

0:00:17 1905 Birth in South Africa; parentage; memories of South Africa; memories of Ireland;

0:08:30 c1911 Antafagasta, Chile; father Canon of the Diocese of the Falkland Islands; schooled by father

0:11:25 1915 Returned to England to school - St John’s, Leatherhead; left there by parents who returned to Chile; guardian was manager of Royal Liverpool Seamen’s Orphanage

0:14:00 Trauma of school; effect of war on the school; choir; classics taught well as school founded for the sons of the poorer clergy but did history

0:21:02 1923 Welsh scholarship at Jesus College, Oxford; parents returned to England 1924-5 and father joined Church of Wales; memories of Oxford, particularly rugger – played for the London Welsh; history at Oxford – Geronwy Edwards

0:27:27 Colonial Service; wanted to go to Sudan but got into the West African section; yellow fever; Acting Assistant District Officer in Coterpenny?, Eastern Nigeria; recruitment from universities rather than the army as previously

0:34:08 Language training in Ibibio but posted to Ibo regions; no need to speak anything but English; Colonial Services exam

0:37:15 Role of Colonial Officers not specified; responsible for keeping order and dealing with village disputes; Blue Book

0:41:50 Court system; magistrate’s role; examples of adjudications

0:50:17 Advantage of being a District Officer before telephones; land cases; Ibo’s sophisticated use of law; Gluckman v: Bohannan’s views on African law

0:58:04 Witchcraft cases; Tiv witchcraft

Second Part

0:00:05 Introduction of taxation, Warrant Chiefs, riots; Margaret Green’s work on Ibo women; tax assessments on adult males

0:07:15 Other jobs as Colonial Officer; travel through the district; tables and tin baths; life in camp; Colonial outfitters and tinned food; whisky

0:15:00 Landscape – tropical rain forest; slash and burn agriculture; hoes

0:18:30 Religion; masquerades; interest in African art; photography; biometric photographs; masks given to Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford 1937

0:26:00 Skulls given to Department of Anatomy, Oxford; collecting skulls; Dudley Buxton replaced by Le Gros Clark and skulls probably went to South Kensington; attitude of villagers to removal of skulls

0:29:20 Mask collection; masquerades performed by members of secret societies; reason for own interest in masks; desire to record the use of masks

0:33:45 Other objects collected included stone kelts “thunder stones”

0:35:30 Interest in anthropology stimulated by R.R. Marett at Oxford; returned to Oxford on leave and gained Certificate in Anthropology in early thirties; Oxford anthropology – Marett taught social anthropology, Henry Balfour curator of Pitt Rivers taught material culture, and Prof. Thompson in the Anatomy School taught physical anthropology, also Tom Penniman

0:39:23 Anthropology at London University; reflections on Oxford staff; fellow students – Culwick & wife, Rupert East

0:43:40 Margery Perham and Colonial History; Malinowski seminar; Nadel

0:48:30 Eastern Nigeria in the thirties; effect of massacre of market women in late twenties; later treatment of rioters

0:53:28 Own marriage to Ursula (who is also interviewed); meeting in London, July 1939; marriage; children

Third Part

0:00:05 Cambridge lectureship, teaching Colonial cadets; resistance from the Colonial Office

0:09:07 Difficulties of maintaining children at school in England; money difficulties; food rationing in England

0:13:19 Ursula’s impressions of Nigeria

0:17:18 Julian Huxley’s visit; K.C. Murray and African art

0:21:30 1946 Cambridge; Faculty – Glyn Daniel, Dorothy Garrod, J.H. Hutton, Grahame Clark, Charles McBurney; first meeting with Hutton; Hutton’s dog; material culture lecture; only anthropology students apart from c60 cadets, Lienhardt and Cunnison; lecture load; pattern for anthropology students was to do undergraduate degree in Cambridge, post-graduate in Oxford with Evans-Pritchard and Fortes

0:30:45 Took Evans-Pritchard’s post to lecture on Africa; Meyer Fortes; Reo Fortune;

0:36:38 Hutton’s retirement party

0:38:15 Parliamentary Commission on Basutoland ritual murder

0:45:45 Meyer Fortes’ professorship in Cambridge; staff difficulties – Ethel John Lindgren; expansion in anthropology department – new staff including Edmund Leach, Jack Goody, Ray Abrahams.

0:51:50 Audrey Richards at Newnham and later Smuts Reader; Jack Goody’s examiner; Edmund Leach; S.J. Tambiah

0:56:20 Students: Jean La Fontaine; WilliamWatson

0:59:26 Ursula’s reflections on life as an anthropologist’s wife.