"Big Bore"

Among the more elusive and little known correspondents of Allan Octavian Hume's network was "Big Bore" who served in the Madras and Mysore Forest Service. Albert George Raschke Theobald was his real name, born in Madras on 4 September 1845 to Charles George and Eliza. "Raschke" suggests German ancestry but he may also have had Indian ancestors considering that he married a Caroline Susan Rungan (daughter of a Manpally Rungan of Mysore or perhaps Kollegal) on 30 October 1886. Very little of him is known except through mentions of his records by Hume in his Game Birds. He seems to have spent at lot of time in the Tirunelveli (Palamcottah), Coimbatore, Kollegal and Mysore regions. He notes the tameness of teals in the Tirunelveli district, something that later observers were surprised about. When William T. Hornaday visited India in 1877, he went to the Anamalais where Theobald had a home. There is a sketch based on a photograph that Theobald seems to have provided Hornaday that may still exist in some US archive.

 

Hornaday write: "From the first moment we became fast friends, which feeling only deepened with time and further acquaintance. I found in him one of nature's noblemen, as frank, free-hearted, and steadfast as ever breathed. In the course of time I discovered that he was a real genius, of the type so generously credited to the "Yankee." Besides possessing a very considerable fund of medical information and surgical skill, he was a good gunsmith and watchmaker, a first-rate photographer and taxidermist, and a very keen sportsman and naturalist."

Theobald's sons Charles and William established themselves as Theobald Brothers, taxidermists in Mysore to compete with the Van Ingens. They seem to have provided services to the Prince of Wales on his hunting trip into India. "Messrs. Theobald claim to have been the first firm to chrome-cure skins with the hair on, and to set up heads on hollow papier mache casts, a process for which they hold patent rights in India. They employ a very large staff, and receive work not only from all parts of India, Burma and Ceylon, but from Africa and other parts of the world as well."

Theobald senior died on 28 May 1919 and is apparently buried in Kilpauk cemetery. According to Gouri Satya in Colonial Landmarks in Mysuru, Theobald road in Mysore is named after the family.