Jervoise Athelstane Baines

Who was Jervoise Athelstane Baines?

Sir Jervoise Athelstane Baines, CSI, was an administrator in the Indian Civil Service during the period of the British Raj.

Baines was the son of Edward Baines, the vicar of Yalding in Kent, and his wife, Catherine Eularia Baines. He was born on 17 October 1847 in the village of Bluntisham in the former English county of Huntingdonshire. He was educated at Rugby School and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1868, he passed the competitive examination for entry into the Indian Civil Service, spent two years in training and was then posted to the Bombay Presidency. He arrived there in 1870, approximately halfway through the five-year long attempt to collect statistical population data, which was the first such exercise by the Raj administration. In 1881, he was deputy superintendent of the census in the Presidency and excelled to the degree that he was appointed Census Commissioner for the national census of 1891. He had worked as an assistant collector and magistrate at Poona from 1883 and held various other posts while in India.