Henry Ling Roth

Henry Ling Roth (3 February 1855 – 12 May 1925) was an English-born anthropologist and museum curator, active in Australia.

Roth was born in London, the son of Dr Mathias Roth, an Austrian-born surgeon, and his English wife Anna Maria, née Collins. Henry was educated at University College School, London, and studied natural science and philosophy in Germany. At 20 years of age, Roth visited British Guiana. In the spring of 1876 Roth visited Russia and remained there until December 1877. Shortly afterwards his Notes on the Agriculture and Peasantry of Eastern Russia was published at London.

In 1878 Roth went to Australia (preceding his brothers Reuter Emerich Roth and Walter Edmund Roth) commissioned to investigate the Queensland sugar industry by English investors. Roth settled at Mackay in northern Queensland, and published A Report on the Sugar Industry in Queensland (1880). Papers on "The Climate of Mackay" and "On the Roots of the Sugar Cane" appeared in the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1881 and 1883. He had an article in The Brisbane Courier for 1 April 1884, subsequently returned to England, and in 1888 was established in business at Halifax, West Yorkshire. In 1890 he published The Aborigines of Tasmania, a careful and able gathering together of the available information relating to a vanished race. A second edition appeared in 1899. In 1896 Roth brought out another important book, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo (published by Truslove and Hanson), largely based on the manuscript of Hugh Brooke Low. He spent much time in a wide range of ethnological studies and many of his papers were published in scientific journals.

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