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The news of Colonel Berkeley Hill's (I.M.S.) death in July at Ranchi, India, signifies to the present writer the close of a friendship of more than forty years' standing. All friends of Berkeley Hill were appreciative of his racy and vivid personality, his always enlivening companionship and his deep sense of loyalty.
Berkeley Hill was educated at Rugby and Oxford, and followed his father, who was a well-known member of the surgical staff there, to University College Hospital. He entered the Indian Medical Service in 1907, and on retiring from it in 1934 elected to spend the rest of his life at Ranchi where he had occupied the post of Superintendent of the European Asylum—the most prominent psychiatric position in India—for twelve years. He was one of the first Englishmen whose interest I had aroused in psycho-analysis, about the same time as the late Dr. Eder. He became a member of the American Psycho-Analytical Association, which I had recently founded, in 1911, and in 1913 was one of the foundation members of the British Psycho-Analytical Society. When the Indian Psycho-Analytical Society was founded, partly by him, he again transferred his membership and it was in that Society that his activities were most manifest.
Berkeley Hill's scientific writings, the number of which was restricted by his vast administrative activities, were published in 1933 in a volume entitled Collected Papers. The chief ones of psycho-analytical interest were devoted to Indian sociological problems, the significance of the colour question, of the Hindu-Muslim feud, etc., and among them was an interesting analysis of the personality of Mahomet.
Berkeley Hill left a widow and four children; one son lost his life at Malta in the Royal Air Force two years ago.