Thomas Theodore Steiger Hayley (1913-1993)

Tom Hayley, Editor of the International Journal from 1978-1988 and Joint Editor from 1988 until his death in June this year, became a psychoanalyst after a career as a social anthropologist and officer in the Indian Civil Service. His was a life of generosity, energy, hard work, caring and, above all, service.

He was born Thomas Theodore Steiger in Ceylon, the son of a Swiss father and an English mother. As was the custom then, he was sent back to England to a boarding Public School. The limitations of sea travel meant that he did not see his parents for a long time. He was first at Clifton College Preparatory School and then later at the Senior School. He was head boy and captain at rugby football and other games at both schools, before going to Peterhouse College, Cambridge, where he was to gain first-class honours in Social Anthropology. He was a scholar of the College and awarded the Leafe Research and Bartle Freer Exhibition. On leaving Cambridge he left for Africa to conduct social anthropological field research for a year among the Lango tribe in Uganda, eventually publishing a monograph, The Anatomy of Lango Religion and Groups (1947), published by Cambridge University Press.

After he and his father became naturalised British citizens, he changed from his father's German name to his English mother's maiden name, Hayley; he was eligible to enter British Government service—something he achieved by gaining entry into the Indian Civil Service in 1937. His induction training involved a probationary year at Exeter College, Oxford, during which he learned about relevant aspects of Indian law and language and horse-riding, before making the sea voyage to arrive in Assam in 1938. For the next few years he was Under-Secretary and then Director of Publicity and performed his duties in such an exemplary and widely appreciated way that after Independence in 1947 he was one of only a handful of British Civil Servants to stay on. He was then Director of Rural Devel