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Re the Rigby .275 that Jim Corbett was supposedly presented with after killing the Champawat man-eating tigress.

From Wikipedia - “The world’s third oldest gunmaker, John Rigby & Co., has acquired one of the most famous sporting rifles of all time: the .275 Rigby bolt-action rifle that was presented to Jim Corbett for killing the dreaded ‘man-eating tigress of Champawat’ in 1907 by Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces, Sir John Hewitt KCSI.”

Researching through all of the books written by Corbett I have come up with the following;

The Champawat tigeress was the first man-eating tiger or leopold that Corbett had ever shot and was bagged in 1907. The image below is of the last page in the chapter ‘The Champawat Man-Eater’, read last paragraph written by Corbett.

Corbett makes no reference to being presented with a Rigby .275 rifle anywhere in any of his books and when using a bolt rifle to hunt and or kill game or man-eaters only refers to “a .275 rifle”.

At the same time as the Champawat man-eater was active so was the man-eating leopold known as the Panar Leopold, the later which Corbett set out to hunt sometime in 1909, this date based on his reference in the chapter ‘The Temple Tiger’ in his book of the same name, to first meeting the priest of Dabidhura: “When two years previously I had been hunting the Champawat man-eater”. Corbett had set out to hunt the Panar man-eater but got diverted at the behest of villagers to hunting the Temple Tiger which was not a man-eater but was killing valuable stock. He got a few chances to kill the Temple Tiger but fouled things up and he or other hunters never did kill the Temple Tiger.
Meanwhile the Panar leopold man-eater had not had any fresh kills in the area so Corbett left and returned in 1910 in which year he killed both the Panar man-eater and also the Maktesar man-eater tiger.

When hunting the Temple Tiger, Corbett relates the following: Exert from ‘The Temple Tiger’ chapter pages 9-10 in the book ‘The Temple Tiger and more Man-eaters of Kumaon’

“Some months previously I had been to Calcutta on a short visit and one morning walked into Manton’s, the gunmaker’s shop. On a glass showcase near the door was a rifle. I was looking at the weapon when the manager, who was an old friend of mine, came up. He informed me that the rifle, a .275 by Westley Richards, was a new model which the makers were anxious to introduce on the Indian, market for hill shooting. The rifle was a beauty and the manager had little difficulty in persuading me to buy it on the understanding that if it did not suit me I would be at liberty to return it. So when I set out with my village friend to shoot his jarao with horns as big as the branches of an oak tree, I was carrying my brand-new rifle.”

Corbett sat up one night in 1909 to shoot the Temple Tiger with his new Westley Richards .275 bolt rifle and from a range of only 5 feet from the muzzle to the tiger’s head, the .275 failed to fire. Pages 13-16 in the chapter narrate what happened and how he only took up the first stage on the two stage WR rifle trigger and when it did not fire he opened the bolt thinking he had failed to chamber a round. Corbett had not used a two stage trigger before and had not shot the rifle before despite Mantons manager stressing to him that it had a two stage trigger.

So in summary, Corbett himself purchased the new Westley Richards rifle only two years on from supposedly being presented with a Rigby .275 rifle for killing the Champawat man-eater.
Why does Corbett never mention being presented with the Rigby .275 and why did he purchase a new Westley Richards .275 shortly after the supposed presentation.
Was a Rigby Mauser a two stage trigger, if so, Corbett obviously never fired it before using his new WR 2 years later, or he was never presented with a Rigby!!!!! (or maybe was and it was a single stage trigger?). However, in his narrative of buying and using the WR .275 in the Temple Tiger, one gets the impression that this was the first bolt action Mauser he possessed.

What was the rifle presented to the Indian Tahsildar by Sir John Hewitt at the Durbar in 1907 of which Corbett himself mentions was suitably engraved would be an heirloom handed down in the Tahsildar’s family?

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