In 1888 the reward for killing a royal tiger was raised to 200 florins. It appears also that the immunity of the tiger is in part due to superstition, for it is considered wrong to kill one unless he attacks first or otherwise does injury.
Moreover, guns were always very rare in this particular district, and, since a rising a few years ago, have been taken away by the authorities.
Sixty one people killed by tigers in 1887. That is steep price for Gun Control.
I tried to figure out a way to calculate the monetary cost of killing the beasts, but the best I could find was that the Florin was made out of 3.5 grams of pure gold so 200 Florins come about to 700 grams of gold per animal killed. The price of gold today is $41.39 and that comes to $28, 973 per tiger.
Predators, be it biped or quadruped, seem to migrate to the locations where they can do killing unopposed. That the message has been ut there for centuries and still not learned will be forever mystifying.
Update: I used an inflation calculator and I got 1890 $1,000 aprox. is about 200 Florins.
Looking at the Dutch Wikipedia, it appears the florin (“gulden” in Dutch) was silver-based in the 1800s, 9.45 grams per florin at the time of that article. It also mentioned that this actually gave some problems in Dutch India because the price of silver was higher in Asia.
I found a purchasing power calculator: http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/calculate2-nl.php which says that fl. 200 in 1888 corresponds to 2961 euro today.