Backhouse, Benjamin

BACKHOUSE, Benjamin jnr (1829–1904) was born at Ipswich, Suffolk, England, eldest son of Benjamin Backhouse snr, a stonemason, builder and architect, and Mary Anne Prentice née Fuller, and elder brother of Joseph BACKHOUSE, and father of the architect Robert Clarence Backhouse (1859-1930). For several years before his mother’s death, his father lived with Mary Anne Fuller Prentice, his wife’s eldest daughter of her first marriage to a stone mason, George Prentice, the father of the Queensland stonemason George PRENTICE. The relationship produced three children before, in 1845, Benjamin Backhouse snr married Mary Anne Fuller Prentice in his second marriage.

Benjamin jnr probably trained as a stone mason and architect with his father. In 1841, he was listed as an apprentice architect living with his mother at Ipswich. He was listed as a stone and marble mason on 20 August 1849 when he Lydia Warne Johnson, by whom he eventually had 17 children. From the following year he worked with his father as a stonemason and later as a builder-architect on his own account at Ipswich. In 1851, he was listed as a builder at Ipswich employing 20 men and 1 apprentice. Losses induced him and his brother Joseph to migrate in 1852 to the Victorian goldfields. At Geelong from 1853 Benjamin Backhouse practised as a mason and later as an architect and surveyor, building up an extensive practice and in 1855 becoming an Associate and Honorary Secretary of the newly formed Geelong Society of Architects, Civil Engineers and Surveyors. From 1855-1860 he was in partnership with his former assistant, William Reynolds (1827–1878), as Backhouse & Reynolds, architects and surveyors of Geelong and Ballarat. When work declined following the Ballarat gold rushes, the partners returned to London in 1860 to practise in London where Reynolds had contacts. After working without earnings for five months during a severe winter, Backhouse returned to Australia, reaching Brisbane in late May 1861.

The Queensland Guardian of 19 June 1861 noted his entry into “the rather think ranks of the architect’s profession in Brisbane”, reportedly attracted by “the new field of enterprise” presenting in the young colony. His only major local competitor in private practice in the early 1860s was James COWLISHAW. Backhouse soon established a large practice, restored his assets and won a respected position in public life. He sought work with conspicuous energy and success. During his ‘eight years of usefulness” in Queensland he was to erect more than 100 buildings, including some of Brisbane’s earliest buildings of architectural pretension – noticed as “unique”, or “elegant”, or “superior”. Backhouse received commissions from a wide range of public, commercial and private clients and, remarkably, from all the major religious denominations. Nor was he too proud to take on commissions for slab cottages. In March 1862 he won a competition for the Town Hall for Ipswich, the first of his several victories in local design competitions, but the building did not proceed. After a short-lived partnership with Thomas TAYLOR as BACKHOUSE & TAYLOR from September 1862 until June 1863, Backhouse advertised for an assistant in July 1863. He was hard-pressed by 21-22 August that year when he placed a notice in Brisbane and Ipswich newspapers to inform his clients and contractors “that he does not intend furnishing ‘Bills of Quantities’ in future, unless expressly requested to do so”. The Queensland Daily Guardian of 17 August 1864 reported that he was “remarkably busy”. The architect ESV SPENCER claimed to have had a limited partnership with Backhouse at some time between 1863 and 1866. Within his large office, employees including RG SUTER made an impact. In 1864 he appointed JT THORNE as his Ipswich agent, succeeded later the same year by Joseph BACKHOUSE. Late in 1864 Backhouse sought a position as Government Architect for North Queensland, based at Bowen, but declined with offered a lower salary than he expected. By 1865 he was purchasing land around Brisbane and erecting speculative buildings in partnership with James Gibbon, a wealthy Parliamentarian. On 30 December 1865 Backhouse had handed over his Ipswich branch to his brother Joseph. In 1868 he had another branch office in Maryborough and carried out several buildings there, possibly again in association with his brother.

In 1864, along with 10 other local and southern architects, Backhouse entered the competition for Queensland’s new Parliamentary Buildings. His entry under the motto “I bide” was one of four favoured by the judges. Upon receiving an official request for the detailed specifications and estimates, he assumed that the Government would proceed with his design and made considerable effort to provide the documentation. But the tender for his design came in at £57,320, the highest of the four, so it was not chosen. In May 1865, when the chosen design of the Colonial Architect Charles TIFFIN was already under construction, Backhouse petitioned Parliament for compensation, no doubt encouraged by the compensation awarded to another finalist, WH ELLERKER. Backhouse’s claim was rejected, and during Parliamentary debate it was revealed that he had “made himself pretty active in canvassing certain members with regard to his design”, and that his delay in making the claim was due to his having been “for some time a candidate for government employment”.

In the latter part of his stay in Brisbane Backhouse found more time to devote to public affairs, though his architectural output (to provide for his large and growing family) was still his major preoccupation. He became a JP, served as a director of The People’s Permanent Building and Investment Society and was a member of the Queensland Acclimatisation Society. All Saints’ Church of England, the Dramatic Club of the Brisbane School of Arts and St Patrick’s Masonic Lodge. In 1867 he was master of the Lodge. In 1866 the contractor for the Brisbane Town Hall, John Bourne, nominated Backhouse as his representative in arbitration settlement with the Municipal Council. In 1867 Backhouse worked hard to raise public subscriptions for the establishment of a grammar school in Brisbane and in January the next year he was appointed honorary secretary of the school’s committee. When the same committee approved his design for the proposed buildings, 1868 accused him of promoting the school for his own ends. However, Backhouse had had considerable experience in school design in Victoria and Queensland. In 1864 he had prepared a model plan for the Queensland Board of Education to be used for country schools, and in the following years a series of these schools were built. Backhouse’s major contribution to public life in Brisbane was on the Municipal Council as alderman for the North Ward in 1867 and for the West Ward in 1868. Active and articulate, he urged the closing of a loop-hole in the legislation constituting certain sections of the town as first-class; he proposed the establishment of a municipal library; and was concerned to end the stalemate with the local Gas Co. over the lighting of Brisbane’s streets. In 1868 he initiated a scheme to beautify Brisbane’s streets and reserves by planting shady trees, based on a similar project in Geelong whereby citizens were encouraged to assist in the planting and maintenance. This led to an organised tree planting in Roma and George Streets. As a member of the Council’s Improvement Committee Backhouse urged better ventilation of the main room of the Brisbane Town Hall, and in 1868 provided plans without charge to implement this.

In August 1867 his young son Percy Nimrod was accidentally killed. This tragedy together with a general downturn in the colony’s economy prompted his decision to leave. Moreover, in 1868 Backhouse won two competitions for buildings in New South Wales. He resigned from the Municipal Council in November 1868 and left Brisbane in December. The entire contents of his residence, Orwell Cottage, were put up for auction. The notice which appeared in the Brisbane Courier of 22 October 1868 included the sale of his “Library (comprising a very large and extremely interesting collection of Standard Works of Literature)”. John HALL took over supervision of Backhouses’s outstanding work, notably the Brisbane Grammar School. His plan for the [partial] completion of St Stephen’s Cathedral was supplanted in 1874 by an alternative design of RG SUTER.

In Sydney, Backhouse rose to greater fame and fortune. He soon developed a large architectural practice with branches in Newcastle and Bathurst. He was a founder of the Institute of Architects of New South Wales, serving as its honorary secretary in 1871-73. In 1874 he admitted his son Robert Clarence Backhouse (1859-1930) into partnership, and in 1882 formed a partnership with JJ LOUGH. On a visit to England in 1886 Backhouse was made an Honorary Associate of the RIBA. He became increasingly involved with the public welfare issues – city improvement, sanitation, water supply and workers’ housing, and was appointed to the City of Sydney Improvement Board on its establishment in 1879. Backhouse was the board’s chairman from 1880 to 1892. In 1884 he handed over his lucrative practice to Clarence Backhouse and retired from architecture to devote time to his wider benevolent interests, visiting Europe again in 1887. He helped found the Sanitary Reform League in 1880 and joined the Metropolitan Board of Water Supply and Sewerage in 1895. Backhouse, an earnest social reformer, was appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1895 as its first socialist member. He died of heart failure on 29 July 1904 at his home in Rushcutters Bay. His second son Alfred Paxton Backhouse, a prize-winning foundation pupil of the Ipswich Grammar School, became a New South Wales District Court judge.