Coutts, Thomas

Family photo

COUTTS, Thomas (1859–1918) architect and inspector of works, was born at Brisbane, Moreton Bay district, third and youngest son of Scottish-born Donald Coutts, a pioneer pastoralist, and Wilhelmina Ross. Donald Coutts who arrived at Port Jackson with his brother James in November 1835, was an early settler in the Moreton Bay district. He was the second owner of Bulimba House, Brisbane and of Jondaryan and Goomburra Stations on the Darling Downs and died in 1869 after being kicked by his horse. After Thomas was educated in Brisbane and Newcastle (with his uncle James, a learned Presbyterian minister), he began training for business in the offices of the merchants DH Brown & Co. of Brisbane. Soon afterwards he decided on an architectural career and late in 1875 joined the Queensland Public Works Department where he was employed until 1878 as a junior draftsman in the Roads Branch and thereafter as a draftsman in the Buildings Branch. He resigned in January 1885 to become office manager for the architectural firm of John HALL & SON of Brisbane. Coutts left the firm in 1888 when he won a design competition for an Exhibition Building for the Wide Bay & Burnett Pastoral & Agricultural Society. To undertake its construction, he entered partnership as COUTTS & HAMILTON with Maryborough engineer and surveyor, CG HAMILTON, who may have detailed the building’s massive curved galvanised iron roof. When the partnership ended, Coutts entered partnership in 1890-1 with AG STOMBUCO as STOMBUCO COUTTS. Separate entries from the partnership “Ebony” and Coutts “Comme il Faut” were both unsuccessful in the competition for the South Brisbane Municipal Offices. Thereafter he was employed in Newcastle, where he called tenders for a cottage before he returned to Brisbane in c1893 to practise independently. He was forced by the economic recession to seek government employment and eventually rejoined the Public Works Department on 28 August 1899 as a temporary draftsman. Following his retrenchment on 30 April 1902, Coutts became chief assistant to the Brisbane architect, EM MYERS. In July 1905 he was reappointed to the Works Department, gaining a permanent position as draftsman on 7 December that year. He was promoted to inspector of works and transferred to Townsville in 1909 and to Toowoomba in 1913. The sport of bicycle riding was his lifelong interest. It is said that Coutts rode the first penny farthing from Ipswich to Warwick via Cunningham’s Gap. Later, the Works Department provided him with a motorcycle to carry out his distant inspections in northern and western Queensland, which he found a faster mode of transport than the country train services despite occasional punctures and discomforts. On 21 October 1913 Coutts had an accident on his cycle near Surat and broke his leg. In failing health, he was transferred back to Brisbane in 1918. Coutts died at his residence, Edenglassie, in Bowen Terrace, New Farm on 11 August 1918. He was survived by his wife, Alice Jessie Lever, whom he had married in Brisbane in 1901. His colleagues judged him “a zealous officer, and a skilful draftsman”, while his second cousin, the Brisbane architect JVD COUTTS, knew him as “the walking encyclopaedia”.