Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/thomas-henry-johnson-browne

Birth Place

London, England

Biography

watercolourist, architect, surveyor, civil engineer and schoolmaster, was born on 7 April 1818 in London. After training as an architect and civil engineer, he worked on the London to Birmingham railway under (Sir) Charles Fox from 1832 39, then with William Nicholson, a civil engineer of Manchester, to whose practice he succeeded in 1848 (according to Browne in 1878). He had his own London practice in 1854 62. During this period Browne married and had a large family. Then, at the London Central Criminal Court in 1862, he was convicted of forging money orders and sentenced to ten years’ transportation to Western Australia, arriving in the Lord Dalhousie on 28 December 1863. Years later he stated that he was guilty only of shielding his wife. For eighteen months Browne was employed in the Office of Works Department of the Convict Establishment at Fremantle, working on E.Y.W. Henderson 's large lunatic asylum building then in progress (erected 1861-65). His watercolour of the completed building, The New Lunatic Asylum, and Invalid Depot, Fremantle, Western Australia , was painted in 1866 (ML). After receiving his ticket of leave on 12 June 1865, Browne was self-employed. It seems that at least two extant watercolours were commissioned at this time: an attributed view of houses in the High Street, Fremantle (WA Museum), and Ravenswood Hall, Murray River (RWAHS). At the end of 1865 he was appointed schoolmaster at Ferguson, resigning about the time he gained his conditional pardon, on 27 December 1869. After a brief period away from the town, possibly at the abortive Peterwnagy gold-rush, Browne set himself up as an architect and land agent in Fremantle. Because of the numerous Tom Brown(e)s around he acquired the distinguishing nickname of 'Satan’, a reference to his black hair, sallow complexion and lean visage. His sentence expired on 11 May 1872 and he was declared a free man, an expiree. The major public work being proposed for Fremantle from mid 1869 to January 1875 was the Harbour Improvement Scheme, for which three tenders were received: from Browne, S.W. Bickley and from the surveyor and director of Public Works, Malcolm Fraser (who also happened to chair the commission which was to award the contract). Predictably, Fraser’s tender was chosen, but the new Governor Robinson persuaded his council to over-rule the recommendation and send Browne’s cheaper scheme to London for professional appraisal by Sir John Coode, a leading civil engineer. In the interim Browne was appointed inspector of works on the Geraldton to Northampton railway. He started planning a connecting system of light railways throughout Western Australia. Difficulties soon arose with the organisation and finances of both projects and Browne was dismissed in 1876. By then Browne had cut off all English ties (his wife being dead and his children indifferent). In October 1875 he married Mary Ann (Polly) Letch in the Fremantle Congregational Church but soon was facing problems with this marriage. Their first child, a daughter, died of sunstroke when she was six months old and, according to Browne, Polly took to heavy drinking. They moved to Perth, but by then no civil engineer’s position in government service (especially in the major towns) was open to an expiree. He made a precarious living as an architect and land agent, one of his commissions being to draw a bird’s-eye view of the Jarrahdale Timber Company’s works. He also spent much time and effort on a plan for a new road and traffic bridge. Again this came to nothing, mainly because of a vicious personal vendetta against him (and his status as an expiree) by the new director of Public Works, James Thomas. Nevertheless, Browne continued to survive as a private land agent in Perth until 20 April 1880, when he opened a grand hotel and pleasure garden around a disused mill in South Perth renamed the Alta Gardens Hotel. This became Perth’s most fashionable social centre. Yet, despite a roaring trade, because Browne had no capital the venture was always in debt. On 11 January 1882 he was found guilty of criminal activities over a land transaction in connection with the hotel. In prison that night, waiting to be sentenced, he committed suicide by taking strychnine. He left a note blaming his (second) wife for his troubles. The warders were censured for not having searched him and Detective Sergeant Rowe – sole witness in his defence to whom Browne wrote his last letter – was reprimanded for befriending a criminal. Polly Browne died in 1937, aged eighty-six. Alta Gardens became a poultry farm and was later subdivided. The old mill still stands. Writers: Erickson, RicaKerr, Joan Date written: 1992 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 7 April 1818

Summary

A nineteenth-century watercolourist and architect who produced paintings of buildings in Fremantle, WA.

Gender

Male

Died

11 January 1882

Age at death

64