Thomas Coutts

Owner and resident; master mariner and pastoralist · Purchased 1859; occupied from about 1860

Their story

Thomas Coutts bought Balmoral House in January 1859 and his family occupied it from about 1860. Earlier, at Kangaroo Creek on the Clarence River, he was accused of supplying poisoned flour to Aboriginal people. Reynolds’s detailed afterword describes Commissioner Oliver Fry’s investigation into deaths reported to have occurred around 28 November 1847, Coutts’s arrest, committal for trial on 17 January 1848, and release on bail later that month. On 13 May 1848 the Maitland Mercury reported that the Attorney-General declined to proceed against him. The afterword does not describe a jury acquittal or conviction. This fuller account is more precise than the brief discharge wording earlier in the journal. Coutts later returned to Queensland and died at North Toolburra on 14 January 1868.

Sources

Peter Reynolds, Leichhardt Historical Journal No. 24, From Cooper Street to Waterview Street: Waterview Estate 1835-1970: Part 3, p. 37
Peter Reynolds, From Cooper Street to Waterview Street: Waterview Estate 1835-1970: Part 3, Leichhardt Historical Journal No. 24, p. 36-38
Peter Reynolds, From Cooper Street to Waterview Street: Waterview Estate 1835-1970: Part 3, Leichhardt Historical Journal No. 24, p. 45-48
Peter Reynolds, Leichhardt Historical Journal No. 24 (2014), From Cooper Street to Waterview Street: Waterview Estate 1835–1970: Part 3, printed pp. 36–38, 45–47 (including Afterword to Section 7).

Connected house: 46 Waterview St, Balmain NSW 2041

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