Thomas Coutts

Thomas Coutts (11 December 1797 – 14 January 1868) was an Australian colonist who emigrated from Scotland during the 19th century, establishing various enterprises including whaling and pastoral farming businesses. He is best known for perpetrating a mass poisoning of Aboriginal Australians on a property near the Clarence River in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales, which killed at least 23 people. Although Coutts was arrested for this crime, the judicial authorities never put the case to trial and he was released after the payment of bail. Coutts afterwards became a prosperous and respected colonial figure. The town of Coutts Crossing is named after him. Early life Thomas Coutts was born in Glenmuick, Aberdeenshire in Scotland on 11 December 1797. His parents were James and Elizabeth Coutts. He emigrated with two of his brothers to the Colony of New South Wales around 1817. He settled in Sydney and it appears that Coutts chose to follow a seafaring vocation. By the 1830s he became a master mariner, taking the title of Captain Thomas Coutts. Whaling In 1832, Coutts and his brothers built a 90 tonne brig on the banks of the Georges River. They named the vessel the Lady Leith and Thomas Coutts was registered as both the owner and master of the brig. Initially the Lady Leith was utilised to transport cargo from Sydney to Hobart but soon was trading in sugar between Mauritius and Australia. It seems this wasn't a profitable trade as Coutts quickly switched to using his vessel as a whaler. From the mid 1830s until 1840, Coutts captained the Lady Leith in regular voyages to the whaling grounds off New Zealand, returning with cargoes of sperm whale oil for sale in Sydney. During this period, Coutts married Maria Bloodworth in 1834 and bought a house in O'Connell Street in Sydney. Pastoral farming In early 1840, Coutts placed the Lady Leith up for sale and started to invest in pastoral farming. He and several other squatters took the opportunity of purchasing and droving herds of livestock to the Clarence River region where they could occupy supposedly vacant crown land. They were guided by an ex-convict in Richard Craig who had previously lived with the Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung people in this area after he escaped from the Moreton Bay penal settlement. Initially Coutts set up a sheep station called Bald Hills in the New England region which was at the start of the track down to the Clarence River valley.