sketcher and medical practitioner, eldest of the four sons of William and Elizabeth Fowles of Painswick, Gloucestershire, came to Sydney as surgeon aboard the Prince Regent , arriving in June 1836. His diary (Mitchell Library) contains many lively descriptions of shipboard life, frequently accompanied by pen-and-ink drawings. One shows the interior of his cabin with its medicine chest, washstand, sea-chest, water-bottle, carpet-bag, and horse-hair trunk 'in which I keep my woollen clothes … I have drawn myself sitting up just awake with my face towards the pillow and going to put on my stockings’. Less finished sketches include a dream Fowles had of his death (a skeleton struggling out of from under a slab inscribed 'Hic jacet D.A.F.’), mermaids and mermen (a constant topic of conversation on board) and a self-portrait in fancy dress playing the guitar.
On reaching Sydney Fowles drew and described the town, noting how 'jail-like’ the buildings seemed with their tiny and numerous windows: 'They only want iron bars to give an exact resemblance to those of jails’, he wrote, 'and if I may judge from the papers brought to us on board these would be anything but superfluous—not to keep the convicts in but to keep them out’. In September he visited the Paterson River district. A charming drawing of a group of Aboriginal women and children around a campfire is the sole illustration in this part of the diary, accompanied by long descriptions of Aboriginal customs (mostly inaccurate).
Fowles had married Rebecca Otten at St Mary’s Church, Whitechapel, London, on 7 July 1824 and they had six children. He had a medical practice in Bath, England, where he died intestate in 1871, according to family documents. One son, William, died in 1848, at the age of 20, in the Bath Union Workhouse.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
