sketcher, stationer and art supplier, publisher and bookseller, youngest son of John Waugh, an Edinburgh publisher, and his wife Jane, came to New South Wales in 1840 with his parents and sisters to join his brothers David and Robert. David had arrived at Sydney in 1834 intending to practise law but had settled on a property at Kiama instead, and had published some of his letters home as Three Years’ Practical Experience of a Settler in New South Wales (Edinburgh 1838). They reveal that the Waugh family had intended to migrate in 1837 but their plans were postponed. David seemingly attributed the delay to James’s burgeoning commercial ambitions, writing: 'I do not think that commencing business on borrowed money is the way to do much good in a place like Edinburgh’.
Settling in the Illawarra district with David, James and his father obtained positions at a sawmill in November; James was engaged at a salary of £150 a year, with board and lodging. However James was not content. His mother wrote on 4 November 1844: 'I sometimes fear for James’s situation, he seems set on being a bookseller in Sydney, but without capital what could he do – besides I don’t think he would keep his health there’. He moved to Sydney and worked for William Piddington, a bookseller who occasionally exhibited paintings ( see H.R. Smith, Mrs Spence and Eliza Thurston), but continued to harbour the notion of setting up in business for himself. His plans, outlined in a letter of 21 May 1851, included bringing out a local edition of the Children’s Missionary Record , based on the Edinburgh one, and an almanac. On 20 November James Waugh opened his own book and stationery shop at 14 Hunter Street and the Record began publication the following year. Waugh and Cox’s Directory of Sydney appeared in 1855. His Stranger’s Guide to Sydney was published in 1861 from 286 George Street and other publications included Waugh’s Australian Settler’s Handbook and The Sydney Magazine of Science and Art .
In 1853 Waugh was appointed agent in New South Wales for the Glasgow Art Union. On 13 November 1853 David wrote from the family property, Waugh Hope at Jamberoo (named thus by David in 1851 after his marriage to Miss Hope of Camden), that 'James, in Sydney, who has got into a most flourishing business is still in single blessedness’. By 1856, however, James was married to Mary Lee; their son was born that September. James Waugh died at Kiama on 22 October 1867.
A sketchbook attributed to Waugh (ML) dates from the early 1840s. It contains pencil drawings of varying competence depicting homesteads in the Jamberoo area and pencil and watercolour drawings of the nearby Illawarra coast. Several document the appearance of Waugh Hope. The book is prefaced by a skilful comic ink sketch, The Jamberoo Omnibus , dated in pencil 1843 and annotated 'by James Waugh’, but it is not certain that any of the others ought to be attributed to him. The only signed example, Residence of J. Graham—Waugh Hope , carries the initials A.W., undoubtedly James’s sister Anne Waugh, while the rest are possibly by other members of the family. According to the English catalogue, Miss A. Waugh of Wollongong exhibited a collection of gourds in the British section of the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition and one had 'views of Wollongong painted upon it’; but the French version of the catalogue states that all were ornamented with engraved landscapes (probably ink line-drawings).
