sketcher, amateur photographer(?), surveyor and cricketer, was born in England, second of the four sons of the future NSW Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis , and Elizabeth, née Clements. His parents came to Sydney in March 1830 with their daughter and three sons, Mortimer William junior, Tom and Oswald Hoddle; a fourth son was born in the colony. Tom Lewis joined the Surveyor-General’s Department in 1849 and worked there as a surveyor for many years though best known as a cricketer who played for New South Wales against Victoria and England. His only known painting, Hyde Park – The Old Days of Merry Cricket Club Matches (watercolour, Mitchell Library [ML]), depicts a match played at Hyde Park on 27 October 1843 between a local Sydney team and a team representing an Imperial regiment then stationed in Sydney. As the title indicates, it was painted considerably after the event, possibly as late as the 1870s.
Lewis was also a member of the Sydney Volunteer Rifle Corps and a hand-coloured photograph, First Volunteers, Government House (ML), with Lewis himself featuring in the image (fourth from left), has been attributed to him. Dated by the Mitchell Library from soon after the Volunteers had been formed in 1854, he may not have been the photographer although he probably coloured it.
Tom Lewis died at Sydney early in July 1901.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
