sketcher(?) and clerk, was born in Wiltshire. He worked for the British Commissariat as a clerk in The Netherlands, in London (the Treasury), in Canada and in the West Indies. As deputy assistant commissary-general, he served as senior audit clerk at Moreton Bay (now Brisbane, Queensland) from November 1830 to January 1835, then was promoted and posted to Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, arriving in the Guardian with his wife, child and two convict servants on 22 January 1835. Assistant Commissary-General Looker and his family left Van Diemen’s Land in the Wellington in January 1850 bound for London where Looker died on 8 July 1872.
A sheet of pencil drawings showing the public buildings of Moreton Bay as they looked in September 1832 (Mitchell Library [ML]) carries the name 'W.C. Looker’ on the right front wall of the Prisoners’ Barracks and on this basis has been attributed to him. Seventeen buildings are depicted individually on the sheet in a precise style closely comparable to that of an 1835 pen and wash view of the Moreton Bay settlement signed and dated by Henry Boucher Bowerman , the other deputy assistant commissary-general at Moreton Bay. Other pencil sketches attributed to Bowerman (ML) are apparently titled and inscribed in the same hand as appears on this sheet (one has the names of the buildings written in by another person, possibly Looker) and Susanna de Vries-Evans has convincingly argued that Bowerman drew the 'Looker’ sketch too.
There is no evidence in his service file (Public Records Office, London) that Looker, an accountant, attended topographical drawing classes during his military training in London, whereas Bowerman trained at Woolwich under Thomas Sandby. Looker may well have been required to make an official report on the public buildings of Moreton Bay which Bowerman illustrated, his name being added to the sketch merely to identify it as part of his report or, in view of its location, as a joke.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
