Transcript

of

Thomas Augustus Sommers Scott [Obituary]

by

J. Brooking-Rowe (Ed.).

Trans. Devon Assoc., vol. XXXVII, (1905), p. 39.

Prepared by Michael Steer

The obituary was read at the Association’s July 1905 Princetown meeting. The celebrated watercolour artist George Gardiner worked for Mr Scott for 50 years at his legal firm, Down, Scott and Down in Dorking. Gardiner’s brief biography and examples of his work are provided on the Dorking museum website. The firm of Downs, Specialist Solicitors and Notaries, founded in 1836 still exists in Dorking. The Bath Record Office Burial Index provides an entry under Bath Abbey Cemetery for Mr Scott. The obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Thomas Augustus Sommers Scott. Thomas Augustus Sommers Scott, the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Scott, Rector of Itchingfield, Sussex, was born at Ilfracombe 4 September, 1845. He was for some time a clerk in the Admiralty, Somerset House, but left this occupation, and studying for the law, was admitted a solicitor in September 1883, and became a member of the firm of Down, Scott, & Down, at Dorking. In 1889 he left Dorking to reside at Ilfracombe, and as he still retained his interest in, and was the head of the firm, he opened a branch office of Down, Scott, & Down in the town, his new place of abode. He was a good lawyer and a successful practitioner, and his success in the High Court in an interesting local lawsuit, Starkey v. Swiss, will be always remembered in Ilfracombe. At a meeting of the members of the Transvaal Gold Mining Estates held soon after Mr. Scott's death, the Chairman referred to the loss sustained by his death, he being one of the London committee, and said that during all the eight years covered by his tenure of office he was absent from only one meeting; his legal training and business capacity were of great help to the directors in their deliberations, and in the conduct of that part of the company's business that fell to be transacted in London; and that his colleagues had lost a valued colleague and the members a capable and conscientious representative. In 1903 Mr. Scott was elected a member of the Ilfracombe Urban District Council, being placed at the head of the poll with the largest number of votes ever before given to a candidate, and he proved a very useful member. He became a member of the Association in 1876. He had gone to London on business in June, 1904, and while there was stricken with paralysis and died on the eighth of the same month.