Background
Thomas Blair Moncrieff Wightman was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1884, the son of Robert Anderson Wightman and his wife Jeanie Greenless (née Dunsmore).
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Thomas Wightman
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He trained in Scotland as an architect and arrived in Brisbane c. 1910 at the age of 26. The couple had one daughter, Jean, born 1911. On arrival in Brisbane, he first lectured in architecture at the Brisbane Central Technical College, then was employed by architects Atkinson and McLay in 1912, and was in private practice in Brisbane by 1913 – firstly on his own, then as Wightman and Phillips from 1914 to 1918.
From 1919 he practised alone until his retirement c. 1933.
He was a councillor of the Queensland Institute of Architects and its president in 1923-1924. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1927.
Wightman"s work was well received in Brisbane, and his residential work is considered to be important in the development of interwar domestic architecture in Queensland. He established a substantial residential practice, and attracted prestigious commissions which permitted design experimentation in adapting the traditional Queensland timber house to meet changing social and functional requirements.
In April 1932, Thomas Wightman was convicted of income tax evasion for the financial year 1925-1926, having understated his income and deducted a number of fictitious expenses.
He was fined £100 and ordered to pay double income tax as penalty, with the alternative of six months in prison. He travelled world-wide during 1933—1935, including Japan (where he was concerned about the political situation), South Africa (where he was concerned about the plague of grasshoppers). He also noted a growing preference for buses over trams as a means of public transport in both the United Kingdom and South Africa.
He retired to Sydney c. 1940.
He died in Sydney on 22 February 1972. This Wikipedia article was originally based on The Queensland Heritage Register published by the State of Queensland under Central Committee-BY 3.0 AU licence (accessed on 7 July 2014, archived on 8 October 2014).
