Obituaries Australia

Mr. Charles Tobin Cowle, whose death in Melbourne on Sunday was announced in The Advertiser on Monday, was a native of Tasmania. He was the son of Mr. Thomas Presland Cowle, and was born at Hobart in 1834. At a very early age he was sent to Europe to be educated. After some years in England he went to Vincennes, in France, to complete his education for a commercial career by learning French. From Vincennes he returned to London, entered a merchant's office there to gain some experience of business, and then came back to Tasmania before he was 18, and took a position in a bank. The Victorian goldfields were then opening up, and he went there to buy gold on behalf of one of the banks. Before he was 21 he married Miss Lewers, whose three brothers were then officers of the Bank of New South Wales on the goldfields, and all subsequently for many years were managers for that bank in Victoria. Mr. Cowie returned to Tasmania after his marriage, and joined a bank, which he afterwards left to become partner in a firm of millers in Launceston. This was not a fortunate venture. He gave it up to enter the service of the Bank of New South Wales. He was manager for that bank at Maldon, Kyneton, Wangaratta, and other places in Victoria; and at Wagga, in New South Wales, which he left in 1878 to join the English, Scottish, and Australian Chartered Bank as their manager at Adelaide. He occupied that position till 1895, carrying the bank's affairs through the troublous times of 1893, when, consequent upon reconstruction arrangements, he retired on a pension. He continued to reside in Adelaide, where he had a wide circle of friends, until about two years ago, when he went to Melbourne. He had not intended remaining there permanently, but ill-health and the weakness of advancing years overtook him, and, much as he wished it, he never saw Adelaide again. Mr. Cowle held the esteem of all who knew him. He was firm and just as a bank manager, with a high sense of duty, and honorable in all business relations. In private life he was gentle and unobtrusive, singularly unselfish, and tenderly considerate for others and a kind and sympathetic friend. He took no part in public life. He shrank from that as from controversy of every sort. He was happiest with his children and his grand-children, and doing little deeds of kindness wherever he thought they were needed. He will be much missed.