IAN FAIRWEATHER was born on 29 September 1891 in Marymount, Bridge of Allan, Scotland, the last of nine children to Annette Margaret Duprè Thorp (1852–1944) and James Fairweather (1828–1917), a retired Deputy Surgeon General of His Majesty’s Indian Medical Service.
James Fairweather gained his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Edinburgh. In 1855 he sailed for Calcutta as assistant surgeon for the forces of the East India Company and in 1857 was placed in medical charge of the 4th Punjab Infantry, which fought in the sieges of Delhi and Lucknow. For his war service, James Fairweather was awarded two medals and four clasps. In India he met and in 1871 married Annette Thorp, who was born in India and whose father, Edward Courtenay Thorp, then held the rank of Surgeon General of the Indian Medical Service. After his retirement in 1886, James Fairweather stayed on with his wife in India to serve as personal physician to the Maharajah of Kapurthala.
The young Ian Fairweather grew up with the idea of India as home: it was where his parents had married, where several of his siblings had been born and where he himself had been conceived; and it was where other relatives and in-laws had served Britain’s great empire. The tiger skins that later decorated the family home were tangible reminders of the Fairweather connection to the subcontinent.
In his large and boisterous family, and with an age gap of nineteen years between himself and his eldest sister, Winifred, Fairweather was something of a loner. It was not until age ten that he was he reunited with his mother and father, who were then forty-nine and sixty-nine respectively. The family moved to ‘Forest Hill’, in Beaumont, Jersey, a fifteen-room house in a large garden with a commanding view of St Aubin Bay. Ian Fairweather attended Victoria College, where he excelled in sport and English. He loved animals and in family photographs can be seen playing with dogs, rabbits and birds; he is said to have kept ferrets in his room. It was on Jersey and during family holidays on nearby Sark that he developed his lifelong love of islands and the delights of beachcombing. His sister Aline showed early artistic talent and may have encouraged her youngest brother to paint; but art was not a career that his parents had envisaged for their youngest son, nor was it any part of the tradition of the long line of Fairweathers who came before him.
After much coaxing and coaching, Ian Fairweather followed his father and his eldest brother into military service, first with the Royal Jersey Light Infantry and later the 1st Battalion, Cheshire Regiment, where he served as Second Lieutenant. But a soldier’s life was not to his taste, nor would it be his destiny.
Unknown photographer, The Fairweather family before the birth of Ian, the youngest child, c. 1890. From left: (standing) Winifred, James, Aline; (seated) Neville, Father, Ethel, Harold, Mother, Annette, Arthur. Albumen print. Fairweather collection. Courtesy Fairweather Estate.
Above: Unknown photographer, The extended Fairweather family at ‘Forest Hill’, Beaumont, Jersey, early 1900s. From left: (standing) Louise Bishop, General Edward Bishop, Mother, Neville, Aunt Mary, Annette, Winifred, George Stewart, Ethel; (seated) Aunt Isabella, Father, Aunt Jane, Aline; (front, seated) James, Arthur, Ian, Harold. Albumen print. QAGOMA Research Library, Brisbane. Opposite: Unknown photographer, Ian Fairweather, c. 1898. Albumen print. QAGOMA Research Library, Brisbane.
Page from the album of Ethel Fairweather showing a photograph of her brother Ian; pressed flowers; a line from a poem by John Milton; and a photograph of the island of Sark, where the Fairweather family holidayed. QAGOMA Research Library, Brisbane.
