WATERS, THOMAS JAMES

Engineer and surveyor.   Thomas James Waters, a son of John(?) Waters, MD, of Birr, Co. Offaly, was born in Birr in 1842.  He appears to have left Ireland early in life, receiving his education in England and Germany and spending his working life in Japan, New Zealand and the United States.   He was the architect of the classical Imperial Mint in Osaka (1868-71) and the Takebashi Barracks (1870-74) in Tokyo, which are reminiscent of the barracks which were built in Birr and elsewhere in Ireland at the opening of the nineteenth century.   He died in 1898 in Denver, Colarado, where he had developed a gold-mining business with his brothers John Albert Robinson Waters (1846-1902) and Joseph Henry Ernest Waters (1851-93).

All information in this entry is from Professor Neil Jackson, University of Liverpool (Jan 2010).