Reverend Richard Poulett-HarrisPrint Page

The fountain commemorates the Reverend Richard Deodatus Poulett-Harris, schoolmaster and Church of England clergyman. The fountain is no longer functioning. 

Richard Deodatus Poulett-Harris (26 October 1817 – 23 December 1899) was an educationalist in England and Tasmania. Harris was born on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, the eldest son of Captain Charles Poulett Harris of the 60th Rifles Regiment who was stationed there. Harris was educated from 1837 at the Manchester Free Grammar School and from 1839 Trinity College, Cambridge where he graduated B.A. with honours in 1843, and M.A. in 1852.  He was ordained deacon in 1847 and priest in 1849 in the Church of England. He engaged in teaching and became a master at Huddersfield Technical College in 1844, and five years later was appointed classics master at the Blackheath preparatory school.

After his wife's death in June 1856, Harris went to Tasmania to became headmaster of the Hobart high school, and filled the position with much ability, inspiring both respect and affection from his pupils. In 1858 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Milward, with whom he had another six children. It was at Harris' suggestion that an act was passed in 1858 founding a system of school examinations based on the Oxford and Cambridge local examinations, and also founding the Tasmanian scholarships of £200 a year tenable at English universities. He was one of the original members of the council of education founded in 1859, and long advocated the establishment of the University of Tasmania He resigned from his headmastership in 1885 and lived in retirement near Hobart. When the university was founded in 1890 Harris was elected the first warden of the senate. He was also the first Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge in Tasmania. He died at Woodbridge, Tasmania, on 23 December 1899.

The fountain intended as a memorial of the late Rev. Richard Deodatus Poulett-Harris, formerly Rector of Hobart High School, has now been erected in the Queen's Domain, and forms a real ornament to that magnificent reserve. The memorial has been erected by the 'old boys' of the High School. The object which is now a public ornament on the highway to Government House. The fountain stands in a small enclosed plantation between the Railway Station and the University, and faces a broad public walk. The fountain was designed and supplied by Messrs. Chambers and Clutten of Lonsdale street, Melbourne, and erected by Messrs. J. and R. Duff, of Hobart.
The Mercury (Hobart), 19th October 1901.

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