The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Stenhouse, Nicol Drysdale
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Stenhouse, Nicol Drysdale, M.A., a writer of taste and a great lover of literature, was clerk to Sir William Hamilton when the latter was practising as an advocate in Edinburgh. He was also a friend of the late Thomas de Quincey. Having embraced the legal profession, he emigrated to New South Wales, and practised for many years as an attorney and solicitor in Sydney. He was a veritable Mæcenas to many needy and struggling literary men in Sydney. Not long before his death he was, on the motion of that great scholar, the late Dr. Badham, appointed an examiner in the Faculty of Law and a member of the senate of Sydney University. He succeeded the late Dr. Woolley, with whom he was on warm terms of friendship, as president of the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, and held the position from 1867 to 1873. Mr. Stenhouse died in 1876.