Brigadier Sir Harold Couchman

The Times 3rd December 1956

Brigadier Sir Harold Couchman, D.S.O., M.C., who died on Friday at the age of 74, was Surveyor-General of India from 1933 to 1937.

The son of the Rev. H. Couchman, he was born on July 29, 1882, and educated at Haileybury, where his father was on the staff, and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1900, and in 1902 went to India, where all his service was passed except the years of the 1914-18 War when he served on the Western Front and was wounded. He was awarded the D.S.O. and the M.C. Returning to India he was employed with the Survey of India of which he became Surveyor-General in 1933, having previously been Director in Shillong, Simla, and Calcutta. He had spent three years from 1926 as deputy master of Security Printing in India. He retired in 1937 and was knighted in that year.

He married, in 1925, Evelyn Beatrice, daughter of Colonel W. L. C. Baddeley.