[taken from Chapter 3 Manx Worthies, A.W.Moore, 1901]

 JOHN THOMAS CLUCAS (b. 1827, d. 1887),

was the only son of John Clucas, of Ballakilley, Rushen, and Margaret Gell, of Kenaa. The greater part of his early education was received from the Rev. William Corrin, Vicar of Rushen from whom he went to Forrester's School, in Douglas, for six months, when he left, owing to ill-health. After studying farming for a few years, he was articled as law student at the Rolls Office with M. H. Quayle, the then clerk of the rolls. Observant, painstaking, and gifted with an excellent memory, he then gathered the intimate acquaintance with insular matters which was afterwards to be so useful to him and many others. Admitted to the Bar in 1856, he soon made his mark there. Since 1853 when his father died, he had superintended the farming of his estates, and, by 1862, he had acquired such a knowledge of Manx properties, that he was appointed a valuer under the Lunatic Asylum Act. In 1864, Governor Loch, with some difficulty persuaded him to accept the offices of secretary to the governor and Clerk to the Council, and, in 1867, after the Isle of Man Customs Act was passed, he became Treasurer of the Isle of Man.

In 1873, probably as a result of overwork, his eyesight began to fail,* and so, in the following year, he resigned his offices, to the great loss of the insular community. This was, however, perhaps more than compensated for by his invaluable work in the House of Keys where he represented Rushen Sheading from 1874 till his death. At various times a member of the Highway, Education, and Asylums Boards, and chairman of all three for a few years before his death, he did excellent service on them. But it is in connexion with the last in particular that he greatly distinguished himself, since it was mainly due to his exertions that the management of the Lunatic Asylum was placed on a more economical basis. In 1886, on the death of William Bell Christian, he was offered the post of receiver-general, but declined it. He was captain of the parish of Rushen, and a Justice of the Peace, a director of the Isle of Man Banking Company, Limited, and of the Isle of Man, Manx Northern, and Foxdale Railway Companies, being, indeed, one of the pioneers of railway enterprise in the Isle of Man.

* He became totally blind five years later.