Born at Penzance, the younger son of Thomas Coulson, master painter in Devon-port Dockyard, and a friend of Humphry Davy. His mother was Catherine Borlase. He was educated, partly at the local Grammar School, and then in Brittany, where he learnt to speak French well. He was apprenticed to a Penzanc

Apparently practised in Marlborough Street, London, WC, for that address is given for the year 1840, but his address is omitted from the Fellow's *Register* and *Calendar*. His name appears last in the Fellow's *Calendar* for 1876, but no obituary or other notice of him has been traced.