His father had served in World War I and came to South India to work with a large British Tea Estate in 1921.
At 16 he joined the Southern Provinces Mounted Rifles (AFI Cavalry) and because of his knowledge of Tamil was placed in the South Indian Labour Units with the Madras Sappers & Miners.
He later moved to the High Wavy Mountains to work as an assistant with Tea Estates India Ltd. which was owned by Brooke Bonds.
[3] In Queensland, Hutton established a farm near Gympie, a large part of which was later gazetted as the Mt Monty Nature Refuge.
As well as operating his own farm, he helped establish one of Australia's first Landcare groups in 1988 and worked as the Gympie district's produce inspector for the Queensland Department of Primary Industries.
The specimen was re-examined later by Kitti Thonglongya who recognised it as a new species that was named as Latidens salimali after Salim Ali.