 At this time he lived at 4 Wardie Avenue in northern Edinburgh and appears to have been a partner in a firm named Lorrain & Purves, engineers and patent agents, of 53 York Place in the town centre.In 1902 he moved to Devon in south-west England with his brother, William Thomson Purves.Together they founded the Paignton Power and Lighting Company in 1908 and created a consultative company, the Western Electricity Corporation in Exeter in the same year.