Cosmo Innes
Cosmo Innes (1841-1887)
1887 Obituary [1]
COSMO INNES, the youngest son of the well-known Cosmo Innes, Advocate, and Professor of History at Edinburgh University, was born on the 11th of December, 1841, and was educated at the Edinburgh Academy, and in the Applied Sciences Department of King's College, London.
He served a pupilage with Mr. Robert Sinclair, M.Inst.C.E., and was afterwards employed as a resident engineer on the Great Eastern Metropolitan Railways for two years, from August, 1866, to August, 1868.
He then went to India as agent for Mr. Joseph Bray, the contractor, and had charge of the construction of a portion of the Great Indian Peninsula railway, connecting Bombay with Madras.
In November, 1870, he joined the Public Works Department of the Government of India as an Executive Engineer 4th grade, and had charge of the Ghat sub-division of the Ghat division of the branch railway to Hyderabad.
On its completion, he was transferred to the North West Provinces, provincial establishment, and was posted to the Ghazipur district of the Benares division. During a short holiday spent in England, he had an attack of rheumatism, which it was hoped the warmer climate of India might cure.
Soon after returning, however, Mr. Innes was unfortunately thrown from a dog-cart, and this, combined with a renewal of the rheumatic attack, ended by permanently crippling him. Although so ill as frequently to be obliged to be carried to the scene of his labours and give his directions from a couch, he yet persisted in remaining at his post till the work, in which he was deeply interested, was finished.
On leaving India, he devoted three years to an endeavour to regain the health which his devotion to duty had shattered; but in the end, becoming convinced that his case was a hopeless one, he determined, with the utmost cheerfulness and fortitude, to devote the remainder of his life to such work as was still possible for him. This he found in sanitary engineering in London, and he became secretary to the Sanitary Protection Association, which post he held till his death on the 18th of June, 1887.
Mr. Innes was elected a Member of the Institution on the 15th of January, 1878.