George Frederick Webb
George Frederick Webb (1903-1938)
1938 Obituary [1]
GEORGE FREDERICK WEBB, whose untimely death occurred on 12th October 1938, in his thirty-fifth year, was born in Dublin and educated in Birmingham. He served his apprenticeship with Birmingham Corporation Electricity Supply Department, and afterwards gained further experience, on the mechanical side, in the workshops. In 1928 he went to South Africa as a switchboard operator to the Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power Company, Ltd., and a year later was made assistant district engineer, in charge of a distribution station together with the substations and interconnecting network. He was made engineer in charge of the company's Vlakfontein station in 1933.
Eighteen months later he became assistant resident engineer at Messina Copper Mine, but left upon his appointment as mechanical engineer to the Irrigation Department at Riet River Irrigation Works, Orange Free State. He was responsible for the installation of a large amount of plant at the works, where he instituted the statistical systems adopted by the undertaking. In 1936 he was appointed engineering inspector of factories, in the Department of Labour and Social Welfare, at Port Elizabeth. A year later he joined the Firestone Tyre Company, Ltd., at Port Elizabeth, but was forced by ill health to return to England in March 1938. Subsequently he went to Portugal for a short period as assistant engineer for Messrs. Mason and Berry, of Cannon Street, London, at the Mina de San Domingos.
Mr. Webb was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1937 and was also an Associate Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.