John Henry Hartwright
John Henry Hartwright ( -1869)
Died 1869
1870 Obituary [1]
MR. JOHN HENRY HARTWRIGHT was born in the county of Worcester, and served a regular apprenticeship under Mr. John Marks, of Cirencester.
He was then employed for several years at the Swindon Works of the Great Western railway, and was subsequently engaged in the construction and erection of pumping engines at the Hayle Foundry, Cornwall, at Elboeuf (France), at Mons (Belgium), and at the Liverpool Waterworks.
In 1845 he was appointed Superintendent of Works for the Manchester and Salford Waterworks Company, and for the four years ending in the spring of 1854 he had charge of the pumping station at Gorton, which had become the property of the Manchester Corporation.
In May, 1854, he was appointed Resident Engineer for the extensions of the Chester Waterworks under Mr. Bateman (M. Inst. C.E.), for whom he also acted as Resident Engineer in the construction of the new works for the supply of water to Wolverhampton, from Cosford Brook, and to Birkenhead, from a well at Flaybrick Hill, and he was likewise actively occupied on many other works.
He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers on the 1st of December, 1868, and he died at Barcelona, in Spain, on the 1st of May, 1869, whither he had gone to superintend, for Mr. Bateman, the erection of some pumping machinery for the drainage of lands forming part of the right delta of the river Ebro.
Mr. Hartwright may be said to have been a self-educated man, having acquired most of his scientific knowledge while occupied in active work ; he was both an excellent practical and theoretical mechanical engineer. He was a diligent student of nature, especially in the department of entomology, and a numismatist, and had formed valuable collections of insects and of coins; but he ww of a very reticent and retiring disposition, and was little known beyond the sphere of his official duties.