Noel Rushton Redfern
Noel Rushton Redfern (1885-1943)
1902-6 Apprentice with Fawcett, Preston and Co working on sugar machinery, etc
1906-8 Refrigeration engineer at sea for H. and W. Nelson
1908-11 With William Esplen and Sons, consulting engineers and naval architects, partly at sea.
1919-20 Chief Assistant to B. P. Wall who was responsible for the Lever Brothers' buildings and plant in West Africa.
1944 Obituary [1]
NOEL RUSHTON REDFERN, who was born in 1885, was educated at Liverpool University and Bootle Technical School, and served his apprenticeship with Messrs. Preston and Company, Ltd., from 1902 to 1906. After five years' experience as marine engineer at sea (during which period he rose to be second engineer and obtained his first-class Board of Trade Certificate), he joined Messrs. Lever Brothers as assistant engineer in 1911, with whom he was associated for twenty-two years.
In 1913 he became the firm's district manager and chief mechanical engineer in West Africa and the Congo Free State. After a brief period of employment in the Liverpool Office he joined H.M. Forces and served for three years in the Royal Flying Corps. On his return to Messrs. Lever Brothers in 1919, he was for a time chief assistant and then manager of the engineering department in Liverpool, and finally structural engineering manager for the Niger Company (an auxiliary of Messrs. Lever Brothers) at the London Office, being placed in charge of the company's interests in West Africa and the Belgian Congo.
He then became interested in the commercial side of engineering, and from 1933 to 1937 was sales manager to Messrs. Ruston and Hornsby, of Lincoln. For the next five years he acted as purchasing officer for Messrs. H. A. Brassert, consulting engineers, London. In the late autumn of 1942 Mr. Redfern was on his way to Turkey to take up the appointment of technical adviser (engineering) to the British-American Co-ordinating Committee in Ankara, when he lost his life on board ship, by enemy action.
He was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1921 and was transferred to Membership in 1924.
See Also
Sources of Information
- Mechanical engineer records