Walter H. Webb
Walter H. Webb (1850-1917), managing director of the Liverpool Refrigeration Co
associated with Joseph Knight Kilbourn
1918 Obituary [1]
WALTER H. WEBB died at Bidston, Birkenhead, on the 6th October, 1917.
A member of an old Shropshire family, he was born in 1850. As a matter of interest it may be mentioned that Mr. Webb was a brother of Captain Matthew Webb, who was the first man to swim across the English Channel to the French Coast, and that another brother, Dr. Webb, of Ironbridge, was a distinguished scientist, who did valuable work in medical research, especially devoting himself to endeavouring to trace the origin of cancer.
For some years Mr. Webb sailed as Chief Engineer in the steamers of the Red Star Line, but retiring from the sea in 1888, he specialised in mechanical refrigeration, in which work he was associated with the late Mr. Joseph Knight Kilbourn in the erection of the first ice-making and cold storage plants of a commercial character in the United Kingdom, and was also responsible for many improvements in mechanical refrigeration, particularly in connection with the transport of chilled beef from North and South America.
He was a prominent Freemason, having been Provincial Grand Warden of West Lancashire, and was a member of the Sefton and Clarence Lodges, Liverpool, and Past Master of the Wrekin Lodge, London.
Mr. Webb was a Member of the Institution of Naval Architects and of the Institute of Marine Engineers. He was elected a Member of the Liverpool Engineering Society on the 8th November, 1893, and in 1902, contributed a paper, entitled: "Refrigeration and its effects upon Civilization."