William Stronach Lockhart
William Stronach Lockhart (1850-1924)
of Fenchurch House, 7 Fenchurch Street, London, E.C.
1924 Obituary [1]
WILLIAM STRONACH LOCKHART was born in Shanghai, China, on 9th October 1850, and was brought to England by his mother when about two years old. His father was the Dr. Lockhart who went out to China with Drs. Medhurst and Morrison about the middle of last century as medical missionaries.
The subject of this memoir received his early education at Mr. Joseph Payne's school at Leatherhead, and he subsequently spent two years in Germany.
On his return he was apprenticed to Messrs. R. Moreland and Sons, engineers, Old Street, London, and after serving three years in the works and two in the drawing office, he entered the service of the Japan Paper-making Co., Ltd. In their interests he spent ten months at the works of Messrs. Easton and Anderson, at Erith, in connexion with the construction and superintendence of paper making machinery, and after further useful experience at other works he left England in 1875 for Japan, where he erected the Japan Paper-making Co.'s mill at Kobe, having charge of the entire work during its later stages.
On his return to England two years later, he entered the service of the Hydraulic Engineering Co., Ltd., of Chester, as their London Manager, and shortly afterwards he started business on his own account as consulting engineer.
Amongst the matters to which he gave special attention in the "Seventies" was that of automatic door fastenings for railway carriages.
About this time too he became a Director of the Swedish and Norwegian Railway Co., Ltd., an undertaking serving the well-known Gellivara iron-ore districts in Northern Sweden and connecting those districts with the Baltic ports.
Later on he undertook the duties of engineer-in-chief to the Burmah Ruby Mines, Ltd., when Sir Lepel Griffin was Chairman, duties which took him to Mojok, Burmah, where he spent nearly two years.
On his return to England he resumed private work and gave special attention to the invention of an automatic separator, particularly suited for dealing with gems, but susceptible of much wider application, as, for instance, to china clay and other minerals.
In the perfecting and exploitation of this invention he was engaged up to the time of his death, which occurred on 12th August 1924, in his seventy-fourth year.
He became a Member of this Institution in 1879. He was also a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.