Henry Wollaston Blake
Henry Wollaston Blake (1815-1899)
1862 Henry Wollaston Blake, James Watt and Co, Soho Foundry, Birmingham.[1]
1899 Obituary [2]
HENRY WOLLASTON BLAKE, born at 25 Portland Place, London, on the 3rd March, 1815, was the youngest son of Mr. William Blake, of Danesbury, Herts, and was named after one of his godfathers, the well-known Dr. Wollaston.
He was educated at a preparatory school near Hatfield, and subsequently at Eton, where already he showed a taste for mechanics. On leaving Eton he joined his parents at Prague, and travelled with them in Italy, Germany and France, until October, 1833, when he entered Trinity College, Cambridge.
In 1837 he graduated M.A., coming out fifteenth in a list of 52 Wranglers, although, as seven names above his were bracketed, he practically ranked much higher. In order to learn business habits he was placed in the office of Mr. Thompson Hankey, then Governor of the Bank of England, and in the following year he accompanied an agent of the Bank to America, to aid in collecting a large number of protested bills, and held slaves as security. For eighteen months he was constantly employed in travelling through America to collect the various securities, and on his return, had it not been for a fortunate incident which caused him to change steamers, he would have sailed for England on the ill-fated 'President,'which foundered with all on board.
Soon after Mr. Blake’s return to England he became a member of the firm of Boulton and Watt (now James Watt and Co.), of the Soho Foundry, Birmingham. His commercial knowledge, ability, and energy were of great value to the firm, of which he became the head. In that capacity he carried out work in connection with many important undertakings, among which may be mentioned waterworks in Italy, Turkey, Siam, Japan, Straits Settlements, Hong-Kong, and other places ; furnished pumping-engines to some of the London Water Companies, to the Metropolitan Board of Works for the drainage of the Metropolis, to the Royal Dockyards, and the London Docks; and supplied machinery for the principal London breweries, for the drainage of the Fens, and engines for many of the ships of the Royal Navy and Mercantile marine, for the Dublin mailboats, for the South Devon Atmospheric Railway, and for the Great Eastern steamship, which he accompanied on her trial trips.
The firm also supplied machinery to the Royal Mint, as well as to the Mints at Bombay, Calcutta, Constantinople, St. Petersburg, and in Japan, Mexico and Chili. Bronze money for Japan and Siam was coined at Soho. Mr. Blake patented inventions for coining machinery, and in 1859 a large mint was erected at Soho from which 2,000 tons of the new bronze coinage for the United Eingdom were issued. Subsequently he was selected to give evidence against the proposed scheme for moving the Royal Mint from its present site to the Thames Embankment. Mr. Blake was an original Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
In 1843 he was elected to the Smeatonian Society, of which he was the 'father' at the time of his death.
He was also for fifty-five years a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Athenaeum Club, and, since 1872, of the Royal Societies’ Club. Taking a great interest in thsec ience of astronomy he accompanied, as recently as 1896, the Expedition to view the total eclipse at Vadso, and was requested to publish his observations of the variations of temperature during the eclipse. He was it Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and of the Royal Geographical Society, and a Member of the Royal Institution and of the British Association, of the Mechanical Engineering Section, of which he occasionally acted as President. For forty-six years he was one of Her Majesty’s Lieutenants of the City of London and a Director of the Bank of England. In 1861 he went to Russia in connection with the Varna-Rustchuk Railway between the Danube and the Black Sea, of which line he was Chairman €or many years, and in 1888 be was instrumental in carrying through the negotiations for its purchase by the Bulgarian Government. He was for some time a Director of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, and from 1842 of the London and North Western Railway. As an engineer he was placed on the Locomotivb Committee of the latter line and was able to render valuable service in connection with the company’s works at Wolverhampton and at Crewe. He was also a Director of the Great Indian Peninsula and the Indian Midland Railways, and of several other companies.
Mr. Blake died at his town house, 8 Devonshire Place, on the 27th June, 1899, after a few days’ illness from pneumonia, in his eighty-fifth year.
He was twice married; first to Charlotte, daughter of Mr. John Walbanke Childers, of Cantley, Yorks, by whom he leaves two sons, and, secondly, to Edith, daughter of the Rev. Prebendary Hawkshaw, of Weston-under-Penyard, Herefordshire.
He was elected an Associate of the Institution on the 24th June, 1845, and was transferred to the class of Members on the 14th January, 1879.
1899 Obituary [3]