Charles Frewer (1866-1885)
1885 Obituary [1]
CHARLES FREWER was elected an Associate of the Institution, on the 2nd of February, 1866. He was at that time Manager, in London, of the Governor and Company of Copper Miners in England, a coal, copper, iron, and tinplate Company, which has been extinct for some years, but was then holding a Royal Charter granted as early as the year 1691. First as Secretary, and subsequently as Manager and Secretary, his engagement with this Company extended over a period of twenty-one years, and to within a short period of its dissolution, so that the energies of his comparatively short life may be said to have been principally expended in this Company’s service.
In 1873 he commenced trading on his own account as a railway-iron and general metal-merchant and agent, and he continued this business until his death. Although particularly unobtrusive, he had during his career come in contact with a large number of business men directly and indirectly interested in the iron trade, including not a few members of the engineering profession, and he secured their confidence and respect, and in many cases their friendship, by his unremitting attention to the business entrusted to him, and by his strict and unswerving integrity. He took great interest in the proceedings of this Institution, attended its meetings regularly, and for many years officiated as one of the Scrutineers at the Annual Election of its Council. He was also elected to the Auditorship of the Institution for the years 1875 and 1876. He was exceptionally proficient in matters of account and in secretarial work, and among several appointments of a kindred nature, which he held at the date of his decease, was that of Auditor of the South Indian Railway Company, an office he had filled for five years. In his earlier private life, and even later on, when he had the responsibilities of a large family resting upon him, he devoted a considerable portion of the time which he had at his disposal to benefit his less-favoured fellow-man at home and abroad; and, as instancing his liberality of heart, it may be recorded that from the first he unfailingly devoted to charitable objects 10 per cent. of his earnings.
Until within three months of his death he had enjoyed complete immunity from serious illness. Symptoms of blood-poisoning, contracted quite unconsciously, then showed themselves, and he died of intermittent fever on the 15th of July, 1885, aged 57 years.