James Horne (1790-1856)
1835 James Horne of Clapham Common, Author of Several Mechanical Inventions and Promoter of Science, became a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.[1]
1858 Obituary [2]
MR. JAMES HORNE was born in the year 1790, and was soon engaged in business, in which he was very prosperous.
From an early age he took great interest in scientific pursuits, and in mechanical inventions and improvements ; initiating several for which he declined to take out patents, leaving the manufacturers to reap the benefit of his talents. Like many others, he devoted attention to the ungrateful subject of Steam Locomotion on common roads, and with the ordinary result of loss of time and money.
The subject of warming and ventilating buildings also occupied his attention ; and he applied the system, with success, to several buildings of the City Companies of which he was a Member.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on the 6th of February, 1834, was an early Member of the Society of Arts, in the Adelphi, and was connected with several other societies. He was elected an Associate of this Institution on the 20th February, 1835,-served the office of Auditor in the year 1840, and contributed several original Papers to the Meetings. He was a very constant attendant at the Meetings, taking part in the discussions, and was always ready to undertake anything which he conceived to be conducive to the advantage, or prosperity of the Society.
He was essentially an Amateur Mechanic, and possessing ample means, with time at his command, he was enabled to indulge his predilections; yet he with equal energy devoted a portion of his time, and much of his wealth, in relieving the wants of his fellow-creatures, and became a Governor of most of the Charitable Societies.
For nine years before his decease he was, in consequence of an attack of paralysis, obliged to discontinue his hitherto regular attendance at the Meetings of this and other Societies; and at length he sank calmly to rest, on the 26th October 1856, in his sixty-eighth year, deeply regretted by his family and a wide circle of friends, by whom he was much esteemed, as an upright, kind-hearted man.