William Sutton Bocquet (1848-1889)
1885 Locomotive Engineer, Scinde, Punjab and Delhi Railway, Lahore, India.
1889 Obituary [1]
WILLIAM SUTTON BOCQUET, son of Mr. Francis Bocquet of Liverpool, was born on 21st November 1848 at Fairfield near Liverpool, and was educated at the Liverpool College.
In 1865 he went to India as assistant manager on a tea estate in Cachar; but owing to the malarious climate prevailing there he had to return to England in less than a year.
On recovering health he went again to India at the end of 1867, and commenced his career on the Sind Punjab and Delhi Railway under his brother, Mr. Roscoe Bocquet, at that time locomotive superintendent of the line, and successively filled the posts of chief draughtsman, and assistant and district locomotive superintendent.
On the amalgamation of that railway with the Indus Valley and Punjab Northern State lines in 1886, he was appointed by government as district locomotive superintendent; and at the time of his death he filled the responsible position of deputy locomotive superintendent on the North Western Railway.
A great natural gift for mechanics, and untiring industry, coupled with an intimate acquaintance with the habits of the people and the conditions pertaining to Upper India, rendered him a most valuable officer. In addition to his official duties, he interested himself in the question of compressed fodder. In a country where distances are so enormous, and where from the nature of the climate supplies must mostly accompany an army, it is important that some simple means for reducing the bulk of hay and grass should be easily available; and he had devised a plan which gave every prospect of complete success, when his untimely death from dysentery took place at Lahore on 30th March 1889, at the age of forty.
He became a Member of this Institution in 1881.