Geoffrey Murton Gill
Geoffrey Murton Gill (1882-1949)
1950 Obituary [1]
"GEOFFREY MURTON GILL was well known as a prominent gas engineer, who in the course of his career had held office with distinction in the several gas corporations with which he was associated.
He was born in 1882, and received his general education at Lancing College. Later he studied at the City and Guilds of London Institute, obtaining first-class honours in gas engineering in 1905. On the completion of a three years' pupilage at the Poplar works of the Commercial Gas Co, under the late Mr. Harry E. Jones, Past-President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, in 1904, he continued in the service of that company for a further nine years, and successively held positions as assistant engineer to the Poplar gas works, engineer and manager at Wapping, and assistant engineer to the company.
In 1913 he received the appointment of chief engineer to the South Metropolitan Gas Co, a position he retained until 1922 when he began to practise as a consulting engineer in Westminster. He built up a considerable practice in foreign countries and travelled extensively, including seven visits to the United States, where in 1926 he was British representative at a conference on bituminous coal, at Pittsburgh. He was instrumental in forming, in 1934, the South Eastern Gas Corporation, which was followed by the formation of Gas Consolidation, Ltd., and the Severn Valley Corporation. These two latter undertakings controlled about fifty gas companies, forming a chain from Newport (Mon.) to Mossley in Lancashire. After serving as director and chief engineer he was appointed managing director and chief engineer in 1941. He became chairman of the Cheltenham and District Gas Co six years later, an office he retained up to the time of his death, which occurred on 4th March 1949.
He was also a director of several other gas companies and since 1944 had been chairman of the Jones Gas Process Co. Mr. Gill, who was elected a Member of the Institution in 1919, was the author of a paper on "Co-operation of the Engineer and Chemist in the Control of Plants and Processes", which he presented before the Institution in 1922."