Robert Manning Dowson
Robert Manning Dowson (c1872-1946)
1947 Obituary [1]
"ROBERT MANNING DOWSON was an Associate Member of the Institution for forty-eight years, having been elected in 1898.
After a three year course of engineering at Nottingham University College, he entered, in 1892, the locomotive shops at Derby as a pupil under Mr. Johnson, at that time locomotive superintendent of the Midland Railway, and gained practical experience in the shops. Subsequently he was employed in the drawing office on the testing of locomotives, and finally was transferred to the test office as an assistant.
In 1899 he went to South Africa, where, after service in the Boer War as a lieutenant in the Colonial Corps, he represented Messrs. Vickers, Ltd., for some years. He founded the firm of R. M. Dowson, Ltd., in 1906, and was later principal of the firm of Messrs. Dowson and Dobson, Ltd., engineering agents and merchants, of Johannesburg, until his retirement in 1927. Mr. Dowson's death occurred at Geldeston, Norfolk, in September 1946, at the age of seventy-four."