George Bransby Williams
George Bransby Williams (1872-1954)
1954 Obituary [1]
WE have learned with regret of the death of Mr. George Bransby-Williams, which occurred on November 17th. Mr. Bransby-Williams had a long and varied career as a civil engineer, principally in the subjects of water supply and sewerage and he was an authority particularly on the hydrological aspects of reservoir design. He was born in 1872, and received his scientific training at Clifton College. Subsequently he served a pupilage with Wright Butler and Co., engineers, and with Mr. James Mansergh.
He became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1897 and a full member in 1909. His early experience included work on a considerable number of water supply and drainage schemes throughout the country, including, for instance, the Birmingham aqueduct. He was also concerned with railway civil engineering, gaining experience of such work in South Wales, and in South Africa, during the Boer War, when he served on the staff of the director of railways of the South African Field Force.
In the years 1906-08 he was consulting engineer to the Crown Agents, and in 1908 he became chief engineer of the public health department of the Government of Bengal, a post he held until 1927. His colonial work included designing and carrying out a scheme for the main drainage and water supply of Nairobi, and during his tenure of office as chief engineer in Bengal he carried out about seventy schemes, the most important of which were the Dakka main drainage, Goya water supply and Tittaghar main drainage schemes.
In 1927 Mr. Bransby-Williams again became a consulting engineer, in partnership with Mr. F. C. Temple. His work was still concentrated in India, and the larger schemes with which he was concerned as a consultant included the Jheria coalfields water supply, Rangoon water supply, Nagpur water supply, and the Lucknow and Cawnpore railway settlements sewerage and sewage disposal schemes.
During the course of his career he presented several papers to the Institution of Civil Engineers and contributed to discussion.
His work in India, for instance, gave rise to the paper "Rainfall Off-flow and Storage in the Central Provinces, India," which was published in 1931. He was also a valued contributor to this journal, his most recent article being " Flood Intensities and Frequencies on British Catchments," which was published in THE ENGINEER of August 22, 1952. He was the author of "The Flow of Water in Pipes, Sewers and Channels; over weirs and off catchments," and of "Storage Reservoirs." The latter volume, which was published in 1937, is very general in its scope, and the last chapter, "An Engineer's Odyssey," describes a tour through Britain visiting many famous hydraulic engineering works.