Gerald Horace Ridley
Gerald Horace Ridley (1898-1938)
1938 Obituary [1]
GERALD HORACE RIDLEY was chief assistant to Mr. Norman Shapton, A.M.I.Mech.E., in the engine works department at Vickers House. He was born in Wandsworth in 1898 and after leaving Marlborough College in 1916 he was commissioned to the Rifle Brigade, and went to the Western Front in 1917. He was severely wounded later in the same year and after the Armistice he joined the Young army of occupation, and was stationed at Cologne.
In 1919 he was demobilized and entered the City and Guilds Engineering College, London, where he obtained his diploma in 1922. After two years' apprenticeship in the Elswick works of Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Company, Ltd., he was transferred to the Low Walker shipyard, and was made assistant engineer on the erection and testing of two sliding caissons and the associated machinery, for the South African Railways and Harbours Board, at Durban; and in 1923 he went to Durban to assist in their erection at the new graving dock.
In 1925 he returned to England to supervise the manufacture of four large electric coaling cranes, and later went to South Australia to take charge of their erection at Adelaide. Coming back to England in 1927, he joined the erection staff of Messrs. Armstrong, Whitworth at Tilbury Dock, where he was engaged on a contract for lock gates at the new entrance to the docks extension until 1929. He then went to Llandarcy, South Wales, as constructional engineer for new works of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Ltd., and in 1931 he joined the staff of the engine works department at Vickers House under his father, Mr. C. O. Ridley, and received his appointment with Mr. Shapton four years later on the retirement of Mr. C. O. Ridley.
Mr. Ridley was elected a Graduate of the Institution in 1920 and was transferred to Associate Membership in 1925. His death occurred on 11th May 1938.