John Laybourne
John Laybourne (1828-1872)
Brother of Richard Laybourne
1857 Engineer of Newport, Monmouthshire.[1]
1873 Obituary [2]
JOHN LAYBOURNE was born on 31st July 1828 at Nafferton Lodge, near Driffield, East Yorkshire, and in 1843 was apprenticed at the Hareshaw Iron Works at Hexham and Bellingham, Northumberland, where he remained until the closing of the works in 1847.
He then went to Messrs. E. B. Wilson and Co., Railway Foundry, Leeds, and after passing through these works and the drawing office became in 1853 head locomotive draughtsman to Messrs. Stothert Slaughter and Co., Avonside Engine Works, Bristol.
In 1857 he left these works to establish the Isca Foundry Co. at Newport, Monmouthshire, which he successfully managed to within a short period of his death.
He introduced into England with success the American cast-iron boiler, upon which a paper was read to the Institution in 1871 (see Proceedings Inst. M. E. 1871 page 263).
He died of heart disease at Bournemouth on 24th March 1872 at the age of forty-three.
He became a Member of the Institution in 1857.