Percy Kendall Stothert
Sir Percy Kendall Stothert (1863-1929), director of Stothert and Pitt
Third son of John Lum Stothert
1929 Obituary [1]
'THE LATE SIR P. K. STOTHERT.
We regret to record the death of Sir Percy Kendall
Stothert, which took place after a prolonged illness at
Bath on Monday last. Sir Percy will best be known to
engineers in connection with the work of his firm,
Messrs. Stothert and Pitt, of which he was Chairman
at the time of his death. Apart from his professional
duties, however, he did much valuable public work
on the Boards of hospitals and other undertakings in
the Bath area, and in his capacity of Justice of the
Peace. He was born on June 21, 1863, and after being
educated at Reading School and Clifton College, he
entered the workshops of Messrs. Stothert and Pitt
in 1881 as an apprentice. In 1883, he was put in charge
of the firm’s London office, and after filling this position
for about a year, was appointed Assistant Manager.
Much of his time about this period was spent on outdoor erection work, and he was associated with the
erection of the Mammoth crane on the South Shields
breakwater, and the Hercules crane on Hartlepool
breakwater. He was appointed a director of the
company in 1886, and Joint Managing Director with
the late Mr. Walter Pitt in 1902.
It is hardly necessary to refer at length to the work
of Messrs. Stothert and Pitt during the period of his
directorship, as frequent references have been made
to the firm’s activities in our columns. Much of the
work carried out has been in connection with the
manufacture and erection of harbour plant, and, amongst
other important works, Sir Percy was responsible for
the plant at the Peterhead Harbour of Refuge, including
a 50-ton Titan crane, and the plant for the Admiralty
Harbour works at Gibraltar. It is interesting to
recall that one of the first tanks developed in the early
years of the war was made at Messrs. Stothert and
Pitt’s works, and that, amongst other munitions work,
the firm turned out a large number of paravanes.
Sir Percy was appointed during the war to the position
of Chairman of the West of England Board of Management for the Ministry of Munitions, and in that capacity
had charge of the arrangements for the visit of the
King and Queen to Bath and Bristol. It was in
recognition of his services on the Board that he was
created a Knight of the Order of the British Empire in
1918. He was appointed Chairman of Messrs. Stothert
and Pitt in 1921, and he was also Chairman of the
Clevedon Gas Company, the Clevedon Water Company, and the Bath Gas Company. He qualified as a
Magistrate for the County of Somerset in 1898, and
in 1900 was elected a Governor of the Royal Mineral
Water Hospital, Bath. Two years later he was appointed
a trustee of the Royal United Hospital, of which he
had previously served on the committee. For several
years he held a commission in the First Volunteer
Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry, and he
was also a member of the Somerset Territorial Army
Association. He was elected an Associate Member of
the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1888, and was
transferred to the class of Member in 1900.'