Richard Lionel Jones
Richard Lionel Jones (1841-1879)
1880 Obituary [1]
MR. RICHARD LIONEL JONES, M.A., Dublin, was born in that city on the 21st of April, 1841, where his family had resided for five generations.
He was educated in the school of the Rev. Daniel Flynn, D.D., and passed thence in the year 1858 into Trinity College. He decided on following the profession of a Civil Engineer, and with that view joined the engineering school attached to the University, where he studied diligently, and obtained the degree of Bachelor in Arts and a diploma in civil engineering at the end of 1862.
He had already spent one year as a pupil and an assistant to the late Mr. Marcus Harty, the engineer of the Dublin and Drogheda railway, and remained in the same office for another year. His next employment was in London, where for two years he was engaged under different engineers, chiefly upon railway and drainage works.
In the early part of 1866 he joined the engineering staff of the London, Chatham, and Dover railway, as an assistant to Mr. William Mills, M. Inst. C.E., the engineer of that line, under whom he was occupied mainly in the drawing office until the end of 1871, when he was selected to take charge of the construction of the Holborn Viaduct railway and station, upon the designs for which he had been engaged. These works were carried out by him in a highly creditable manner, and on their completion he was entrusted with their maintenance, and with other important works of construction.
In 1874 he was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, was admitted in the Michaelmas term of 1878 to the degree of Master in Arts at his university, and on the 31st of December of that year was transferred to the class of Member of the Institution.
He was a man of a high sense of honour, of a keen and kindly wit, and an amiable disposition; he possessed in a remarkable degree the faculty of exposing fallacies in a convincing manner, and he had the power of attracting to himself without effort the alliance and affection of other men. Both in professional matters and in private life, his practical turn of mind and lucidity of expression obtained for his opinions marked attention. His work was always thoroughly sound and reliable, the details being invariably well considered.
Mr. Jones died on the 4th of November 1879, from inflammation of the lungs, after a short illness.