Thomas Stewart
Thomas Stewart (1857-1942)
1942 Obituary [1]
THOMAS STEWART was born at Craigend, Perthshire, on the 30th March, 1857, and died in Cape Town, South Africa, on the 23rd October 1942.
From 1873 to 1876 he served, first as a pupil and then as an assistant, to the late Mr. D. H. Halkett, of Alyth, Scotland.
In 1876 he was appointed an assistant in the Glasgow Corporation Waterworks and also studied engineering at the University of Glasgow, Anderson’s College, and the College of Science and Arts, Glasgow.
In 1881 he became an assistant in the office of Mr. (later Sir) John Wolfe Barry, Past-President Inst.C.E., and in 1882 was appointed by the Crown Agents for the Colonies as assistant to the late Mr. J. G. Gamble, M. Inst. C.E., Hydraulic Engineer to the Cape Colony, under whom he was engaged on water-supply and irrigation schemes for towns throughout the Colony.
In 1886 he resigned from the Government service, and after a brief visit to Great Britain returned to South Africa as Resident Engineer for the waterworks of Cradock. He also designed and carried out the Wynberg waterworks.
He then started a private practice in Cape Town, and was responsible for the design and construction of five reservoirs on Table Mountain for Cape Town and Wynberg, for the Steenbras waterworks for Cape Town (as joint engineer), the Zuurbekom waterworks for Johannesburg, and for water-supply and sewage-disposal works of many cities and towns in Cape Colony and Rhodesia, whilst in 1914 he prepared scheme for the water-supply of Beira, Portuguese East Africa.
In 1896 he was appointed by the Cape Government as the engineering member of a commission for the Steynsburg Irrigation Scheme (which condemned the scheme) and was also appointed to the Geological Commission of the Cape of Good Hope, on which he served until its work was taken over by the Government of the Union of South Africa, and to the Cape Peninsula Commission (1903).
During the Boer war he was attached to the Royal Engineers as a Major (without pay), at Cape Town and was engaged in the construction of defence works....[more]