Alfred Inigo Suckling-Baron
Alfred Inigo Suckling-Baron (1863-1922)
1923 Obituary [1]
ALFRED INIGO SUCKLING-BARON was born at Hungerford on the 16th August, 1863, and died on the 20th March, 1922. He was the youngest son of the Rev. W. J. Baron. Brought up principally in the country, he developed a love for fishing at a very early age and proved always fond of games and sport in general. At the age of nine he was sent to St. John's Foundation School for the Sons of the Clergy, at Leather head, remaining there until he was seventeen.
A certain amount of business training, for which he always expressed his appreciation in after years, followed in the service of the London and County Bank. This work, however, made no appeal to him ; his great ambition lay more in the direction of engineering. Naturally, it was a great pleasure to him when, through the kindness of a relative, he was able to start serious training at the Hanover-square School of Electrical Engineering.
After completing the course he joined the Gulcher Electric Light and Power Co., and in 1886 went on business to Wellington, New Zealand.
He returned to England in January 1892, partly on business and partly on holiday, and went back to Wellington in the autumn of the same year to erect the new power house of that city.
On his return from New Zealand in 1896 he joined the staff of the General Electric Co., as manager of their Manchester branch, which position he held for a year or two before he was called upon to form the Engineering Department in London in 1901. He remained at the head office until 1909, when the General Electric Co., with a view to creating a further outlet for their manufactures, decided to develop electrical power stations in different parts of the world.
Their first venture was at Uitenhage in South Africa to this outpost Mr. Suckling-Baron was sent to make the necessary arrangements and plans for a generating station and distribution system. While in South Africa he obtained a further concession at Oudtshoorn. Both of these stations were designed and built to his own specifications, and very satisfactory business was the result of his efforts. He next entirely reorganized the power station and distribution system of the Madeira Electric Lighting Co. and succeeded in bringing order out of chaos.
In 1913 he was sent to Frinton-on-Sea to report on the conditions existing at the power station there. He supervised the reconstruction of the whole system and during the same year obtained the Provisional Order for supplying electricity in Macclesfield, where he planned and carried out a complete system for the supply of electricity for power and lighting. The outstanding feature of all the work which he carried out was thoroughness in every detail, and the generating stations controlled by him rank amongst the most orderly and well kept in the country. He was undoubtedly an engineer of very high standing, and his death meant a great loss to the electrical industry.
He was elected an Associate of the Institution in 1888 and a Member in 1892.