Arthur Crompton Brown
Arthur Crompton Brown (1855-1901)
1902 Obituary [1]
ARTHUR CROMPTON BROWN, Messrs. S. Pearson and Son’s agent at Seaham Harbour Works, died from an accident on the 29th December, 1901. He was superintending the erection of a dam across the entrance to the South Dock when a steam crane knocked him off the quay. He fell on to the dam, a distance of 20 feet, and fractured his spine, death resulting in less than half an hour,
Younger son of the late Rev. William Lawson Brown, M.A., of Totteridge, he was born on the 26th March, 1855, and was educated at University College School. After a preliminary training in engineering, he joined the staff of the late Mr. Thomas A. Walker in 1878 on the construction of the Dover and Deal Railway.
In 1880 he was placed in charge of the construction of the Prince of Wales Dock at Swansea. From there he proceeded to take charge of the operations in connection with the projected tunnel under the Thames between North and South Woolwich. It was hoped that the mining could be accomplished with the aid of compressed-air working, as had been successfully done elsewhere; but this was found impracticable, owing to the faulty nature of the strata in the bed of the river at that point.
He was then for some time engaged on the construction of the Whitechapel extension of the Metropolitan and District Railways.
In 1886 Mr. Brown was placed in charge of the construction of a reservoir at Llanishen, in connection with the Cardiff Water Supply, and on the completion of this work in 1888 he was appointed to take charge of the construction of the Ince section of the Manchester Ship Canal. For a short time after Mr. Walker’s death in 1889 he was in charge of the construction of the Preston Dock.
In 1890 he joined the staff of Messrs. S. Pearson and Son, and superintended on their behalf the sinking of cylinders and the construction of a coaling camber for the Admiralty at Portland. In 1891 Mr. Brown proceeded to Chesterfield, as Agent in charge of the Chesterfield to Bolsover section of the Lancashire, Derbyshire, and East Coast Railway.
This being completed in 1897, he was appointed in the following year Agent for the Contractors on the National Harbour Works at Dover. Circumstances of sickness and domestic trouble prevented him from continuing in that position, and on a change in Messrs. Pearson’s staff he was appointed at the end of 1900 to the charge of the Seaham Harbour Works, which, in spite of many natural difficulties, were, under his able and experienced superintendence, proceeding very satisfactorily at the time of his death.
Mr. Brown was elected an Associate Member of the Institution on the 3rd February, 1891.
1902 Obituary.[2]