Charles John Grahame MacGuckin
Charles John Grahame MacGuckin (c1884-1934), general manager of Armstrong Whitworth
Later Managing Director of William Beardmore and Co
1934 Obituary [1]
CHARLES JOHN GRAHAME MACGUCKIN, C.B.E., after being attached for the greater part of his career to Messrs. Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Company, relinquished engineering for the Law, particularly that branch relating to patents and trade marks.
He was born at Ballinderry, Co. Londonderry, and educated at Dundalk College; he received his technical education privately.
In 1901 he became an apprentice at the Elswick Works of Messrs. Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Company, and in 1905 was made inspector of brass castings and electrical details in connexion with gun mountings. In the following year he was appointed assistant works manager and later took charge of the gun sights, cartridge, and gauges departments. He was responsible for the manufacture and erection of sighting gear for a large number of battleships, both in the British and in foreign navies.
In 1914 Mr. MacGuckin became assistant general manager and two years later he was appointed general manager of the gun ammunition department and had charge of several factories, in which 25,000 workpeople were employed.
In 1918 he was awarded the C.B.E. for his services during the War. He was appointed general manager of the firm's Openshaw works in 1922 and general manager of both the Openshaw and Elswick works in 1927.
About this time, however, he began to devote himself more particularly to the legal aspects of engineering. He was called to the Bar in 1926, and was a member of the Middle Temple and of Gray's Inn. At the same time, he retained a direct connexion with the engineering profession, for in 1929 he was appointed managing director of Messrs. William Beardmore and Company's Parkhead Steel Works, Glasgow.
He left for London, however, in 1930 and acted as a junior to Sir Arthur Colefax, an authority on the laws relating to patents and trade marks.
Mr. MacGuckin died in London on 17th August 1934, in his fifty-first year.
He was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1912, and was transferred to Membership in 1915. He was also a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
1934 Obituary [2]
CHARLES JOHN GRAHAM MACGUCKIN, C.B.E., died in a London nursing home on Friday, August 17, 1934; he was only fifty years of age.
He was born in Ireland and received his education at St. Mary's College, Dundalk. In 1900 he entered the Elswick Works of Sir W. G. Armstrong Whitworth & Co., Ltd., as an apprentice. His pre-war work with the late Sir Andrew Nobel on the improvement of the sighting gear for large naval guns fitted him particularly well for the work which he undertook during the war, when, under the direction of Sir Glynn West and the late Sir Percy Girouard, he was eventually entrusted with the management of the whole of the firm's ammunition undertakings. Besides con- trolling the various English and Scottish works of the company he devoted himself to the improvement of armour-piercing shells and the design and manufacture of base fuses.
In 1922 he became general manager of the Armstrong-Whitworth Openshaw Works, Manchester, and seven years later he was appointed general manager of both the Elswick and the Openshaw Works.
In 1929 he went to Glasgow as managing director of Messrs. William Beardmore & Co.'s Parkhead Works, from which position he retired in 1930 to take up legal work. He had always had an inclination for the law, and in 1926 he had already been called to the Bar, and was a member of the Middle Temple and Gray's Inn; he soon established himself in a branch of the legal profession where his engineering knowledge proved to be of great advantage. In January, 1933, he was stricken with an illness from which he never recovered.
He joined the Iron and Steel Institute in 1927.