H. B. Barlow

William Henry Barlow (10 May 1812 - 12 November 1902) was an English civil engineer of the 19th century, particularly associated with railway engineering projects. Barlow was involved in many engineering enterprises. He was engineer for the Midland Railway on its London extension and designed the company's London terminus at St Pancras. With John Hawkshaw, he completed Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge. Following the Tay Bridge disaster he sat on the commission which investigated the causes and designed the replacement Tay Bridge. Barlow was also an inventor and experimenter, patenting a design for a rail and carrying out investigations on the use and design of steel structures. Barlow was born on 10 May 1812 in Woolwich, Kent (now in south-east London), the son of mathematician and physicist Professor Peter Barlow, who taught at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. William Barlow was the younger brother of Peter William Barlow. After a private education, Barlow began to study civil engineering with his father at the age of sixteen. After a year he, went on to a pupillage at the machinery department of the Royal Navy's Woolwich Dockyard close to his family home. He then worked at the London Docks for Henry Robinson Palmer. Barlow married Selina Crawford Caffin in May 1842 at Charlton, Kent. The couple had four sons and two daughters. Their son Crawford Barlow became a civil engineer and was in practice with his father. Barlow was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Arts. He served as Vice President of the Royal Society in 1881 and was an honorary member of the Société des Ingénieurs Civil de France. He was also a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Railway Volunteer Staff Corps. With his health failing, he retired from practice in 1896, along with his son. He died on 12 November 1902 from exhaustion after breaking his leg, and was buried in Charlton Cemetery in a plot adjacent to that of his father's grave. His home "High Combe", Charlton Road, Greenwich, is marked with a blue plaque.