Clark, William Timbrell

CLARK, William Timbrell (1847–1909) was born at London, possibly the son of Robert Clerk, a carpenter and his wife Maria. After serving his apprenticeship at Lincoln, he worked on public works including at HM Docks, Chatham; the Midland Railway, London and Bradford; the Settle & Carlyle Railway; the Devon & Somerset Railways; the Halifax, Thornton and Keighley Railway, and others. In 1871 he was listed as a clerk, living with his uncle, William F London, a plumber, painter and glazier, at Hackney. In 1873 as an engineer he joined the Lewis Lodge, Whitehaven, Cumberland, and late in 1876, he was listed as a mechanical engineer, of Queensbury, near Halifax. In October 1878 in London his partnership with Philip John Le Gros and John Shaw, as Le Gros, Shaw, Clark & Co, engineers and patentees of rock drills, air compressors, steam pumps and other machinery, was dissolved. He was a member of the Royal Society of Engineers. In 1881 he came to Queensland with his former pupil, TF FAUSET to erect refrigerating equipment made by Haslam & Co, of Derby, which inaugurated the Queensland frozen meat trade. After joining the Queensland Ice Company as a partner he returned to England to procure ice-making machinery for the company. Returning to Brisbane he practice with Fauset as CLARK & FAUSET, mechanical engineers, until 1893. Thereafter under the same name, the firm was continued by Fauset. Forced by losses resulting from the 1893 floods and the depression in real estate, Clark was forced into liquidation in Brisbane. Early in 1894, he moved to Western Australia where he lodged patent applications and worked as a gold miner and as a mechanical engineer in partnership with William Horace Raddon as WT Clark & Co until bankrupted in 1909. Facing a charge of assaulting a boy, Clark committed suicide at Subiaco, Perth in 1909. He was described as a ‘mechanical engineer of more than usual ability’.