Doyle, Patrick

DOYLE, Patrick (1849–1907) was born in Aden, the elder son of Irish-born, James Doyle and his wife Ann. He was raised at Madras where from 1864, he trained at the Civil Engineering College, Madras which had been founded in 1794 by the East India Company as a school of surveying. By 1867 he was appointed to take charge of two divisions of the Public Works Department of the Madras Presidency. In the late 1870s Doyle moved to the Straits Settlements, Malaya as Superintendent of Public Works, Surveys and Mines in Perak, from where he contributed a paper on “Tin Mining in Larut” to the Mining Journal, republished with additions in 1879 and reprinted recently. Attracted by recent discoveries of tin at Herberton, Doyle moved to Queensland. His arrival was heralded by the widespread reporting of his paper as well as other articles he wrote on: mining accidents, irrigation, cheap and Indian railways and petroleum and its distillate, kerosine. In 1880, he was licensed as a surveyor in Queensland and employed as Town Clerk and Surveyor to the Charters Towers Municipal Council with the right of private practice, but soon fell out with the mayor who sought his removal with a trumped-up charge of embezzlement. Doyle was acquitted on 3 of 4 charges with the remaining charge adjourned, apparently indefinitely, before he counter-claimed with an action for damages which he won before he left Queensland in mid-1881. He may have gone back to the Straits Settlements as Superintendent of Works at Penang, or according to his obituary to China. He returned to Madras in 1883 and later moved to Calcutta where from 1887, he edited a weekly illustrated journal Indian Engineering. He died at Bombay enroute to London and was buried with his parents and siblings at Church of the Holy Rosary, Mylapore, Chennai.