MR. HENRY DAVID FURNESS, the second son of the Rev. John Robson Furness, Vicar of Dinnington, Northumberland, was born in 1830, and was educated at the collegiate school, Leicester. In July 1847 he was apprenticed for four years to Messrs. Robert Stephenson and Co., of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but for one year of this time worked in the erecting shop of Messrs. Robert Napier and Sons, Glasgow. From September 1853 he was for two years Chief Engineer on board steamers belonging to the Steam Navigation Company of the Two Sicilies. he next obtained an appointment in the Turkish navy as engineer during the Crimean war, after which he became sub-manager of the works at Messrs. Robert Stephenson and Co.’s factory under the late Mr. William Weallens, M. Inst. C.E. He subsequently went to Russia as locomotive superintendent on the Riga-Diinaburg railway, and continued there after the amalgamation of that line with the Diinaburg and Witepsk, until the year 1869. He then accepted the post of locomotive superintendent on the Orel-Witepsk railway ; but the work and the climate told so severely on his health that he was obliged to return to England in 1870.
After a rest of a few months he recovered sufficiently to occupy himself in the invention of a lubricator for locomotive cylinders, which is now extensively used both at home and abroad. He also carried on business at Newcastle as a consulting engineer. He had been to Suez on professional business, and was on his way home when he died at Marseilles, of liver complaint and heart disease, after an illness of only ten days, on the 2nd of November, 1880. Mr. Furness was elected a Member of the Institution on the 5th of March, 1867. He was possessed of an eminently mechanical turn of mind, had clear judgment and great uprightness of character, and his amiable temper earned for him the confidence of all with whom he was brought into contact, professionally and privately.
