Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Rawlinson, Robert

​RAWLINSON, Sir Robert, C.B., civil engineer, born in Bristol, Feb. 28, 1810, son of Thomas Rawlinson, of Chorley, Lancashire, and Grace Ellice, of Exeter, Devonshire. Mr. Rawlinson's father being a mason and builder at Chorley, the son learned the practical part of the business there, and in 1831 Mr. Rawlinson entered under Jesse Hartley, C.E., the Liverpool Dock Engineer's office, and in 1836 passed on to the Blisworth Contract (London and Birmingham Railway), under Robert Stephenson, C.E. On the completion of this line of railway Mr. Rawlinson returned to Liverpool, and became assistant-surveyor to the corporation, remaining up to the end of 1844; then for three years he was engineer to the Bridgwater Canal. In 1847 he devised a scheme to supply Liverpool with sixty million gallons of pure water per day, to be brought by an aqueauct from Bala Lake and the district in North Wales, which project was, however, considered at the time too grand for the town. The late H. L. Elmes, architect of St. George's Hall, Liverpool, consulted Mr. Rawlinson as to that building, and having (1847), by the advice of his medical man, to visit a warmer climate, he, Mr. Elmes, left his friend, Mr. Rawlinson, in charge of St. George's Hall. Mr. Elmes died, Nov. 26, 1847, at Kingston, Jamaica. Mr. Rawlinson then designed and executed the great hollow-brick arched ceiling, as also the main floor, at St. George's Hall—this work being new, difficult, and special, to suit Dr. Reid's mode of ventilation; subsequently the works were handed over to the late Mr. Cockerell, who completed the building. In the autumn of 1848 Mr. Rawlinson was appointed by the government of the day one of the first superintendent inspectors under the Public Health Act. In the spring of 1855 he was sent as Engineering Sanitary Commissioner to the Britsh Army in the East (Dr. John Sutherland and Dr. Hector Gavin being the medical members). The commissioners landed at Constantinople, March 6, 1855, and at the harbour of Balaclava on April 3. Works were commenced immediately both at the great hospitals situate on the Bosphorus, and at the camp in the Crimea, such as cleansing, ventilating, and furnishing a purer water. The returns from the four great hospitals on the Bosphorus, containing upwards of 4,000 sick British soldiers, showed, March 17, 1855, an average rate of mortality equal to 8.61 per cent. per month of the sick, which mortality was reduced by June 30 of the same year to 1.01 per cent. per month. In the Crimea, during the winter (1854-55) previous to the advent of the Sanitary Commission, the losses in some regiments at the front had ranged for three months as high as seventy per cent., a mortality unexampled even in the worst of any former wars; by the end of this summer (1855) the entire British army in the Crimea was placed in a better state of health, and had a lower rate of mortality than it had ever experienced in barracks at home; and this improvement continued to the end of the war; the mortality in the French army knowing no such diminution, but on the contrary, increasing—15,000 men perishing in their hospitals the last three months of the war. Under the supervision of sanitary committees, established upon this Crimean pattern, the average mortality in the British army has, since 1858, been reduced about one-half, that is, from 17.5 per 1,000 to below 8.0 per 1,000 per annum. Waterworks, on the English plan, have been executed, under Mr. Rawlinson's directions, for Hong Kong and Singapore. A great social question was entrusted to Mr. Rawlinson during the Cotton Famine, caused by the ​American war. In 1863 he was sent to Lancashire by Lord Palmerston's Government as Engineer Commissioner to organize, under Mr. Villiers, M.P., President of the Poor Law Board, "Work for Wages" amongst the distressed cotton operatives. Sanitary works were carried out simultaneously in ninety-three towns and places within the distressed cotton district. Government advancing by instalments in the whole upwards of £1,750,000 at 3½ per cent., the entire of this sum having been expended, under the supervision of Mr. Rawlinson, at a cost to the Government of less than three shillings and sixpence per cent. Mr. Rawlinson having practically proved that Government could profitably lend money at 3½ per cent. for towns improvements and sanitary works generally, strongly advocated the extension of the practice to all cases, and consequently an Act is now in force under the powers of which the Exchequer Loan Commissioners can advance money to any Urban or Rural Sanitary Authority for terms extending to 60 years—30 years at 3½ per cent., 40 years at 3¾ per cent., and 50 years and upwards, at 4. per cent. Mr. Rawlinson has served on several other royal commissions and special Government inquiries, and is a member of the Army Sanitary Committee, which considers all questions connected with barracks, hospitals, and stations for the army, both at home, in India, and wherever British soldiers are stationed throughout the world. He was decorated with the civil companionship of the Bath (1865), and is at present Chief Engineering Inspector under the Local Government Board, and Commissioner to grant Certificates under the Rivers Pollution Prevention Act. He received the honour of knighthood Aug. 23, 1883.