Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jones, John (1835-1877)
JONES, JOHN (1835–1877), geologist and engineer, was born in the neighbourhood of Wolverhampton in 1835. While young he began to study the rocks of his native district, and published a useful and trustworthy little treatise on the ‘Geology of South Staffordshire.’ Jones was secretary of the South Staffordshire Ironmasters' Association from an early age until 1866, when he was appointed secretary to the Cleveland Ironmasters' Association, and removed to Middlesbrough. In his new position Jones took an active part in the formation of the board of arbitration and conciliation for the iron trade of the north of England. He acted on this board, as the representative of the employers, until his death. He was also secretary of the Middlesbrough chamber of commerce and of the British Iron Trade Association; while shortly before his death he was appointed secretary to the Association of Agricultural Engineers. He will probably be best remembered as the founder of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1868, for which he continued to act as secretary and editor of its journal until his death. Among other useful work, Jones established a weekly iron exchange at Middlesbrough. He founded and edited two or three newspapers connected with the iron trade, of which the ‘Iron and Coal Trades Review’ was perhaps the best known. He was elected an associate of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 1869, and became a full member of the same body in 1873.
Jones died at Saltburn-by-Sea on 6 June 1877, at the age of forty-two, after a long illness. His savings had all been embarked in the iron industries of the north of England, and the companies in which he had speculated having failed, he died penniless. A fund, however, was raised by the members of the Iron and Steel Institute for the benefit of his wife and children.
Jones wrote about twenty papers on scientific (mainly geological) subjects, the first of which, ‘On Rhynchonella acuta and its Varieties,’ appeared in the ‘Geologist’ for 1858. At the Middlesbrough meeting of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 1871 Jones read an able paper on the ‘Geology of the Cleveland Iron District’ (Proceedings of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers for 1871, p. 184). His other papers are principally contained in the ‘Proceedings of the Cotteswold Club’ and in the ‘Intellectual Observer.’
[Athenæum, 23 June 1877; Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 1877, p. 414, and App. C, p. viii.]