Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Bruce, George Barclay
BRUCE, Sir GEORGE BARCLAY (1821–1908), civil engineer, born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on 1 Oct. 1821, was younger son of John Bruce, founder of the Percy Street Academy. John Collingwood Bruce [q. v. Suppl. I] was his eldest brother. Robert Stephenson [q. v.] was among his father's pupils, and Bruce, who was educated in his father's school, served five years' apprenticeship (1836-41) in the locomotive works of Messrs. Robert Stephenson & Company. After two years' experience on the construction of the Newcastle and Darlington railway, he spent a term as resident engineer on the Northampton and Peterborough line, and then was appointed, at the age of twenty-four, by the engineers-in-chief Messrs. Robert Stephenson and Thomas Elliott Harrison [q. v.], resident engineer of the Royal Border bridge, one of the largest stone bridges in Great Britain, which carries the North Eastern railway across the Tweed at Berwick, on twenty-eight semi-circular arches, each of sixty-one feet six inches span. It was opened by Queen Victoria in August 1850, and in 1851 Bruce presented an account of it to the Institution of Civil Engineers (Proc. x. 219), for which he was awarded a Telford medal. While next engaged on the construction of the Haltwhistle and Alston Moor branch of the Newcastle and Carlisle railway, Bruce was called to India, and was thenceforth largely concerned with Indian railways. After working on the Calcutta section of the East Indian railway until 1853, he served as chief engineer of the Madras railway until 1856, when ill-health compelled his return homo. He had then laid out and partly constructed about 500 miles of the Madras railway, employing free native labourers under proper supervision instead of depending on contractors. On 5 Dec. 1857 Robert Stephenson presided at a dinner in London, when Bruce was presented by his associates on the Madras Railway Company with an address and with plate to the value of 515l. In 1857 he wrote a paper, 'Description of the Method of Building Bridges upon Brick Wells in Sandy Foundations, illustrated by the Viaduct over the River Poiney, on the Line of the Madras Railway' (Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. xvi. 449).
From 1856 Bruce was established as a consulting engineer in Westminster, from 1888 in partnership with Mr. Robert White. He was consulting engineer for fifty years to the metre-gauge South Indian railway, and from 1894 to the Great Indian Peninsula and Indian Midland railways of five feet six inches gauge the broader gauge which Bruce preferred.
Bruce's work included the Kettering, Thrapston and Huntingdon, the Peterborough, Wisbech and Sutton, the Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont, and the Stonehouse and Nailsworth railway lines. Abroad he constructed the Tilsit-Inters burg, East Prussian, and Berlin-Gorlitz lines. During 1873-6 he constructed works for the shipment of ore from the Rio Tinto copper-mines at Huelva in Spain, including a railway and a pier of considerable magnitude and novel construction. He also did engineering work for the East Argentine railway, the Buenos Ayres Grand National tramways, and the Beira railway in South Africa.
Bruce was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1850, became a member of council in 1871, and was president in the Jubilee year 1887 (Address in Minutes of Proceedings, xci. 1). He served a second term as president in 1888, when he was knighted. In 1883, while vice-president, he represented the institution in Canada at the opening of the Northern Pacific railway (cf. Proc. lxxv. 1). In 1889 he was created an officer of the legion of honour of France. He became a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1874, and served on the royal commissions on the water-supply of London of 1892 and 1897.
Outside his professional work Bruce was deeply interested in the Presbyterian church in England and public education. To the extension of the Presbyterian church at home and abroad he gave time and money liberally, and he actively promoted the union of presbyterians in England, which was effected in 1876. At Wark-on-Tyne he built a church and manse. His chief services to the cause of public education were rendered as a member of the school board for London, on which he represented Marylebone from 1882 to 1885.
Bruce died at his residence, 64 Boundary Road, St. John's Wood, on 25 Aug. 1908. He married in 1849 Helen Norah, daughter of Alexander H. Simpson, solicitor, of Paisley, by whom he had one son and four daughters.
His portrait in oils by W. M. Palin was presented to the Institution of Civil Engineers by members in 1889.
[Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. clxxiv.; The Times, 26 Aug. 1908; Morning Herald, 7 Dec. 1857.]