Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Shelford, William
SHELFORD, Sir WILLIAM (1834–1905), civil engineer, born at Lavenham, Suffolk, on 11 April 1834, was eldest son of William Heard Shelford (d. 1856), fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and rector of Preston St. Mary, Suffolk. His grandfather and great-grandfather were also clergymen of the same name. His mother was Emily Frost, eldest daughter of Richard Snape, rector of Brent Eleigh. Of his brothers, Thomas became a member of the legislative council of the Straits Settlements, and was made C.M.G., while Leonard Edmund was appointed prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1889 and vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, London, in 1903.
In Feb. 1850 Shelford went to Marlborough College, leaving at midsummer 1852 to become an engineer. He was first apprenticed to a mechanical engineer in Scotland, but in 1854 he became a pupil of William Gale, waterworks engineer, of Glasgow. During his two years' term of service he attended lectures at Glasgow University. In 1856, being thrown on his own resources by his father's death, he left Glasgow to seek his fortune in London, and in December of that year he entered the office of (Sir) John Fowler [q. v. Suppl. I] as an assistant engineer, remaining in his service until 1860. He was engaged upon the Nene river navigation and improvement works, of which he was in due course placed in charge, until 1859, when he was transferred to London and was engaged on the laying-out and construction of the first section of the Metropolitan railway. Leaving Fowler's service in the autumn of 1860, Shelford became an assistant to F. T. Turner, joint engineer with Joseph Cubitt of the London, Chatham and Dover railway. After employment on various surveys he was appointed resident engineer on the high-level railway to the Crystal Palace, an act of parliament for which was obtained in 1862. With the exception of the ornamentation of the stations, he designed and superintended all the engineering works of that line. In 1862–5 he was also engaged, under Turner, as resident engineer on the eastern section of the London, Chatham and Dover railway, to Blackheath Hill. In 1865 he started practice on his own account in partnership with Henry Robinson, who was afterwards professor of engineering at King's College, London. The work carried out by the firm during the next ten years included the railways, waterworks, sewage-works and pumping- and winding-engines, shafts, &c., for collieries and mines at home and abroad. In 1869 he visited Sicily and installed machinery and plant for working sulphur mines there, which had previously been worked by very primitive methods. For his services he was made a chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Italy.
The partnership was terminated in 1875, and thenceforward Shelford practised at 35a Great George Street, Westminster, taking his third son, Frederic, into partnership in 1899, and relinquishing work in 1904. His practice during these twenty-nine years covered an unusually wide field. In 1881 Shelford was appointed engineer of the Hull, Barnsley and West Riding Junction railway, which was designed to connect a new (Alexandra) dock at Hull with the Barnsley and West Riding districts. The Hull and Barnsley railway, which involved much difficult engineering work, was Shelford's most important piece of railway construction at home. The line authorised by the original act of parliament, which was sixty-six miles in length, was opened in June 1885, and extensions to Huddersfield and Halifax were made subsequently.
Shelford, who was in much request as an engineering witness, was consulting engineer to the corporation of Edinburgh in connection with the enlargement of Waverley Station and the attempt of the Caledonian Railway Company to carry its line into Edinburgh. Other work in Scotland included the Brechin and Edzell railway, which he carried out in 1893–5.
He reported on many railway schemes abroad, visiting for the purpose Canada in 1885, Italy in 1889, and the Argentine in 1890. With Sir Frederick Bramwell [q. v. Suppl. II] he was consulting engineer to the Winnipeg and Hudson's Bay railway, and under their direction forty miles of this line from Winnipeg were completed in Jan. 1887. His chief work abroad and the main work of his later years was the construction of railways in West Africa, in which he acted as consulting engineer to the crown agents for the colonies. After preliminary surveys, begun in 1893, a line of 2 ft. 6 in. gauge from Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Songo Town was commenced in March 1896 and opened in 1899. This line was gradually extended until, in Aug. 1905, shortly before Shelford's death, it had reached Baiima, 220 miles from Freetown. In the Gold Coast Colony a line of 3 ft. 6 in. gauge from Sekondi to Tarkwa was begun in 1898 and completed in May 1901. By October 1903 the line had been extended as far as Kumasi, 168 miles from Sekondi. In the colony of Lagos a line from Lagos to Ibadan (123 miles) was completed in March 1901. A short railway, six miles in length, from Sierra Leone to the heights above Freetown, was opened in 1904, and road-bridges were built to connect the island of Lagos with the mainland. On Shelford's retirement in 1904 Sir William MacGregor, formerly governor of Lagos, acknowledged Shelford's services to the colony, and how by his skill and perseverance he had overcome the formidable obstacles of the unhealthy climate, the density of the tropical forests which the lines traversed, and the difficulties of landing railway material.
From an early period Shelford interested himself in the engineering works of rivers and estuaries, with which his principal contributions to the literature of his profession dealt. In 1869 he presented to the Institution of Civil Engineers a paper ‘On the Outfall of the River Humber,’ for which he received a Telford medal and premium. In 1879 he examined the River Tiber and reported upon a modification of a scheme proposed by Garibaldi for the diversion of the floods of that river. For his paper presented in 1885 to the institution, ‘On Rivers flowing into Tideless Seas, illustrated by the River Tiber,’ he was awarded a Telford premium.
Shelford's colonial services were recognised by the honour of the C.M.G. in 1901 and the K.C.M.G. in 1904. He was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 10 April 1866, and from 1887 to 1897 and from 1901 till death was a member of the council. In 1888 he was a vice-president of the mechanical science section of the British Association, before which he read two papers, in 1887 on ‘The Improvement of the Access to the Mersey Ports,’ and in 1885 on ‘Some Points for the Consideration of English Engineers with Reference to the Design of Girder Bridges.’ He was a fellow of the Royal Geographical and other societies, and served upon the engineering standards committee as a representative of the crown agents for the colonies.
After his retirement from practice he resided at 49 Argyll Road, Kensington, where he died on 3 Oct. 1905. He was buried at Brompton cemetery. He married in 1863 Anna, daughter of Thomas Sopwith, F.R.S. [q. v.], who survived him; by her he had eight children.
A portrait by Seymour Lucas, which was subscribed for by his staff for presentation to him but was not finished at his death, belongs to his widow.
[Life of Sir William Shelford, by Anna E. Shelford (his second daughter), printed for private circulation, 1909; Minutes of Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. clxiii. 384; The Engineer, 6 Oct. 1905.]