landed property in the Isle of Purbeck in 1863. In 1872 he assumed the additional name of Pleydell, his mother's maiden name. He founded the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club in 1875, and was its president till his death. In 1876 he was high sheriff of Dorset, and he was a member of the county council from its establishment in 1887 till his death. He was an evangelical churchman. A liberal in politics till 1886, he changed his party in consequence of the home rule bill. He died at his Dorset residence on 3 May 1902.
Mansel-Pleydell married twice: (1) on 6 June 1844, Emily (d. 4 Nov. 1845), daughter of Captain A. Bingham; and (2) on 21 June 1849, Isabel, the daughter of F. C. Acton Colville (sometime captain in the Scots guards and A.D.C. to Lord Lynedoch in the Peninsular war). He celebrated his golden wedding on 21 June 1899. Of three sons, two survived him.
Mansel-Pleydell was a keen student of geology, botany, and ornithology. To the County Museum of Dorset he presented many valuable geological finds made by himself, including a perfect fore paddle of the Pleiosaurus macromerus and the tusks and molars of the rare Elephas meridionalis. He was the author of:
- 'The Flora of Dorsetshire,' 1874; 2nd edit. 1895.
- 'The Birds of Dorsetshire,' 1888.
- 'The Mollusca of Dorsetshire,' 1898.
He also contributed many papers on natural science and archaeology to the journals of learned societies.
[The Times, 5 and 20 May 1902; Who's Who; The Eagle (Mag. of St. John's Coll. Cambridge), June 1902; Quart. Journ. of the Geol. Soc. 1903.]
MANSERGH, JAMES (1834–1905), civil engineer, born on 29 April 1834 at Lancaster, was second son of John Burkit Mansergh of that town. After being educated locally and at Preston, he was sent in 1847 to Queen wood College, Hampshire ('Harmony Hall'), which he entered on the same day as Henry Fawcett [q. v.], afterwards postmaster-general. Mansergh and Fawcett edited together the 'Queenwood Chronicle,' and among their teachers were John Tyndall [q. v.] and (Sir) Edward Frankland [q. v. Suppl. I].
In 1849 Mansergh was apprenticed to Messrs. H. U. McKie and J. Lawson, engineers, of Lancaster. In 1855-9 he was engaged in Brazil as engineer to Mr. E. Price, the contractor for the Dom Pedro II railway; and on his return to England he became a partner of his former master, McKie, in Carlisle. The firm laid out the first sewage-farm in England at Carlisle. The partnership was dissolved in 1860, and from 1802 to 1865 Mansergh was engaged on the construction of the Mid-Wales and the Llandilo and Carmarthen railways. In 1806 he entered into partnership with his brother-in-law, John Lawson, in Westminster. Lawson died in 1873, and thence-forward Mansergh practised alone until he took his two sons into partnership towards the end of his life.
Mansergh specialised chiefly in water-works, and in sewerage and sewage-disposal works. In accordance with advice which he had given the corporation of Birmingham in 1871 and repeated in 1890, the corporation obtained powers to construct impounding reservoirs in the valleys of the Elan and Claerwen rivers, and an aqueduct 73½ miles in length to convey the water to Birmingham. The work was commenced in 1894, and the supply was inaugurated by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra on 21 July 1904. The complete scheme will provide 75,000,000 gallons per day for the use of Birmingham and district, after giving 27,000,000 gallons of compensation-water per day to the River Wye. The total cost of the works up to the present has been about five and three-quarter millions sterling. They have been described recently by Mansergh's sons (Minutes of Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. cxc).
Mansergh also carried out sewerage and sewage-disposal for Southport, Burton-on-Trent, Coventry, Derby, and Plymouth, and water-supply works for Lancaster, Stockton, Middlesbrough, and many other places. His consulting practice and parliamentary work reached large dimensions. He appeared more than six hundred times before parliamentary committees, acted for three hundred and sixty municipalities or local authorities, wrote more than two hundred and fifty reports on sewerage and waterworks alone, and gave evidence at about three hundred public inquiries. In 1889 he reported to the Victorian government on the sewerage of Melbourne and its environs; in 1895 on a scheme for a supply of water from Lake Simcoe for the city of Toronto; and in the same year on the sewerage of Colombo, Ceylon. He prepared two schemes for the sewerage of the Lower Thames valley; to the first, in 1878, was awarded one of three premiums, while the second (prepared in conjunction with Mr. J. C. Melliss) was defeated in Parliament. He was a member of the royal commission on metropolitan
