Great Western railway bridges. In roofs he executed those at the Paddington station, at the Waterloo station, and at the New Street station, Birmingham, and slip roofs for several of the royal dockyards. The railways upon which he was engaged included the Cork and Bandon, the Thames and Medway, the Portadown and Dungannon, the East Kent, the Lyons and Geneva (eastern section), the Mâcon and Geneva (eastern section), and the Wiesbaden and the Zealand (Denmark). He was also one of the constructors of the Berlin waterworks. Fox was engineer to the Queensland railways, the Cape Town railways, the Wynberg railway (Cape of Good Hope), the Toronto narrow-gauge railway, and (with Berkley) the Indian Tramway Company. Fox & Sons were engineers to the comprehensive scheme of high-level lines at Battersea for the London and Brighton, Chatham and Dover, and London and South-Western companies, with the approach to the Victoria station, Pimlico, including the widening of the Victoria railway bridge over the Thames. Fox was a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers, and for many years a member of the council of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He was an original life member of the British Association, a member of the Society of Arts, and a fellow of the Royal Asiatic and Royal Geographical Societies. Early in his career he took an active part in the affairs of the Society of Arts, and, in conjunction with his elder brother Douglas, who was well known as a medical practitioner at Derby, he elaborated the process of casting in elastic moulds, for which the society's silver medal was awarded.
Fox married in 1830 Mary, second daughter of Joseph Brookhouse, by whom he had three sons and one daughter. The two elder sons, Charles and Francis Fox, constitute the firm of Sir Charles Fox & Sons, civil and consulting engineers. Fox was of a most urbane and generous disposition. He died at Blackheath 14 June 1874.
[Engineering, 17 July 1874; Ann. Reg. 1874.]
FOX, CHARLES (1797–1878), scientific writer, seventh son of Robert Were Fox, by Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Tregelles of Falmouth, and younger brother of Robert Were Fox, F.R.S. [q. v.], was born at Falmouth 22 Dec. 1797, and educated at home. He became a partner in the firm of G. C. and R. W. Fox & Co., merchants and shipping agents at Falmouth, and was also a partner in the Perran Foundry Company at Perranarworthal, Cornwall, where from 1824 to 1847 he was the manager of the foundry and the engine manufactory.
He was one of the projectors and founders of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society at Falmouth in 1833, and, in conjunction with Sir Charles Lemon, led the way to a movement which resulted in the offer of a premium of 600l. for the introduction of a man-engine into Cornish mines, the result of which was the erection of the first man-engine at Tresavean mine in 1842. This machine was a great success, and its invention has been the means of saving much unnecessary labour to the tin and copper miners in ascending and descending the mine shafts. He was president of the Polytechnic Society for 1871 and 1872, in connection with which institution he founded in 1841 the Lander prizes for maps and essays on geographical districts. He was president of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall from 1864 to 1867, and president of the Miners' Association of Cornwall and Devon from 1861 to 1863. He interested himself particularly in such discoveries, philological and antiquarian, as tended to throw light on Bible history, and with this object in view he visited Palestine, Egypt, and Algiers. In all branches of natural history he was deeply read, making collections and examining with the microscope the specimens illustrative of each department.
On the introduction of boring machines into mines he was one of the first to recognise their use, and as early as 1867 he wrote papers on this subject. He made many communications to the three Cornish societies, as well as to the ‘Mining Journal’ and ‘Hardwicke's Science Gossip.’ ‘Extracts from the Spiritual Diary of John Rutty, M.D.,’ was edited by Fox in 1840, and in 1870 he wrote a small work, ‘On the Ministry of Women.’ He was largely interested in Cornish mines throughout his life, and latterly was much impoverished by the failure of the greater number of these undertakings. For the last twenty-five years of his life he resided at Trebah, near Falmouth, and died there 18 April 1878, and was buried in the Friends' cemetery at Budock 23 April. He married, 20 Dec. 1825, Sarah, only daughter of William Hustler. She was born at Apple Hall, Bradford, Yorkshire, 8 Aug. 1800, and died at Trebah 19 Feb. 1882. Her writings were: ‘A Metrical Version of the Book of Job,’ 1852–4; ‘Poems, Original and Translated,’ 1863; ‘Catch who can, or Hide and Seek, Original Double Acrostics,’ 1869; and ‘The Matterhorn Sacrifice, a Poem,’ in ‘Macmillan's Magazine,’ 1865.
