Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Wolfe-Barry, John Wolfe
WOLFE-BARRY, Sir JOHN WOLFE (1836–1918), civil engineer, was the youngest son of Sir Charles Barry [q.v.], the architect of the Houses of Parliament. He assumed the additional surname of Wolfe in 1898. He was born in London 7 December 1836, and educated at Trinity College, Glenalmond, and King's College, London. He then became a pupil of Sir John Hawkshaw [q.v.], under whom he subsequently acted as assistant resident engineer for the railway bridges and stations at Charing Cross and Cannon Street, London. In 1867 he began a long and disguished career as a consulting civil engineer; for many years before his death his wide experience, sound judgement, and untiring energy made him the leader of his profession in Great Britain. He was created K.C.B. in 1897.
Only a brief account can be given here of the principal works for which he and his firm were responsible. He was engineer for the Earl's Court station, and for the extension of the District Railway to Ealing; also, with Sir John Hawkshaw, for the completion of the Inner Circle Railway to Aldgate and Whitechapel, a work involving great technical difficulties. In 1899 he persuaded the metropolitan companies to experiment with electric traction, and the results were so satisfactory that electric traction is now widely adopted. He was engineer of the Blackfriars arched bridge, and of the King Edward VII bridge at Kew. In association with Sir Horace Jones [q.v.] he constructed the Tower bridge, completed in 1894, with a bascule opening span. The ponderous bascules had to be erected in a vertical position so that navigation should not be arrested. To prevent delay to foot passengers when the bascules were raised, a special high-level foot-bridge was provided, but the opening and closing of the span takes so short a time that the footway is no longer used. Wolfe-Barry was almost continuously occupied from 1885 with the construction of the Barry docks and railway in South Wales, and with other similar undertakings, including the Alexandra dock, Newport, the lock entrance, dock, and graving dock at Immingham, near Grimsby, and the extensions of the Surrey commercial docks (1895–1906). With Sir Benjamin Baker [q.v.] and Mr. Hurtzig he was engineer for the Avonmouth docks, near Bristol, completed in 1908.
Wolfe-Barry acted as consulting engineer to many railways and public undertakings, and was a member of many royal commissions, including the Port of London Commission. He was one of the three members of the court of arbitration which arranged, under the terms of the Metropolitan Water Act (1902), the purchase of the eight London water companies. From 1892 to 1906 he was one of the two representatives of the British government on the International Suez Canal Commission. He was specially interested in the problems of town traffic, served on the royal commission on London traffic (1903–1905), and expressed his views on the subject in two addresses delivered to the Society of Arts (1899). He contributed a paper to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1868 on the city terminus of the Charing Cross Railway, and, with Sir Benjamin Baker, one on the metropolitan railways in 1895. His other publications were Railway Appliances (1874–1892), Lectures on Railways and Locomotives, 1882, The Tower Bridge, 1894.
Not the least important of Wolfe-Barry's services was the part which he took in founding (1901–1902) the Engineering Standards Committee, now the British Engineering Standards Association. Of this body he remained the chairman till his death. He saw that, as the adoption of standards must be voluntary, it was necessary to co-operate, in formulating them, with the great technical societies, with representatives of the manufacturers and the consumers, with the spending departments of the government, and with public companies and registration societies. The great advantage of the standardizing policy is that it cheapens and simplifies the process of manufacture and renders mass production possible. To give only two examples of the economies which have been effected: it has been found possible to reduce the number of patterns of tramway-rail from seventy to nine, and one uniform specification for Portland cement has been found to combine the best qualities of the many different specifications formerly in use. The principle of standardization has been extended to almost every class of engineering production, and the example of Great Britain in this respect is now being followed by other countries.
Wolfe-Barry had many interests and activities outside his professional work. He was much interested in technical and scientific education. He was chairman of the City and Guilds of London Institute for promoting technical education, and afterwards on the governing body of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, in which the Central Engineering College of the Guilds of London has been merged. He was on the senate of the university of London, and took a prominent part in the establishment of the National Physical Laboratory. He took a deep interest in the Institution of Civil Engineers, of which he was a member for fifty-four years; he sat on its council for forty years, and held the office of president for two years; it was at his instance that an examination test was prescribed for candidates for membership.
Wolfe-Barry married in 1874 Rosalind Grace, youngest daughter of the Rev. Evan Edward Rowsell, rector of Hambledon, Surrey, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. He died at Chelsea 22 January 1918.
Wolfe-Barry's portrait was painted by Sir Hubert von Herkomer in 1900.
[Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xciv, A, 1917–1918; Engineering, 25 January 1918.]