School of Music, Glasgow; later he was conductor of the Glasgow Select Choir, for which he wrote, among other things, the choral ballade, 'Barbara Allan.' When Professor Gilbert Murray's 'Hippolytus' was staged at Glasgow in 1905 he composed special music for it of great beauty and appropriateness. This was followed by a dramatic cantata, 'Tamlane,' a sublimation of the old Border spirit. His original settings of Scots lyrics and his arrangements of folk-songs show a true insight into the spirit of national song. Many arrangements are included in the 'Dunedin Collection of Scots Songs' (1908), which he edited. In 1907 he collaborated with the duke of Argyll in ' The Scottish Tribute to France,' not as yet (1912) performed, for chorus and orchestra; and at his death he had practically finished a grand opera provisionally entitled 'Fionn and Tera,' to a libretto by the duke; the orchestration was completed by Mr. David Stephen. Many other works were left in MS., including 'The Oracle' and other light operas, a romantic opera, 'Flora Macdonald,' several cantatas, orchestral, piano and violin pieces, and songs. He died prematurely, unmarried, at Edinburgh on 18 June 1909. Imbued with the national sentiment, he showed much originality, versatility, and inspiration.
[Private information; personal knowledge; Musical Herald, July 1909 (with portrait); Ernest Kuhe in Scottish Musical Monthly, July 1894 (with portrait).]
DU CANE, Sir EDMUND FREDERICK (1830–1903), major-general, R.E., and prison reformer, born at Colchester, Essex, on 23 March 1830, was youngest child in a family of four sons and two daughters of Major Richard Du Cane (1788–1832), 20th light dragoons, of Huguenot descent, who served in the Peninsular war. His mother was Eliza, daughter of Thomas Ware of Woodfort, Mallow, co. Cork.
Du Cane, after education at the grammar school, Dedham, Essex, until 1843, and at a private coaching establishment at Wimbledon (1843-6), entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in November 1846, and passed out at the head of his batch at the end of 1848, having taken first place in mathematics and fortification, and receiving a commission as second lieutenant in the royal engineers on 19 Dec. 1848. He joined at Chatham, and in December 1850 was posted to a company of royal sappers and miners commanded by Captain Henry Charles Cunliffe-Owen [q. v.] at Woolwich. Du Cane was assistant superintendent of the foreign side of the International Exhibition of 1851 and assistant secretary to the juries of awards, and with the rest of the staff was the guest in Paris of the prince president, Louis Napoleon. From 1851 to 1856 Du Cane was employed in organising convict labour on public works in the colony of Swan River or Western Australia, which was then first devoted to penal purposes under the command of Captain (afterwards Sir) Edmund Henderson [q. v. Suppl. I]. Promoted first lieutenant on 17 Feb. 1854, he was stationed at Guildford in charge of the works in the eastern district of the colony. He was made a magistrate of the colony and a visiting magistrate of convict stations. Although recalled early in 1856 by the requirements of the Crimean war, Du Cane arrived home on 21 June to find the war at an end, and joined for duty at the war office, under the inspector- general of fortification, in August 1856. He was soon employed upon the designs and estimates for the new defences proposed for the dockyards and naval bases of the United Kingdom. Promoted second captain on 16 April 1858, he during the next five years designed most of the new land works at Dover, and the chain of land forts at Plymouth extending for five miles from Fort Staddon, in the east, across the Plym, by Laira, to Ernsettle on the Tamar.
In 1863, on the recommendation of Lieutenant-colonel Henderson, who had become chairman of the board of directors of convict prisons, Du Cane was appointed director of convict prisons, as well as an inspector of military prisons. He administered the system of penal servitude as it was reformed by the Prisons Act of 1865, and made the arrangements for additional prison accommodation consequent on the abolition of transportation in 1867. In 1869 Du Cane succeeded Henderson as chairman of the board of directors of convict prisons, surveyor-general of prisons, and inspector-general of military prisons. On 5 Feb. 1864 he was promoted first captain in his corps; on 5 July 1872 major; on 11 Dec. 1873 lieut.-colonel; and four years later brevet-colonel. He was placed on the supernumerary list in August 1877.
The charge of the colonial convict prisons was transferred to Du Cane in 1869. A strong advocate of the devotion of prison labour to works of national utility, on which he read a paper before the Society of Arts in 1871, Du Cane provided for
