and Lord Hardinge, the viceroy, in the gradation of responsibility of officials in India for the shortcomings of the expedition. The main grounds of censure were: the shortage of medical personnel and supplies; the delay in investigating the unofficial reports of medical break-down, which were subsequently confirmed; the deficiency, after the offensive movement towards Bagdad, of transport by water for the greatly increased forces, and of provision for the sick and wounded. The commission also blamed Duff for not quitting his post and visiting Mesopotamia or Bombay in order to ascertain what was happening, though he appears to have felt himself bound to stay with the viceroy, having no deputy to leave in charge of the army department. The commission’s censures were, however, qualified in part by the statement that ‘the combination of duties of commander-in-chief and military member of council cannot adequately be performed by any one man in time of war’ [Report, p. 116]. Duff had, in fact, been set a task wellnigh impossible in the circumstances, and it is due to him to recognize—though he was too generous to avail himself of this defence—that in many matters he is shown to have suffered for the failures of subordinates. The Mesopotamian expedition differed from any war-scheme contemplated by previous Indian administrations, and in conjunction with so many other undertakings it involved difficulties which would have strained the most efficient organization.
Duff did not live to complete the defence which he proposed to write. From the spring of 1915 the mental strain of the war had gradually worn down his health, and he suffered much from sleeplessness. When he returned to England the effects were evident to those who had known him before 1914, He died in London 20 January 1918.
Duff married in India in 1877 Grace Maria, daughter of Oswald Wood, Indian civil service, of Glenalmond, Perthshire, and had two sons and one daughter; his daughter died in 1897, and the elder son, Captain Beauchamp Oswald Duff, fell in action near Ypres 7 November 1914.
[East India Army Administration. Correspondence presented to Parliament 1905-1906, Cd. 2572, 2615, 2718, 2842; Official Army Lists and India Office List; Naval and Military Dispatches, London Gazette, January—December, 1916; Mesopotamia Commission Report, 17 May 1917, Cd. 8610; Sir C. Townshend, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1920; personal knowledge.]
DUNLOP, JOHN BOYD (1840-1921), inventor and pioneer of the pneumatic rubber tyre, was born 5 February 1840 at Dreghorn, Ayrshire, of a farming family. As a boy he attended the local parish school and, being considered too delicate for farm work, was allowed to continue his studies at Irvine’s Academy, Edinburgh. Reared in a farming atmosphere, it was natural that he should be interested in horses, and later he studied veterinary surgery so successfully that at the age of nineteen he secured his diploma. For eight years he worked at his profession in Edinburgh, and in 1867 migrated to Belfast, where he established a practice in Glouchester Street. His personal and professional qualities brought success, and within twenty years the practice was one of the largest in Ireland.
The invention which made Dunlop’s name famous was devised in October 1887. His son John, then nine years of age, who had a tricycle fitted with solid rubber tyres, complained of being jarred as he rode over the rough setts with which the streets were paved. Dunlop’s mind was attracted by the problem. He obtained a disk of wood and, being skilled at working in rubber, constructed an air-tube and laid it round the periphery of the disk, fastening it down by a covering of linen tacked to the wood. He tested this disk against one of the tricycle wheels by throwing the two along the cobbles of a long courtyard, and the enormously greater resilience and liveliness of the air-tyred disk was at once obvious. Developing the idea further, Dunlop made two rims of wood, fastened air-tubes and covers to them, and fixed them over the existing tyres of the rear wheels of his son’s machine. A trial of this device in February 1888 proving eminently successful, a new tricycle frame was ordered, for which wheels with pneumatic tyres were built and fitted; and a demonstration took place before several Belfast business men, with the result that, on 28 July 1888, the first application for a provisional protection was lodged at the Patent Office. This was finally accepted on 7 December.
After exhaustive tests on a bicycle, Dunlop began to procure from Edinburgh tyres made to his specification and, in conjunction with Messrs. Edlin & Co., of Belfast, who built the tricycle, he put on the market machines complete with pneumatic tyres. A racing bicycle was also built to the order of W. Hume, captain of a local cycling club, who rode the new machine at a local sports meeting
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