Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Boyle, Richard Vicars
BOYLE, RICHARD VICARS (1822–1908), civil engineer, born in Dublin on 14 March 1822, was third son of Vicars Armstrong Boyle of that city, a descendant of a branch of the Boyles of Kelburn, Ayrshire, who had migrated to the north of Ireland in the seventeenth century. His mother was Sophia, eldest daughter of David Courtney of Dublin. After education at a private school and two years' service on the trigonometrical survey of Ireland he became a pupil to Charles Blacker Vignoles [q. v.]. On the expiration of his articles he was engaged on railway construction in Ireland, at first as assistant to William Dargan [q. v.], who employed him on the Belfast and Armagh and Dublin and Drogheda railways. In 1845, under Sir John Benjamin Macneill [q. v.], he surveyed and laid out part of the Great Southern and Western railway, and in 1846-7 was chief engineer for the Longford and Sligo railway. In the autumn of 1852 he laid out railways and waterworks in Spain as chief assistant to George Willoughby Hemans (son of the poetess).
In 1853 he was appointed a district engineer on the East Indian railway. At first he was stationed at Patna, and was thence transferred to Arrah (Shahabad). At the outbreak of the Indian mutiny, Boyle honourably distinguished himself. When, towards the end of July 1857, the native troops in the cantonments at Dinapore, about twenty-five miles from Arrah, mutinied and deserted, Boyle fortified a detached two -story house fifty feet square standing in the same compound as his own private residence, and provisioned it to withstand a siege. Here on Sunday, 26 July, sixteen Europeans and about forty Sikhs took refuge, and the following morning the mutineers, having crossed the river Son and taken possession of Arrah, besieged the little garrison. But, thanks to the courage and fidelity of the Sikhs, the inmates defended the house successfully against about 3000 men until sunset on 2 August, when the approach of the relieving force, under Major (Sir) Vincent Eyre [q. v.], from Buxar drew off the rebels and left the besieged free. Boyle was thereupon appointed field-officer to Eyre's force, and was engaged in restoring broken communications and bridges. A few days later he was disabled by a kick from a horse. When somewhat recovered he was summoned to Calcutta, and travelling down the Ganges in the steamer River Bird was wrecked on the Sunderbunds. After a sea-trip to Penang and Singapore to recruit his health, he returned to Arrah early in 1858. For his services Boyle received the mutiny medal and a grant of land near Arrah. In 1868, after leaving the East Indian railway company, he became a first-class executive engineer in the Indian public works department, but was soon recalled to England by private affairs. He was made C.S.I, in 1869. From 1872 to 1877 he was in Japan as engineer-in-chief for the imperial Japanese railways. With English assistants he laid out an extensive system of railways in Japan and left about seventy miles of completed line in full working order.
To the Institution of Civil Engineers, of which he became an associate on 10 Jan. 1854 and member on 14 Feb. 1860, he presented in 1882 a paper on the Rokugo river bridge, Japan (Proc. Inst. C.E. lxviii. 216). He joined the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1874. On retiring in 1877 from professional work he spent much time in travelling. He died at 3 Stanhope Terrace, Hyde Park, on 3 Jan. 1908, and was buried at Kensal Green. He married in 1853 Eleonore Anne, daughter of W. Hack of Dieppe, and had issue one son who died in infancy.
[Min. Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. clxxiv.; Biographer, May , 1898; C. Ball, History of the Indian Mutiny, ii.; G. B. Malleson's Recreations of an Indian Official, 1892.]