Soon after his arrival at the Cape he rapidly crushed a rising in Zululand, which had been formally annexed in May 1887. The Zulus fled into the territories of the South African repubUc, where they dispersed. Dinizulu and his chiefs ultimately surrendered to the British, and were banished to St. Helena. For some eight months in 1889-90 Smyth acted as governor of Cape Colony between the departure of Sir Hercules Robinson, afterwards Lord Rosmead [q. v. Suppl. I], and the arrival of Sir Henry Brougham Loch, afterwards Lord Loch [q. V. Suppl. I]. Smyth was created C.M.G. in January 1889, and K.C.M.G. in 1890, when he was appointed governor of Malta. He was promoted general on 19 May 1891, and on 20 Dec. 1893 his jubilee in the Royal Artillery service was celebrated at Malta. He left the island at the end of the year on retirement, and settled at his father's house, which he had inherited, St. John's Lodge, Stone, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
Smyth became a colonel commandant of the royal regiment on 17 Oct. 1894. He was honorary colonel of the royal Malta militia, a J.P. for Buckinghamshire, and fellow both of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Geographical Society. He died on 18 Sept. 1906 at his own house, and was buried in Stone churchyard. He married at Lillington, near Leamington in Warwickshire, on 14 April 1874, Helen Constance, daughter of John Whitehead Greaves, of Berecote, near Leamington. His widow survives him without issue. A portrait painted by Lowes Dickinson is in Lady Smyth's possession. Memorial tablets have been erected in the garrison church at Woolwich and in the church at Stone.
[Royal Artillery Records; private information; The Times, 20 Sept. 1906; the Biographer.]
SNELUS, GEORGE JAMES (1837–1906), metallurgist, born on 25 June 1837 in Camden Town, London, N., was son of James and Susannah Snelus; his father, a master builder, died when George was about seven. He was trained at the St. John's College, Battersea, for the profession of a school teacher, but subsequently, whilst teaching in a school at Macclesfield, he attended lectures on science at the Owens College, Manchester (now the Victoria University, Manchester), where he came under the influence of Sir Henry Roscoe. In 1864, on winning a Royal Albert scholarship, he entered on a three years' course at the Royal School of Mines, gaining at its conclusion the associateship in metallurgy and mining together with the De la Beche medal for mining. On the recommendation of Dr. John Percy [q. v.] he was appointed chemist to the Dowlais Ironworks, and he held the post for four years. In 1871 he was commissioned by the Iron and Steel Institute to proceed to the United States to investigate the chemistry of the Danks's rotary puddling process, and the report which he subsequently presented on the subject proved of the utmost value (Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, vol. i. 1872).
It was during this investigation that Snelus conceived the possibility of completely eliminating phosphorus from molten pig iron by oxidation in a basic lined enclosure. In 1872 he took out a British patent for such a process, afterwards proving by actual trial the soundness of the underlying idea. In a Bessemer converter, lined with overburnt lime, he succeeded in almost entirely eliminating phosphorus from 3 to 4 ton charges of molten phosphoric pig iron; in these trials he made the first specimens of 'basic' steel by the pneumatic process. But certain practical difficulties attendant upon the prescribed use of lime he never fully overcame, and it was not until the 'basic' process was finally developed in 1879 by Messrs. Thomas and Gilchrist (see Thomas, Sidney Gilchrist) that it became commercially practicable. For the conspicuous part which he had played in regard to this invention he was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, and the Iron and Steel Institute awarded him, jointly with Thomas, the Bessemer gold medal. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1887. Another conspicuous contribution to metallurgical chemistry was his proof of the true practical value of the molybdate method for the determination of phosphorus in steel, a process which is now universally employed in steel-works laboratories.
In 1872 he was appointed works manager (and subsequently general manager) of the West Cumberland Iron and Steel Company, Workington, where he remained until 1900. He also became director of several mining concerns in Cumberland. In 1902 he took out a patent for the manufacture of iron and steel in a basic lined rotary furnace, experiments upon which were being carried out at the time of his death by the Distington Iron Company, but were afterwards discontinued.
