sible, and not exceeded since. His ‘North Star’ engine, ‘a marvel of symmetry and compactness,’ constructed about 1839, is still at Swindon. His engine called the ‘North Briton,’ constructed in 1846, is the pattern from which all engines for broad-gauged express trains were afterwards designed. In 1843 he invented ‘the suspended link motion with the shifting radius link,’ first fitted to the engine called ‘Great Britain.’ He, with Mr. McNaught, also constructed the earliest indicator used on locomotives. His experiments on atmospheric resistance of trains and internal and rolling friction fully exhibited his inventive genius. For the purpose of his researches he constructed a dynamometer carriage, ‘in which all the results were registered (automatically) upon a large scale, opposite each other on the same roll of paper.’ He read an account of these experiments before the Institution of Civil Engineers on 18 April 1848, and a full report was printed in the ‘Morning Herald’ of the next day. Gooch, as a champion of the broad gauge, was severely criticised by the advocates of the narrow gauge, but the results of his experiments proved true.
In 1864 Gooch resigned his post as locomotive superintendent to inaugurate telegraphic communication between England and America. His efforts were successful, and he despatched the first cable message across the Atlantic in 1866. For his energy in conducting this enterprise he was made a baronet on 15 Nov. 1866. Until the end of his life he was chairman of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, and was long a director of the Anglo-American Company. In 1865 the Great Western Railway was in a critical situation. Its stock stood at 38½, and bankruptcy seemed imminent. Gooch re-entered its service as chairman of the board of directors, and his activity and financial skill rapidly placed the railway on a sound footing. He was deeply interested in the construction of the Severn Tunnel, which was opened in 1887. He remained chairman of the railway till his death, when Great Western stock was quoted at over 160. Gooch also supported the building of the Great Eastern steamship, and was one of her owners when she was purchased for laying the Atlantic cable.
Gooch was M.P. for Cricklade from 1865 to 1885, was a D.L. for Wiltshire, a J.P. for Berkshire, and a prominent freemason, being grand sword-bearer of England, and provincial grand-master of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. He died at his residence, Clewer Park, Berkshire, 15 Oct. 1889, and was buried, 19 Oct., in Clewer churchyard. He married, first, on 22 March 1838, Margaret, daughter of Henry Tanner, esq., of Bishopwearmouth, Durham; she died on 22 May 1868; and secondly, on 17 Sept. 1870, Emily (d. May 1901), youngest daughter of John Burder, esq., of Norwood, Surrey. By his first wife he had four sons and two daughters, the eldest son, Henry Daniel, succeeding as second baronet. A portrait is in the board room of the Great Western Railway, Paddington, and a bust in the shareholders' meeting-room.
[Times, 16 and 21 Oct. 1889; Foster's Baronetage; Men of the Time, 1887; Engineering, 20 Oct. 1889.]
GOOCH, ROBERT, M.D. (1784–1830), physician, born at Yarmouth, Norfolk, in June 1784, was son of Robert Gooch, a sea captain who was grandson of Sir Thomas Gooch [q. v.] He was educated at a private day school, and when fifteen was apprenticed to Giles Borrett, surgeon-apothecary at Yarmouth, who had a great practice, and had shown ability in published observations on hernia. Gooch used to visit a blind Mr. Harley, who gave him a taste for literature and philosophy, which he felt grateful for throughout life, and acknowledged by a bequest large in proportion to his means. When Nelson came to visit the wounded of the battle of Copenhagen, Gooch went round the Yarmouth Hospital with him, and was delighted with the kind words which the admiral addressed to every wounded man. In 1804 he went to the university of Edinburgh, where among his chief friends were Henry Southey [q. v.] and William Knighton [q. v.] In his vacations he studied German at Norwich with William Taylor [q. v.], and became engaged to marry Miss Bolingbroke. He graduated M.D. June 1807, his inaugural dissertation being on rickets. After a tour in the highlands, and some further holiday in Norfolk, he came to London, worked under Astley Cooper, and in 1808 began general practice at Croydon, Surrey. He also wrote in the ‘London Medical Record,’ and married the lady to whom he had been engaged for four years. She died in January 1811, and her child in July of the same year. He left Croydon, took a house in Aldermanbury, and after a tour, in which he became intimate with the poet Southey at Keswick, was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians 6 March 1812 (Munk, Coll. of Phys. iii. 102), and was soon after elected lecturer on midwifery at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In January 1814 he married the sister of Benjamin Travers [q. v.], the surgeon, and in 1816 went to live in Berners Street, where his practice in midwifery and the diseases of women soon became large. His health was
