Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/194

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the building was opened in July 1879. A festival in celebration of the centenary of Stephenson's birth was held at Newcastle on 9 June 1881, when a medal was struck in his honour (W. Duncan, The Stephenson Centenary).

Several statues have been erected in Stephenson's honour. A fine one by Bailey stands in the great hall of Euston Station. Another by Gibson was placed in St. George's Hall, Liverpool, in 1844, and a third by Lough is at Newcastle near the High Level Bridge. There are two oil paintings of him by John Lucas at the Institution of Civil Engineers; in one he is painted along with his son. A third portrait by Pickersgill is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Schools were built by way of memorial at Willington, where his son Robert [q. v.], who is separately noticed, was born.

With his high mental attainments Stephenson possessed great physical strength and powers of endurance. In his younger days he was fond of showing his muscular development by feats of strength, and even when very advanced in life he was a good wrestler. His courage and perfect confidence in his work and judgment were shown by his venturing with his trial safety lamps into parts of the mine purposely rendered dangerous. The services that he rendered to the well-being of mankind by his invention of steam locomotion and railways place him among the world's greatest benefactors.

[The Life of George Stephenson, by Mr. Samuel Smiles, appeared in 1857, and, in a revised shape, formed the third volume of the same writer's Lives of the Engineers. In this form it constitutes the standard authority. See also notice of life and character by J. Scott Russell, Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. 1849; obituary notice by J. Field, Pres. Inst. Civ. Eng., Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. viii. 49; Memoir by Hyde Clarke in Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal, 1848, pp. 297, 329, 361; Tredgold's Steam Engine; R. L. Galloway's Steam Engine and its Inventors; Summerside's Reminiscences of George Stephenson, 1878; cf. Nature, xxiv. 121–3, an article on the centenary of Stephenson's birth.]

T. H. B.

Stephenson, Henry Palfrey (1826–1890), civil engineer, son of Major John Stephenson of the 6th dragoon guards, was born at Portobello, near Edinburgh, on 27 March 1826. He was educated at a private school at Twickenham, and in 1842 became a student at the college of civil engineers, Putney. The then principal was Dean Cowie of Exeter; Sir Guilford Molesworth, and several other well-known engineers were his fellow students. He founded the Putney Club, which was afterwards converted into the Society of Engineers. His early professional work consisted mainly of the design of iron railway bridges, and of arbitration work. In 1858 he turned his attention to gas lighting for towns; he designed and carried out several important gas undertakings on the continent, and was connected as a director with a large number of similar undertakings both in England and abroad. He was elected an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1853, and a full member in 1864. About 1882 his health began to fail, and he gradually retired from active professional pursuits; he died on 30 April 1890.

[Obituary Notices in Proc. Inst. Civil Eng. ci. 303.]

T. H. B.

STEPHENSON, JAMES (1808–1886), engraver, born at Manchester on 26 Nov. 1808, was the son of Thomas Stephenson, boot and shoe maker, of Stable Street, near Oldham Street, in that town. James was educated at a school kept by Thomas Rain, adjoining Oldham Street chapel, and before the end of his schooldays was apprenticed to John Fothergill, an engraver, of Prince's Court, Market Street. While there he made the acquaintance of the artist, Henry Liverseege [q. v.], and, probably by his advice, he came to London at the expiry of his apprenticeship and entered the studio of William Finden [q. v.] While there he gained the silver medal of the Society of Arts for an original design of a figure engraved in line.

About 1838 he returned to Manchester and established himself as an historical and landscape engraver in Ridgefield, and afterwards in a studio in St. Ann Street. Besides furnishing illustrations for ‘Manchester as it is’ (1839), for Charles Swain's ‘Mind and other Poems,’ and for other books, he engraved the members' card for the Anti-Corn-law League, and executed for Agnew & Sons portraits of prominent members, among others of Sir John Bowring [q. v.], Edward Baines [q. v.], and John Heyworth. During this period he also engraved Du Val's portrait of Richard Cobden, George Putten's portrait of John Frederick Foster, and John Boston's portrait of Daniel Grant, one of the original ‘Cheeryble Brothers.’ In 1842, for the British Association, which met in that year in Manchester, he executed a portrait of John Dalton (1766–1844) [q. v.], the chemist.

About 1847 Stephenson took up his permanent abode in London, and from 1856 exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. Among his later engravings were ‘The Day of Wrath,’ ‘The Last Judgment,’ and ‘The