Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Galton, Douglas Strutt
GALTON, Sir DOUGLAS STRUTT (1822–1899), man of science, captain royal engineers, second son of John Howard Galton of Hadzor House, Droitwich, and of his wife Isabella, eldest daughter of Joseph Strutt of Derby, was born at Spring Hill, near Birmingham, on 2 July 1822. He was educated at Birmingham, Geneva, and at Rugby under Dr. Arnold, where he was a contemporary of Lord Cross, Tom Hughes, and Theodore Walrond. He passed through the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich with distinction, and received a commission as second lieutenant in the royal engineers on 18 Dec. 1840. His further commissions were dated: lieutenant, 1 Oct. 1843; second captain, 31 Aug. 1851; first captain, 14 March 1855. After the usual course of professional instruction at Chatham, Galton was employed in 1842, under Sir Charles William Pasley [q. v.], in the removal of the wreck of the Royal George at Spithead by blasting, when firing the charges was attempted for the first time by electricity. He then went to the Mediterranean, and, after serving at Malta and Gibraltar, returned home in 1846 and joined the ordnance survey.
In 1847 Galton was appointed secretary to the newly formed railway commission. He also served as secretary to the royal commission on the application of iron to railway structures a commission created in consequence of the breakdown of the railway bridge over the river Dee. The test experiments on the strength of iron which he made were of great practical utility, and the report which he wrote tbereon forms an important text-book for reference. In 1854 he was appointed secretary to the railway department of the board of trade, and in 1856 visited the United States of North America with Robert Lowe (afterwards Lord Sherbrooke) [q. v.] to inspect the railways of that country. He subsequently wrote an interesting report, published as a blue-book in 1857, on the rapid development of railways in the absence of roads in that progressing country.
In 1857, in conjunction with two civil engineers, Messrs. Simpson and Blackwell, Galton was appointed a government referee for the consideration of plans for the main drainage of the metropolis. He was opposed to the discharge of the effluent into the Thames so high up as Barking and Crossness, and advocated its discharge at Sea Reach, where it would mix with a larger body of water. His views have been justified by results. The report of the referees was published in July 1857.
In 1858 Galton was a member of the royal commission, presided over by Sidney Herbert (afterwards Lord Herbert of Lea) [q. v.], on the improvement of the sanitary condition of military barracks and hospitals. The report of the commission was presented in 1861. Submarine telegraphy also engaged Galton's attention and study, and, after the failure of the Atlantic cable of 1858, the government appointed him in 1859 chairman of a committee to investigate the whole question of electric submarine telegraph cables. The committee collected evidence and information from every available source, and published a report in 1861 which has been described as 'the most valuable collection of facts, warnings, and evidence ever compiled concerning submarine cables.'
In January 1860 Galton returned to : military duties and was appointed temporary assistant inspector-general of fortifications, for barracks, at the war office, and about the same time he was a member of the royal commissions on the embankment of the river Thames, both on the north and south sides.
He accompanied Dr. John Sutherland in 1861 on a mission from the war office to inquire into the sanitary condition of the military hospitals and barracks at Gibraltar, Malta, and the Ionian Islands. Their report was presented to parliament in 1863. In May 1862 Lord Palmerston made him assistant permanent under-secretary of state for war, a position he occupied for nearly eight years, and on 2 July he was placed upon the permanent half-pay list of the army. In 1862 also he became a member of the barrack and hospital improvement committee, a standing committee under the quartermaster-general to the forces for the time being, which in 1865 was renamed the army sanitary committee. It still exists and its recommendations have been and are of the greatest utility. Galton continued to serve on it until his death.
Galton's work at the war office did not prevent him continuing to interest himself in railway matters. In 1862, at the Institution of Civil Engineers (of which he had been an associate since 1850), he read a paper on railway accidents, and showed the bearing of existing legislation on such accidents. In 1865 he was a member of the committee to advise on all questions connected with the laying of the Atlantic telegraph cable, and was also a member of the international telegraph commission held in March at Paris. For his services he was made a companion of the order of the Bath, civil division, in 1865. In the following year he was an active member of the royal commission on railways, of which the Duke of Devonshire was chairman.
In December 1869 Galton was transferred from the war office to the office of works as director of public works and buildings, from which position he retired in August 1875 on a pension. In 1876 he acted as judge of railway appliances at the exhibition held at Philadelphia in the United States of North America, and in 1878 in a similar capacity at the Paris international exhibition. During 1878 and 1879 he brought before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers the results of his experiments with railway brakes in a series of papers which have become works of reference on the subject.
Galton joined the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1860, and from 1871 to 1895, as one of the general secretaries, he bore a large share of the association's work and only resigned the secretaryship in 1895 on election at Ipswich to the presidency. Having previously visited the Reichsanstalt (physical laboratory) at Berlin, he used the opportunity afforded him by his position as president of the British Association to bring to a crisis the efforts which he and others had made during a course of years, and to insist on an organised project for a national physical laboratory in London. With persevering energy he carried on negotiations with the government and with the Royal Society which were crowned with complete success. He did not, however, live ‘to see the formal completion of the scheme whose birth he did so much to help, and which, to his last days, he aided in more ways than one’ (Sir Michael Foster's Presidential Address, British Association, 1899).
Galton's interest in education was wide and varied. He was a member of the first committee to advocate the higher education of women and was one of the original founders of the Girls' Public Day School Company. He was president of the senate of University College, London, and took a lively interest in its welfare. He represented the Royal Institution on the council of the London University Extension Society, was vice-president of the Society of Arts, a member of the council of the Royal Drawing Society, and a member of the council of the Princess Helena's College at Ealing. It was through his efforts that the Childhood Society was established. He strongly urged before a committee of the education department that special classes in elementary schools should be provided for the benefit of children of defective intellect, and he advocated the removal of such children, when subject to unhealthy or evil surroundings, to ‘homes’ in order to give them, by family life, an opportunity of development, believing that the proper care of such children would eventually reduce crime and add to the strength and wealth of the nation. From its start in 1869 he was a most active member of the committee of the Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War (now the Red Cross Society), and during the Franco-German war was sent by the society as commissioner to the sick and wounded of both nations. He visited the German hospitals especially, and in recognition of his services the imperial order of the Crown of Prussia was conferred upon him by the German emperor.
But Galton's name will always be chiefly associated with sanitary science. The Herbert hospital at Woolwich was designed by him when he was at the war office between 1860 and 1862, and many improvements in barracks and hospitals are due to his initiative. He invented a ventilating fire grate in the early sixties, which was adopted for all military barracks and hospitals, and went by his name. It introduced a new idea in connection with heating apparatus, and General Arthur Jules Morin, of the French artillery, the head of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, considered it the only original arrangement for perfect warming and ventilating with the open fireplace that the century had produced.
Galton gave a course of lectures to the royal engineers at Chatham, in November 1876, on sanitary engineering, which was published in the following year. He was among the first and most earnest supporters of the Parkes Museum, and was chairman of its council from 1882 to 1888. He was also a member of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain, and acted as chairman of its council from 1885 to 1887. Since the amalgamation of the two bodies he was twice chairman of council from 1888 to 1892 and from 1897 to 1899. He was elected vice-president in 1892, and became also treasurer in 1894, positions which he continued to hold until his death. For many years he was chairman of the board of examiners, and took great interest in the training of sanitary officers, to whom he often lectured, both in London and the provinces. His last lecture to them in London was given on 17 Oct. 1898, when he urged that their motto should be the proverb ‘Prevention is better than cure.’
At the queen's jubilee in 1887 Galton was made a knight commander of the order of the Bath, civil division, and in 1889 an officer of the French legion of honour, and a knight of grace of the order of St. John of Jerusalem. He also received the Turkish order of the Medjidie. In 1894 the Institution of Civil Engineers made him an honorary member. Oxford University conferred on him the honorary degree of D.C.L. on 9 June 1875, and Durham and Montreal Universities that of LL.D. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society as far back as 1859, he more than once served on its council. He was also a member of many other learned and scientific societies at home and abroad.
In 1891 he acted as chairman of the executive committee of the international congress of hygiene and demography held in London. During the last decade of his life he associated himself with some of the metropolitan electrical industries. He had been a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers since 1872, and a member of the council from 1888 to 1890. He was also vice-president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. In his own county, Worcestershire, he was a justice of the peace and county councillor.
He died of blood poisoning at his town house, 11 Chester Street, S.W., on 18 March 1899, and, although a prominent advocate of cremation, he was buried at Hadzor, Worcestershire, for family reasons. He married, on 26 Aug. 1851, at Farnham, Marianne, daughter of George Thomas Nicholson of Waverley Abbey, Surrey, and sister of General Sir Lothian Nicholson [q. v.] Lady Galton and two daughters survived him.
A good photograph was published in the 'Journal of the Sanitary Institute' for April 1899. A bust, by Thomas Brock, R.A., is in course of execution for erection in the shire hall, Worcester.
Galton was the author of the following: 1. 'Report on the Herbert Hospital at Woolwich,' London, 1865, 4to. 2. 'Organisation of the War Office,' 1868. 3. 'The Construction of Hospitals,' London, 1869, 8vo. 4. 'Sanitary Engineering,' Chatham, 1877, fol. 5. 'Technical Education,' London, 1878, 8vo. 6. 'Brake Experiments,' 1879 and 1880. 7. 'The Construction of Healthy Dwellings,' Oxford, 1880, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1896. 8. 'Preventable Causes of Impurity in London Air,' London, 1880, 8vo. 9. 'Ventilating, Warming, and Lighting : Lectures at the International Health Exhibition,' London, 1884, 8vo. 10. 'Army Sanitation,' Chatham, 1887, 8vo. 11. 'Healthy Hospitals,' Oxford, 1893, 8vo. Many of his reports on sewerage and drainage, such as 'Lincoln County Hospital' in 1873 and the town of Cannes in 1883, have been published. He contributed two papers to the 'Professional Papers of the Royal Engineers,' one on 'Drawbridges' in 1844, and the other on 'Hospital Construction' in 1898.
[War Office Records; Royal Engineers' Records; memoirs in the Journal of the Sanitary Institute (with portrait), April 1889, in the Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, August 1899, in Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 1899, vol. cxxxvii., and in the Royal Engineers Journal, July 1900; Blue-books; private sources.]