FOWLER, JOHN (1826–1864), English inventor, was born at Melksham, Wilts, on the 11th of July 1826. He learned practical engineering at Middlesborough-on-Tees, and about 1850 invented a mechanical system for the drainage of land. In 1852 he began experiments in steam cultivation, and in 1858 the Royal Agricultural Society awarded him the prize of £500 which it had offered for a steam-cultivator that should be an economic substitute for the plough or the spade. In 1860 he founded at Hunslet, Leeds, the firm of Fowler & Co., manufacturers of agricultural machinery, traction engines, &c. He died at Ackworth, Yorkshire, on the 4th of December 1864.
FOWLER, SIR JOHN (1817–1898), English civil engineer,
was born on the 15th of July 1817 at Wadsley Hall, near Sheffield,
where his father was a land-surveyor. At the age of sixteen
he became a pupil of John Towlerton Leather, the engineer of
the Sheffield water-works. The latter’s uncle, George Leather,
was engineer of the Great Aire and Calder Navigation Company,
of the Goole Docks, and other similar works, and Fowler passed
occasionally into his employment, in which he acquired a
thorough knowledge of hydraulic engineering. The era of
railway construction soon swept both Fowler and his employers
into its service, and one of his first employments was to oppose
the route of the Midland railway, chosen by the Stephensons,
which left Sheffield on a branch line, and was therefore strongly
resented by the inhabitants. The prestige of the Stephensons
carried all before it, but in later life Sir John Fowler had the
satisfaction of seeing the opposition of his clients justified, and
Sheffield placed on the main line. In 1838 he went into the
office of John Urpeth Rastrick, one of the leading railway
engineers of the day, where he was employed in designing bridges
for the line from London to Brighton, and also in surveying for
railways in Lancashire. In 1839 he went as representative of
Mr Leather to take charge of the construction of the Stockton
& Hartlepool railway and remained as manager of the line after
it was finished. In 1844 he began his independent career as an
engineer, and from the first was largely employed, more particularly
in laying out the small railway systems which eventually
were amalgamated under the title of the Manchester, Sheffield
& Lincolnshire. In the course of this work he designed a
bridge known as Torksey Bridge, which was disallowed by the
Board of Trade inspector, Captain (afterwards Field-Marshal Sir)
Lintorn Simmons. The engineering profession espoused Fowler’s
side in the controversy which followed, and as a result the verdict
of the Board of Trade was modified. The episode was the
beginning of a warm friendship between these distinguished
representatives of civil and military engineering. Fowler was
engineer of the London Metropolitan railway, the pioneer of
underground railways, and noteworthy in that it was mostly
made not by tunnelling, but by excavating from the surface and
then covering in the permanent way; and he lived to be one of
the engineers officially connected with the deep tunnelling “tube”
system extensively adopted for electric railways in London.
He was also engaged in the making of railways in Ireland, and
in 1867 he was selected by Disraeli to serve on a commission to
advise the government in respect of a proposal for a state-purchase
of the Irish railway system. He also carried out
considerable works in relation to the Nene Valley drainage and
the reclamation of land at the Norfolk estuary.
In 1865 he was elected president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the youngest president who had ever sat in the chair. He was strongly opposed to the project of a Channel tunnel to France, and in 1872 he endeavoured to obtain the consent of parliament to a Channel ferry scheme, whereby trains were to be transported across the strait in large ferry steamers. The proposal involved the making of enlarged harbours at Dover and Audresselles on the French coast, and the bill, after passing the Commons, was thrown out by the casting vote of the chairman of a committee of the House of Lords. In 1875 he was enabled to render, in his private capacity, a signal service to the Italian government, which was much embarrassed by impracticable proposals pressed on it by Garibaldi for a rectification of the course of the Tiber and other engineering works. He had several interviews with the Italian patriot, and persuaded him of the impracticable nature of his plan, thereby obtaining for the government leisure to devise a more reasonable scheme. For eight years from 1871 he acted as general engineering adviser in Egypt to the Khedive Ismail. He projected a railway to the Sudan, and also the reparation of the barrage. These and many other plans came to an end owing to financial reasons. But the maps and surveys for the railway were given to the war office, and proved most useful to Lord Wolseley in his Nile expedition. For his service Fowler was made K.C.M.G. (1885). He was created a baronet in 1890 on the completion of the Forth bridge, of which with his partner Sir Benjamin Baker he was joint engineer. He died at Bournemouth on the 20th of November 1898.
FOWLER, WILLIAM (c. 1560–1614), Scottish poet, was born
about the year 1560. He attended St Leonard’s college, St
Andrews, between 1574 and 1578, and in 1581 he was in Paris
studying civil law. In 1581 he issued a pamphlet against John
Hamilton and other Catholics, who had, he said, driven him from
his country. He subsequently (about ?1590) became private
secretary and Master of Requests to Anne of Denmark, wife of
James VI., and was renominated to these offices when the queen
went to England. In 1609 his services were rewarded by a grant
of 2000 acres in Ulster. His sister Susannah Fowler married
Sir John Drummond, and was mother of the poet William
Drummond of Hawthornden. On the title-page of The Triumphs
of Petrarke, Fowler styles himself “P. of Hawick,” which has
been held to mean that he was parson of Hawick, but this is
doubtful. A MS. collection of seventy-two sonnets, entitled
The Tarantula of Love, and a translation (1587) from the Italian
of the Triumphs of Petrarke are preserved in the library of the
university of Edinburgh, in the collection bequeathed by his
nephew, William Drummond. Two other volumes of his manuscript
notes, scrolls of poems, &c., are preserved among the
Drummond MSS., now in the library of the Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland. Specimens of Fowler’s verses were published
in 1803 by John Leyden in his Scottish Descriptive Poems.
Fowler contributed a prefatory sonnet to James VI.’s Furies;
and James, in return, commended, in verse, Fowler’s Triumphs.
FOX, CHARLES JAMES (1749–1806), British statesman and
orator, was the third son of Henry Fox, 1st Lord Holland, and
his wife, Lady Caroline Lennox, eldest daughter of Charles
Lennox, 2nd duke of Richmond. He was born at 9 Conduit
Street, Westminster, on the 24th of January 1749. The father,
who treated his children with extreme indulgence, allowed him
to choose his school, and he elected to go to one kept at Wandsworth
by a French refugee, named Pampelonne. In a very short
time he asked to be sent to Eton, where he went in 1757. At
Eton he did no more work than was acceptable to him, but he
had an inborn love of literature, and he laid the foundation of
that knowledge of the classic languages which in after years was
the delight of his life. The vehemence of his temper was controlled
by an affectionate disposition. When quite a boy he
checked his own tendency to fits of passion on learning that his
father trusted him to cure his defects.
That he learnt anything, and that he grew up an amiable and magnanimous man, were solely due to his natural worth, for no one ever owed less to education or to family example. The relations of Lord Holland to his sons would be difficult to parallel. He not only treated them, and in particular Charles, as friends and companions in pleasure from the first, but he did his best to encourage them in dissipation. In 1763 he took Charles for a tour on the continent, introduced him to the most immoral society of the time and gave him money with which to gamble. The boy came back to Eton a precocious rake. It was his good fortune that he did go back, for he was subjected to a wholesome course of ridicule by the other boys, and was flogged by Dr Barnard, the headmaster. In 1764 Charles proceeded to Hertford College, Oxford. At Oxford, as at Eton, he read literature from natural liking, and he paid some attention to mathematics. His often quoted saying that he found mathematics entertaining was probably meant as a jest at the expense
