Edgar William Owens Dawson died on 14th December, 1959, at the age of 54.
Mr. Dawson was trained in the Chemical Department of the West Ham Municipal College between 1919 and 1924, working as an assistant in the laboratory while he studied.
His first two engagements were in the City of London — three years with British Drug Houses, Ltd., as a laboratory assistant, and from 1927 to 1928 with Minerals Separation, Ltd., as an assayer and later chief assayer working on experimental metallurgy. In 1928 he joined Allihies Copper Mines, Ltd., County Cork, as chief assayer, and was promoted mill superintendent in 1930. During 1930 and 1931 Mr. Dawson worked at Silvermines for Shallee Zinc Corporation, Ltd., Co. Tipperary, as an assayer and sampler, and in 1933 took up the position of chief assayer to Halkyn District United Mines, Ltd., Flintshire, later becoming mill shift boss.
He joined Basinghall Mining Syndicate, Ltd., in 1938, working at Greenside Mine, Cumberland, for two years, and in 1940 was appointed mill superintendent and assistant manager at the Devon Barytes Co., Ltd., holding this post until 1943. He was metallurgist and assayer for Non-Ferrous Minerals Development, Ltd., at Nenthead, Cumberland, from 1943 to 1945 and then became mill manager, leaving in 1946 to work in Ireland as metallurgist and mill superintendent in the experimental plant of Mianrai Teoranta at Avoca. A year later Mr. Dawson was appointed efficiency engineer and chemist to Procea Products, Ltd., and worked in Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire, until 1953 when he moved to the Sondes Place Research Institute, Dorking, in the capacity of assayer and metallurgist. He resigned from Messrs. McTaggart and Sons, Ltd., in the following year and left England for Cyprus Sulphur and Copper Co., Ltd., working as mill superintendent for two years. He took up a similar appointment with Rowland Lead Mines, Lanarkshire, early in 1956, and in 1957 was employed as metallurgist in charge of the operations in Northumberland of Mineral Treatment Co., Ltd. He left early in 1959 to live in Essex.
Mr. Dawson contributed a paper to the Transactions of the Institution entitled ‘War-time treatment of lead-zinc dumps situated at Nenthead, Cumberland’ (vol. 56, 1946-47).
He was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1938.
Vol. 70, Trans IMM 1960-61, p.217
