Edgar Archibald Collins died of pneumonia at Ben Lomond, California, on June 3rd, 1918, aged 40 years.
He was educated at Alleyn’s School, Dulwich, and on leaving school went to Colorado, where he received nearly two years’ practical training in mining, assaying and surveying under his eldest brother, the late Arthur L. Collins.
In 1895 he returned to England and was engaged for a year in tin mining and tin dressing in Cornwall. He afterwards went back to Colorado, and from 1896 to 1902 was Working under his brother, first at Central City, and subsequently as mine superintendent at the Smuggler Union Mine, Telluride, Colorado. His next appointment was that of field engineer to the United States and British Columbia Mining Co., which he held for a year; and then for four years he occupied the position of mine superintendent of the Combination Mines Co., at Goldfield, Nevada. From 1907 to 1911 he managed the property of the Montana-Tonopah Mines Co. at Tonopah, Nevada, and then left the United States for a year and proceeded to South Africa, where he obtained the post of assistant manager of the City Deep mine on the Witwatersrand Goldfield. During this period he gained the Transvaal First Class Mine Managers’ Certificate.
Returning to the United States early in 1912, Mr. Collins was appointed general superintendent to the Commonwealth Mining Co. at Pearce, Arizona, and remained there for five years. In 1917 he was appointed resident manager for the Ridder mine of the Russo-Asiatic Corporation in the Altai, and had barely assumed his new responsibilities when the Bolshevik revolution compelled the cessation of mining operations and his return to the United States. A few days afterwards he contracted a severe cold which developed into pneumonia and terminated fatally.
Mr. Edgar Collins, who was a son of the late J.H. Collins, a former president and trustee of the Institution, leaves a widow and three young children, who were with him in Siberia and accompanied him on the anxious and fatiguing homeward journey, which was necessitated by the political situation in Russia.
Mr. Collins was admitted to Studentship of the Institution in 1896; was transferred to Associateship in 1902; and to Membership in 1913.
Vol. 27, Trans I.M.M. 1917-18, pp. 390-91
