Sydney Osborn Hatton died in Calgary, Alberta, on 22nd May, 1953, at the age of 60.
He was educated at St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, from 1909 to 1913, and gained some mining experience in Bengal before being employed in 1915 in the Minerals Section of the Indian Department of Commerce and Industry. He subsequently served in the 1/117th Mahratta Light Infantry. In 1919 Mr. Hatton was employed by the Fife Coal Co., Ltd., and in 1920 entered Birmingham University, obtaining the degree of B.Sc. (Mining) in 1922. For the next four years he worked in various British collieries, and in 1925 obtained the Colliery Manager’s Certificate.
He joined the Gold Coast Cadastral Survey in 1926 and in 1927 was appointed assistant engineer to Associated Tin Mines of Nigeria, Ltd., remaining in Nigeria during the following year as area manager for South Bukuru (Nigeria) Tin Co., Ltd. He prospected in Ashanti for Fanti Consolidated Investment Co., Ltd., in 1929, and from 1930 to 1931 held the position of surveyor on the Haifa-Baghdad Railway Survey. In 1934 he took up the post of resident engineer in Tanganyika Territory for East African Selection Syndicate and Andura Syndicate, Ltd. He left that appointment in 1935 to go to Dutch Guiana for Van Emden Gold Co., and in 1937 was again in West Africa drilling for gold in Sierra Leone and reporting on areas in Nigeria. Mr. Hatton then spent a year shaft sinking at a colliery in Lancashire, and in 1939 was assayer to the Saudi Arabia Mining Syndicate.
On the outbreak of war Mr. Hutton worked for a time on air raid shelters and in 1940 was commissioned in the Royal Engineers (Tunnellers) but was invalided out of the Army in 1942. After convalescing he joined the staff of the Directorate of Opencast Coal Production, Ministry of Supply, and subsequently worked in South America. A year or two ago he moved to Canada, and had only just returned to his home at Calgary from a prospecting trip in British Columbia when he died from a heart attack.
Mr. Hatton was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1931.
Vol. 63, Trans IMM 1953-54, p.44
