George Walter Leech died at Denham, Bucks, on April 12th, 1926, at the age of 68.
He was educated at Bedford College. In 1881-2 he was engaged in survey and exploration work in the North West Territory, Canada, and in 1883 he went to Australia, where he was employed until 1887 in mine development work in Queensland, assaying and general mill management. Returning to England in 1887 he was for about a year in charge of ore reduction works at Greenwich.
In 1889 he went to South Africa and for a year was occupied in exploration and reporting on mineral concessions in Swaziland. After a year spent in Siam as assistant manager of the Temoh gold mines, he returned to South Africa for a brief tour in the Pilgrim’s Rest district, after which he returned to Australia, first as general manager of mines in W.A., as consulting engineer on his own account in Sydney, N.S.W., and later as representative of Messrs. Sulman & Picard in Western Australia. For the same firm he went to Cyprus in 1904 to examine the Lymni copper mines. In 1905-6 he was occupied in examining monazite concessions in Brazil and the United States, and in 1907-8 he was back in Queensland and New South Wales.
From 1909 to 1915 he made many trips to Spain, Ireland, Sardinia, North Wales, Cumberland, the Pyrenees, and Sweden, concerning copper, silver-lead, barytes, and molybdenite properties. In 1916 he went to Burma for the purpose of developing Wolfram mines, and on his return in 1919 was engaged in inspecting and reporting on lead mines in North Wales and Cornwall.
He was afterwards occupied as technical assistant at the Science Museum, South Kensington, cataloguing and arranging exhibits in the mining and mineralogical departments. In 1924 he went to Siberia on a tour of inspection and reporting, and while thus engaged he had to endure considerable hardships especially due to the political condition of the country, which had a very serious effect upon his constitution.
Mr. Leech was elected a Member of the Institution in 1893.
Vol. 36, Trans IMM 1926-27, pp.532-33
