Humphrey Layland Braithwaite was killed in action in France on January 10th, 1916, at the age of 31 years.
He had only been gazetted 2nd Lieutenant in the Tunnelling Section of the Royal Engineers in the previous May, and had been in France barely five weeks when he was killed. His eldest brother, the late Major F.J. Braithwaite, of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, was killed at Tanga, German East Africa, on November 4th, 1914.
Mr. Braithwaite was educated at Cheltenham and at the Camborne School of Mines, and at both places won distinction as an athlete. At Cheltenham he was in the Rugby 15 and rowed in the college boat; and while at Camborne he was chosen to play in the County Rugby team. He obtained a first-class diploma at Camborne and was awarded one of the Institution post-graduate courses, which he took on the Champion Reef Gold Mines, Mysore, South India, remaining there during the years 1908 and 1909. On the satisfactory completion of his course, he received the Institution certificate.
From 1910 to 1911 he was manager of the York Harbour Mines in Newfoundland; and thence he went to South America, and for four years held the position of assayer and surveyor to the Ouro Preto Gold Mines of Brazil, Ltd. He was chief assayer and surveyor during the last two years of his engagement.
Mr. Braithwaite was admitted to Studentship of the Institution in 1906 and was transferred to Associateship in 1915.
Vol. 26, Trans I.M.M. 1916-17, p. 260
