George Alfred Denny died at his home in Durban, Natal, on 3rd September, 1958, at the age of 90.
Mr. Denny was born in Australia and was engaged in mining generally in company with his father, Mr. Thomas Denny, M.I.M.M., at various mines in South Australia, and later attended the Ballarat School of Mines. He gained experience, reporting on mines in the U.S.A., Central America and Hungary, and working at Broken Hill, N.S.W., and at the Denny Dalton mine in Zululand before proceeding to the Witwatersrand gold fields in 1892.
During his long association with South African mining, he worked with his younger brother, the late H.S. Denny who died in 1938. Mr. Denny, as consulting engineer of the General Mining and Finance Corporation was one of the first to introduce tube mills, from Kalgoorlie, into Rand metallurgical practice. The first very deep vertical shaft of the Rand, the Cinderella, was sunk to a depth of 4300 ft under his control, and he re-equipped the Meyer and Charlton which, in 1901, was the first mine to be re-opened after the suspension of Rand mining operations during the South African War.
Mr. Denny spent some time in Mexico and in Chile, and carried on a consulting engineering practice with his brother in the 1920s in the City of London, where he formed the Denny Chemical Company.
Mr. Denny returned to South Africa about 1927 and retired to Durban for the remainder of his life. He took a great interest in civic affairs, and was at one time President of the Durban Town Planning Association.
Mr. Denny made substantial monetary gifts to the Natal University and to the University of the Witwatersrand, and in recent years instituted the ‘George Denny’ lectures in Natal.
He was the senior full member of the Institution, having been a Member since 1893, and had served as a Corresponding Member of Council for Mexico from 1912 to 1915. In 1955 he was awarded Honorary Membership of the Institution ‘in recognition of his distinguished services to the mining industry of the Union of South Africa, notably the early development of Witwatersrand gold mines’.
He was a foundation member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and a Past-President of the South African Institution of Mining Engineers. In 1906 he was awarded the Telford Gold Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers, for his paper on gold-milling equipment and practice on the Witwatersrand.
At the height of his career Mr. Denny contributed widely to world literature on mining and metallurgy, and had earlier submitted a paper to the Transactions of the Institution entitled ‘Examination of a mine in the Klerksdorp district, Transvaal’ (vol. 5, 1896-97). Three of his technical books — on deep level mining, on diamond drilling, and on the Klerksdorp goldfield — were published in London between 1897 and 1902.
Brigadier R.S.G. Stokes writes: George Denny’s record marks him as one of the most distinguished mining engineers of his day, but he will be best remembered for his vivid personality, his intensity of purpose and his unshakable loyalty to friends and principles. The buoyant enthusiasm with which he pursued any favoured cause or policy endured throughout his life. Many of us will long remember the typewritten letters — controversial and detailed, but never dull — through which he maintained contact with distant friends. Nor will we forget the admonitions, easily taken from so senior and wise a man, against the dangers of letting false principles beguile us in our work. Never were we allowed to forget the virtues of ‘clean mining’ or the unfitness of the ‘ton milled’ to function, in place of the ‘ounce of gold’, as the sole unit in statements and comparisons of working expenditure.
George Denny’s physical activity was no less remarkable than his mental. In a letter written from Durban in his 90th year he told me he was still playing bowls, although with his steadily failing eyesight he could ‘no longer see the jack’.
As a family, the Dennys can certainly claim exceptional distinction in the mining world. George’s father, Thomas Denny, was a foundation member of the Institution, to which his brother, Harry, also rendered fine service at one time; and George’s son, Denison, is practising to-day as a consulting mining engineer in Canada.
Vol. 68, Trans IMM 1958-59, pp.120-21
