Maurice Gregory died on 30th October, 1958, at the age of 76.
He was educated in Lancashire and at Bloxham School, Banbury. After serving a mechanical engineering apprenticeship between 1898 and 1903 with Messrs. Hick, Hargreaves and Co., Ltd., at their Soho ironworks in Bolton, he took employment with Lancashire Dynamo and Motor Co., Ltd., Manchester, rising during eight years with the firm to the position of chief assistant tester and outside erecting engineer, working on Admiralty contracts, at collieries and lead mines. During this period he studied mechanical and electrical engineering at Bolton, Manchester and Salford Technical Institutions, and metallurgy and assaying at Manchester University, and later took a short course at Redruth School of Mines.
Mr. Gregory spent most of his mining career in Cornwall after joining Cornwall Tailings, Ltd., in 1912, recovering tin from residues. He took up a lease of an alluvial tin and tailings property near St. Austell and worked it between 1912 and 1914 on his own account, also reporting on other properties. In 1914 he was appointed engineer to Carnon Valley, Ltd., and in the following year worked as high tension distributing engineer for Cornwall Electric Power Co., Ltd.
He left England in 1916 for Brazil to take up the appointment of chief mechanical and electrical engineer to Ouro Preto Gold Mines, Ltd., which he held for three years, returning in 1919 to work in Cornwall until 1927, first as assistant manager and engineer to a tin and wolfram concern, and from 1920 to 1922 managing Trumpet Mines, Ltd., and for the next three years as mine manager at South Terras mine in Cornwall for Société Industrielle du Radium, Ltd., acting also as consultant to the company. He discovered, prospected and opened up Polhigey tin mine on his own account between 1922 and 1924, and in 1926 purchased and re-equipped Kieve mill tin streams on Red River, operating the tin recovery plant and carrying out research there for London consultants.
In 1927 Mr. Gregory investigated and reported on a gold proposition in Czechoslovakia, then worked as general manager of tin dredging operations in Portugal. He returned to resume investigations in Cornwall, but between 1928 and 1931 visited Spain, Portugal and Czecho-slovakia, reporting for Messrs. Lake and Currie, and Abyssinia for the Ethiopian Government. He remained in Ethiopia until 1934 as consultant for Société des Concessions Prasso en Abyssinie reported for a private syndicate. After examining radium prospects in Portugal in 1934 he returned to the United Kingdom to work again in Cornwall and in Wales, investigating tin and lead-zinc propositions until 1937. He was general manager of Callington Consolidated Minerals, Ltd., from 1937 to 1938, and in 1939 took up the appointment of manager of Urgurica radium mine in Northern Portugal. On his return home in 1941 he was engaged by the Ministry of Supply until 1945, and after the war spent a year in Nigeria as consultant with Anglo Oriental Tin Co., Ltd.
Since 1946 Mr. Gregory had lived in semi-retirement in Cornwall, though retaining many mining interests and continuing to associate himself actively with the resuscitation of Cornish mining.
Mr. Gregory was elected an Associate Member of the Institution in 1920 and was transferred to Membership in 1928. He was a one-time member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, and had served as a Member of Council of the Cornish Chamber of Mines and as President for two years of the Cornish Institute of Engineers, to whose Transactions he contributed, also writing for the technical press.
Vol. 68 Trans IMM 1958-9, pp.282-83
