Edward Halse died at his residence, St. Margarets, Twickenham, on October 29th, 1935, at the age of 81.
He was born in 1854, and was the son of George Frederick Halse, a sculptor of some renown. After receiving education privately and at King’s College, London, he entered the Royal School of Mines in 1873 and graduated with the A.R.S.M., in Metallurgy, in 1875. He had a refresher course in 1879.
From 1877 to 1884 he was engaged in the management of lead, zinc, and manganese mines in Merionethshire, and reported on manganese mines in Sardinia. In 1888 he went to the Republic of Colombia, where he managed the Silencio gold mine, Tolima, and reported on gold and quicksilver deposits; and in I889 and 1890 he was manager of the Taquah and Abosso gold mines in West Africa.
For four years from 1891 he was engaged in consulting work in Mexico City, reporting during that period on gold, silver, manganese, and quicksilver deposits in the country, and from 1895 to 1897 he was in Western Australia on the Coolgardie, Yilgarn and Murchison goldfields. He returned to Colombia in 1897 as manager of the Sucre gold mines, and held that position until 1906, when he returned to England to engage in consulting work, which involved reporting on copper, manganese, tin and other properties in Great Britain, Italy, Asia Minor, and Spain.
From the outbreak of war in 1914 until June, 1919, he was engaged in War Office work, and on release from those duties he examined tin and tungsten properties in Spain and Portugal. From 1920 to 1932 he was attached to the Mineral Resources Department of the Imperial Institute, London, and in that connexion wrote several monographs on ore deposits.
In 1929 to 1980 he was President of the R.S.M. Old Students’ Association. In the leisure intervals of a busy life, he compiled a ‘Dictionary of Spanish, Spanish-American, Portuguese and Portuguese-American Mining Metallurgical and Allied Terms’, which went to a second edition in 1914. Later, he compiled a still more comprehensive ‘Dictionary of Mining Terms in the English, German, French and Italian Languages’, the manuscript of which he bequeathed to the Institution and which is preserved in the Library. He contributed papers to various technical societies, including the following which were published by the Institution: ‘Deep Mining in Mexico, and the changes that occur in the Country-rock and Vein-filling in Depth’ (Trans., vol. iii); ‘Electro-silvered v. Plain Copper Plates’ (vol. ix); ‘Improved Native Gold Mill’ (vol. ix); ‘Average Rate of Accumulation and Absorption of Gold Amalgam’ (Vol. xvii); and ‘Notes on the Origin of Some Mining Terms’ (vol. xlii). He also took part in the discussion of other papers.
Mr. Halse was elected a Member of the Institution in 1892.
Vol. 45, Trans IMM 1935-36, pp.512-13
