Edward Thomas McCarthy died at his daughter’s home at Swindon on November 21st, 1943, at the age of 86.
He was trained at the Royal School of Mines, obtaining his A.R.S.M. in Metallurgy in 1877, and began his professional career as assistant mines manager in the U.S.A. During the next 22 years he gained experience in many parts of North and South America, and West and South Africa, and in 1899 was appointed general mines manager to British and Chinese corporations in China and to the British Korean Corporation. In 1902 he resigned these positions and set up in consulting practice in London, taking into partnership Mr. R.E. Binns, M.Inst.M.M., in 1928. During his long career he was connected with many mining enterprises, including the Mountain Copper Co., California, Foldal Copper and Sulphur Co., Norway, Ipoh Tin Dredging and other Malayan companies, the Siberian Syndicate, Ltd., the Indian Copper Corporation, Ltd., and the various mining interests of the Transvaal Agency, Ltd.
His publications include Incidents in the Life of a Mining Engineer and Further Incidents in the Life of a Mining Engineer, published during the 1914-18 war, and it is typical of him that all proceeds from the sale of these books were donated to St. Dunstan’s Home for Blinded Soldiers. The books reveal a man of adventurous spirit who was intensely happy in his work, and who possessed a love of humanity and a wide interest in the wonders of nature. His friends knew him as a man of unimpeachable integrity and great generosity, and his life was an inspiration to the numerous young engineers with whom he came in contact.
Mr. McCarthy was elected a Member of the Institution in 1892, the year of its foundation, and served as a Member of Council from 1908 to 1942. He held the office of Vice-President from 1913 to 1919, 1921 to 1924, and 1935 to 1937, and in 1921 was awarded the Gold Medal of the
Institution ‘in recognition of his services to the Mining Industry and the Mining Engineering Profession, and as an expression of the high regard in which he is held by his fellow-engineers’.
He was elected to Honorary Membership in 1940. It can now be disclosed that Mr. McCarthy made many large anonymous donations to the Benevolent Fund, and these were but a part of his charitable activities, the extent of which can never be known.
Vol. 54, Trans IMM 1944-45, p.270
