William Henry Trewartha-James died in London on September 7th, 1939, at the age of 78.
He was born at Redruth, Cornwall, in 1860, and received his technical training at the Camborne School of Mines and for three years at the South Wheal Francis Tin Mine under his father Captain A.T. James, who was then managing a number of mines in Cornwall.
For five and a half years from 1880 he was assistant manager of the New Quebrada Railway, Land and Copper Company in Venezuela, and on his return to London in 1886 he joined his brother, the late John Henry Cordner-James, in partnership as consulting mining engineer under the style of James Brothers. In 1888 he went to South Africa to take over the management of Moodies Gold Mines, Barberton. He was also consulting engineer to the Brighton Gold Mining Company, Kimberley and laid out hydraulic power works for the Alpine Gold Mining Company, De Kaap.
From 1899 he was associated with his partner and the late; Alfred James in the introduction of the MacArthur Forrest cyanide process at Johannesburg, and subsequently introduced the process into Mexico while acting as manager of the Mexican Gold and Silver Recovery Company. For many years he devoted the greater part of his time to the metallurgical problems connected with the process, but he also was able-to visit on his firm’s behalf mining districts in various parts of the world, including Canada (where he was manager of the Tyee Copper Company for five years), the Yukon, the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, South and West Africa, Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria and Western Australia, in which countries his firm was interested, and he represented James Brothers as consulting engineer to several gold-mining companies in Western Australia from 1896 to the time of his death.
Mr. Trewartha-James was elected a Member of the Institution in 1892, the year of its foundation. He was a Member of Council from 1915 to 1923 and was Vice-President from 1920 to 1922.
Vol. 49, Trans IMM 1939-40, pp.740-41
