Philip Brandford Archibald Went died of pneumonia after only 10 days’ illness at Bindura, Southern Rhodesia, on October 24th, 1918, in his 39th year.
In October, 1899, he entered the Royal School of Mines South Kensington, where he graduated with the Associateship in Mining (Second Class) in July, 1902. For two months during the summer vacation of 1900 he worked in the Thornthwaite lead and zinc mine in Cumberland, and for a similar period in 1901 he was at the Clutton Colliery, Somerset. He spent the winter session, 1902-3, working in the metallurgical division of the Royal School of Mines.
In June, 1903, he started as assistant assayer and surveyor at the Morven Mine of the Consolidated Goldfields of South Africa in Rhodesia, but was almost immediately transferred to the Edmundian Mine of the Consolidated African Copper Trust, Ltd., in the Manica district of Portuguese East Africa, in the same capacity but with charge of the books and stores and the supervision of some parts of the machinery. He had the management of the mine from 1907 to 1910, when he left to take up the position of manager of the Meg Mine, near Hartley.
In August, 1918, he took over the management of the Asp Mine at Bindura, and during the devastating epidemic of influenza which raged in Rhodesia at about that date he contracted a chill whilst transferring some of his ‘boys’ to the hospital, which developed into pneumonia and produced heart failure.
Mr. Went was admitted to Studentship of the Institution in 1902, and transferred to Associateship in 1906.
Vol. 29, Trans IMM 1919-20, pp.439-40
