George Holworthy Palmer – an engineer

Abstract

George Holworthy Palmer was a 19th century engineer – a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and despite a wide range of interests he is known as a gas engineer. Many books and articles about engineers describe their successes and contributions to science and technology and to society as a whole, but, for all of these successful engineers there must have been many, many failures. I had come across Palmer following the debacle at the Old Kent Road works of the South Metropolitan Gas Company. This is well known and repeated in almost every history of the company. When researching the early gas industry in London I was constantly encountering Palmer who seemed to have worked for most of the London gas companies and been dismissed by most of them in due course. Why did they take him on, despite his past record? This paper is about someone whose career appears to be a disaster.