William Robert Bousfield 1854-1943

Abstract

William Robert Bousfield, barrister and man of science, was born at Bedford in 1854 and died near Ottery St Mary on 16 July 1943. His father, E. T. Bousfield, was Manager and Engineer at Howard’s Works, Bedford, and also practised as a consultant, with a workshop and drawing office in his private house. At the age of sixty he was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple, and thereafter did a certain amount of advisory legal work on technical matters. He made many inventions, for instance an early water-tube boiler and an incandescent electric light bulb—both before their time and commercially unsuccessful. But doubtless the father’s activities led the son, by environment as well as by heredity, to a scientific and legal career. W. R. Bousfield went to Bedford Modern School, where he won many prizes, and was a School Monitor and ‘Head Boy’ in 1870. He served an apprenticeship as an engineer, and then entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, winning both a College Scholarship and a Whitworth Scholarship in 1873, and taking his degree as sixteenth Wrangler in 1876. While an undergraduate, he sought recreation in rowing and rifle shooting; in after life he turned to golf and lawn tennis. Leaving Cambridge, he was for a time in Whitworth’s Engineering Works and then Lecturer in Mathematics and Engineering at University College, Bristol, where he developed farther his interest in other sciences. But his main professional career was to be the Law; he was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1880, and became a Queen’s Counsel in 1891. Naturally, with his scientific knowledge, he came to the front as a Patent Lawyer; in that branch he won an outstanding position, appearing in many of the most important cases for a long series of years.