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THE MIDLAND RAILWAY STUDY CENTRE
Sir Henry Fowler Collection

Sir Henry Fowler

Sir Henry Fowler became the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Midland Railway in succession to Richard Deeley in 1909. He began his railway career as an apprentice with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway at their Horwich Works under John Aspinall between 1887 and 1891. He then spent four years in the L&Y Testing Department and between 1895 and 1900 he was served as Gas Engineer before moving to the Midland Railway on 18th June 1900. On 1st November 1905, he was appointed as Assistant Works Manager and the two years later he was promoted to Works Manager.

With the First World War he was seconded to war work, initially becoming Superintendent of the Royal Aircraft Factory in 1915 and then in 1918 he became Assistant Director of Aircraft Production. In 1920 he was knighted in recognition of his contribution to the war effort. On his return to peacetime work, he returned as C.M.E. of the Midland, but at the grouping his former boss from Lancashire and Yorkshire days, George Hughes took the position as the London Midland and Scottish Railway C.M.E. with Fowler as his deputy. However in October 1925, Hughes retired and Fowler took over as C.M.E., a position that he held until he retired in 1933. His final career record sheet can be downloaded here

Sir Henry died on 16th October 1938 at the age of 68 at his home at Spondon Hall.

In early 2024, a cache of personal effects from Sir Henry Fowler's estate came up for auction and the Midland Railway Society was successful in securing several Lots. Chief amongst these was his Midland Railway Ambulance gold medal, awarded for his committee work.

Sir Henry Fowler

The remaining Lots consisted of personal paperwork and a large quantity of photographs; getting on for 500 images, mainly film and glass negatives and a handful of prints. View of many packets of photographs The vast majority are what you would expect from anyone’s personal photograph album; lots of family (especially grandchildren), holidays (home and abroad), a few pets, an awful lot of churches...and with a few work trips abroad thrown in. The latter element includes a lot of American railroad pictures including a dozen or so taken at the Baldwin Locomotive Works.

From a Midland Railway perspective the highlights include; several shots of a pair of steam lorries in action, the slides from a talk interior shot of a of Lancaster, Morecambe & Heysham electric car, Sir Henry evidently gave in 1922 regarding administration improvements in the Loco Works, an interior shot of a Lancaster, Morecambe & Heysham electric car, a fantastic view of the type 1 signal box at London Road Junction at Derby. Sadly, not a lot in the way of MR locomotives. If such shots existed, then perhaps they were diverted away from the collection long ago?

On the documentation front, we have the entire life-and-times of Sir Henry; from his birth certificate and that of his son Henry, his and his wife’s passport, letters from the Institute of Civil Engineers awarding him the Watt Gold Medal and the Webb Prize in 1913 for a Paper on “Superheating Steam for Locomotives”, to the letter signed by King George V conferring the title of Knight Commander of the British Empire upon him (though this has suffered badly with damp over the years). There’s a petrol ration book, his National Registration Act 1915 identity card and even all his school reports from Evesham Grammar School... (General Remarks Trinity Term 1880: “Rather volatile - easily distracted. He has in many respects shown decided improvement. I could wish a more visible advancement in the matter of spelling and writing but both seem great stumbling blocks to him”). There is also a roll of cine film (from its label, we think it is a 1927 commercial film called The Toy Shop) and two records (the round, vinyl type) which we think are speech recordings, though whether we will ever be able to play these is highly debatable!

A few more example photographs taken by Sir Henry...

A group of ten men, including a Midland Railway Guard on the left, standing on a wooden station platform, posing for the photographer.
An Edwardian lady with a fancy hat, light jacket and long skirt stands on Derby Station posing for the camera with a railway carriage bearing the number 100 and Midland is seen behind her
A young man in military uniform stands on the steps of a large house with many potted plants on the steps behind him
A very young girl and a slightly older boy in his smart school uniform play in the front garden of a house with a view of the street behind them
A view taken out of the window of an American street car that has just descended from a very rickety looking bridge carrying the rails across a road intersection

Needless to say we are very excited about this collection and are delighted to have it and show it off. Full details of all the items within the collection can be seen in this extract from our catalogue — (6.5Mb PDF). If you would like to know more, please get in touch.

Sir Henry and Lady Emma Fowler passport