Sir John Hawkshaw

Sir John Hawkshaw (born 1811, Yorkshire, Eng.—died June 2, 1891, London) was a British civil engineer noted for his work on the Charing Cross and Cannon Street railways, with their bridges over the River Thames, and the East London Railway, which utilized Sir Marc Isambard Brunel’s Thames Tunnel.

In 1845 Hawkshaw became chief engineer of the Manchester and Leeds Railway, introducing steeper gradients than any previously built. In 1850 he started a practice as a consulting engineer in London, later working with Sir John Wolfe-Barry on the underground District Railway. He also designed the nearly mile-long bridge over the Narmada River in India, and in 1862 he became the engineer for the Amsterdam ship canal. The following year he visited Egypt, where he reported in favour of Ferdinand de Lesseps’s proposed site for the Suez Canal; Hawkshaw’s report was decisive in allowing the work to continue. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1855 and knighted in 1873.