245 



Mr. Clark commenced his career first iii Bristol and afterwards 

 with Messrs. Darby and Co. at their celebrated iron- works at Cole- 

 brook Dale in Shropshire, where he doubtless acquired the first 

 principles of Cast-iron Engineering, and which were afterwards more 

 matured when he entered the service of the late Mr. Rennie in 1808, 

 where he remained until 1811, when he was appointed Engineer to 

 the Water-works Company at Hammersmith, in whose service he 

 remained until the day of his death on September 22, after a long 

 and painful illness. Of his w^orks it may be said that they combined 

 great elegance with good sense in the arrangement of the details. 



John George Children, Esq. was born on the 18th of May, 1777, 

 at Ferox Hall, Tunbridge. His father was the possessor of large 

 landed property near Tunbridge, and was a Bencher of the Middle 

 Temple, but never practised at the bar. Mr. Children's mother died 

 a few days after his birth. His father did not marry again, but de- 

 voted himself to the care of his son, who received the rudiments of 

 his education at the Grammar School at Tunbridge, and subsequently 

 at Eton, on quitting which, he was entered a fellow- commoner of 

 Queen's College, Cambridge, in 1794. His views were at this time 

 directed to the church as his profession, but having had the mis- 

 fortune to lose his wife, a granddaughter of Governor Holwell whom 

 he had married as soon as he was of age, he accompanied some in- 

 timate friends to Lisbon, and after a residence there of some months, 

 he returned to England, and in March 1 802 sailed for North America, 

 where a cousin to whom he was much attached had established 

 himself. They travelled together through not only the more settled 

 towns, but among large tracts of the then uncleared backwoods, 

 both of the States and Canada. The change of scene had a bene- 

 ficial effect on Mr. Children's spirits, but had nearly cost him his life. 

 He v/as attacked by a terrible fever, and it required the most judi- 

 cious treatment of his medical friends to save him. As soon as he 

 was sufficiently recovered he returned to England, entirely restored 

 to health by the voyage. He found his native county, Kent, busy in 

 organising national defences, at that time the great object of 

 attention, and he entered the West Kent Militia as one of its cap- 

 tains ; which post he retained until 1805, when severe illness obliged 

 him to resign. 



From this period his time was principally devoted to science, to 

 which he had been from his early youth greatly attached. Mine- 

 ralogy, chemistry, and galvanism, became his favourite studies, and 

 he soon made the acquaintance of the leading men of science. 

 From their society he derived the highest gratification, and he lived 

 much among them. Sir Humphry, then Mr. Davy, Mr. Hatchett, 

 Dr. Wollaston, and many more great names of that day were among 

 his intimate friends, and his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society 

 in 1807, was at once the result and the cause of increasing attach- 

 ment to his scientific pursuits. He had an excellent laboratory at 

 Tunbridge, where he constructed a galvanic battery, with a small 

 series of very large plates, of which he gave an account to the Royal 

 Proceedings of the Royal Society, Vol. VI. No. 92. 17 



