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William George Clarke (1878-1941)

 

William George Clarke - Research Metallurgist, WA School of Mines, Kalgoorlie

Compiled by Russell Hudson 19 August 1987. Last revised 10 July 2008.

William George Clarke, Research Metallurgist at the Kalgoorlie School of Mines, was born in the town of Vyaznike in the district of Vladimir, Russia on 12 December 1878, and was baptised in Moscow on 21 February 1879. He was the seventh of nine children (six boys and three girls) born to Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances (Stelfox) Clarke within the period from 1866 to 1880.

The Cyclopaedia of New Zealand (1902) describes aspects of Mr Thomas Plummer Clarke's employment as an English mechanical engineer in Russia, from which the following brief summary has been compiled. He completed his apprenticeship with the Union Foundry Company, Bolton, Lancashire, and was sent to Russia in 1884 to superintend the erection of an engine and gearing for working a large mill. Over a period of three years he erected three other mills, before returning to England. Thomas Plummer Clarke worked for several major foundries and shipbuilding works in England and Canada before returning to Russia as a representative of the Globe Iron Works, Bolton to erect and take charge of the large flax spinning mills of Messrs Cludoff and Sons on the Volga. He managed other flax spinning mills in Russia before leaving with his family for New Zealand in 1885 to take up new engineering and management positions in timber mills and at the great Waihi Gold Mining Company.

William George Clarke was educated at Auckland Grammar School, and on completing schooling he trained as an assayer. He enlisted for service in the Boer War and sailed from Wellington on 31 March 1900. He served abroad until 16 July 1901 and was discharged on completion of his term of service on 11 August 1901.

William George and his brother Robert (a mining engineer) came to Western Australia in the early 1900's, and it is believed they commenced work in the Leonora district. In 1904, he and his brother were employed as metallurgists on the King Solomon Gold Mine near Coolgardie. In 1905, he was appointed as metallurgist on the Main Lode, Burbanks, and later that year (28 December 1905) he married Elizabeth Annie Douglas, the schoolteacher at Burbanks. Their four children, Frieda Frances (13/01/1907), Joyce Elizabeth (19/01/1909), Grace (10/04/1911) and Robert Douglas (Tim) Clarke (14/06/1913) were all born at Burbanks.

The family moved to Kalgoorlie in 1915 or 1916 as a result of declining operations on the Burbanks Main Lode, and William Clarke worked as a metallurgist on the Ivanhoe and Perseverance mines before joining the School of Mines as a Research Metallurgist in early 1928.

Mr Clarke brought to the School of Mines a varied experience of battery and cyanide treatment, and also some experience of flotation gained while carrying out experimental work on ore from Wiluna. He was appointed to work under the direction of Mr B H Moore, and he replaced Mr A S  Winter, who was the first full-time research metallurgist as from 1925. Dr Frank Stillwell was completing his studies on the nature of the complex gold telluride ores of the Golden Mile when Mr Clarke joined the School of Mines staff. Mr George Payne was employed for a period as Assistant Research Officer and left to take up a position with the CSIR in Melbourne during 1938. Mr Payne subsequently worked at the Government Chemical Laboratories in Western Australia, and was officer in charge of the mineralogy section on retirement.

As an indication of the broad scope of Mr Clarke's contribution to the treatment of Western Australian ores the following titles are listed from "Reports Conducted in the Metallurgical Laboratory".

Bulletin 5 (1930)

Flotation of Wiluna Antimonial Ore - Progress Report.

Lake View and Star, Ltd - Treatment of Low Grade Sulphide Ore.

Oriental Consolidated Mining Co, Korea - Treatment of Accumulated Concentrates - Progress Report.

Holletin Tin Ore - Fineness of Crushing Necessary for Efficient Concentration.

Big Bell Gold Mine, Coolgardie - Treatment of Ore.

Bulletin 6 (1931)

Treatment of Cupriferous Gold Tailings from Gabanintha.

Treatment of Clean-up Material from Old Plant, Lake View and Star, Ltd.

Roasting and Cyanidation of Flotation Concentrates from Wiluna Gold Mines Ltd.

Separation of Cassiterite and Tantalite from Concentrates from Greenbushes.

Efficiency of Western Australian Eucalyptus Oils as Frothing Agents in the Flotation of Ores.

Treatment of Sulphide Ore from Patricia Leases of the Kimberley Oil Options Company at Edjudina.

Mr Clarke retired from the School of Mines soon after 4 December 1940. He died in Perth on 4 March 1941. His obituary (from the Kalgoorlie Miner) reads:

"Mr W G Clarke, research metallurgist at the School of Mines, died on Sunday at the age of 62. The late Mr Clarke, who came to this State in the early days of the Eastern Goldfields, acted as metallurgist on the main Lode at Coolgardie, and on the Ivanhoe and Boulder Perseverance mines on the Golden Mile before joining the staff of the School of Mines, where he assisted in many important metallurgical experiments, perhaps the most outstanding of which was the adaptation of flotation methods to refractory ores in this State. A keen rifleman, Mr Clarke was President of the Eastern Goldfields District Rifle Club and captained the State team which defeated the British rifle team in 1938. In addition to being a member of the council and executive committee of the National Rifle Association, he was also an Honorary Life Member. He was President of the South African Veteran's Association, at Kalgoorlie".

William Clarke also served on the Kalgoorlie Municipal Council within the period 1922-1926 (see photograph).

In the mid 1980's, the WA Mines Department sponsored two scholarships for students attending the WA School of Mines Kalgoorlie. One of these scholarships, the "William Clarke Scholarship in Extractive Metallurgy", was named in recognition of his role as Research Metallurgist at the School of Mines, and for the contribution he made to metallurgical research in Western Australia. In 1986, the recipient of the award was Steven Happ.

Acknowledgements: The above summary is closely-based on a contribution prepared in 1987 by Russell Hudson at the request of Odwyn Jones, Head of the WA School of Mines Kalgoorlie. It was published as a Feature Article on pages 91 and 92 in the 1987 Report of the School of Mines, entitled "85 Years". Four of the photographs used here to illustrate the description of WGC's career were located by Keith Quartermaine within the collection of the Eastern Goldfields Historical Society and I am most grateful to the EGHS for permission to use them on this website. Information on the history of WCG's employment with the School of Mines was provided in 1986 by Vin McLinden of the Government Chemical Laboratories. Frank de Cinque of the Department of Industry and Resources provided information in 2007on records held by the Mines Department and on the history of the William Clarke Scholarship. Staff at both the Battye Library and the Geological Survey Library were helpful in locating records relating to WGC's employment at the School of Mines.

References:

Cyclopaedia of New Zealand, 1902, Volume 2, Auckland Province & District.

Mines Department Reports for the School of Mines of Western Australia  - Years 1928-1943.

Reports on Investigations Conducted in the Metallurgical Laboratory,  School of Mines of Western Australia, Bulletin 5 (1930) and Bulletin 6 (1931).

William George Clarke

The photograph is believed to have been taken in Kalgoorlie during the period 1928-1941 when W G Clarke  was conducting metallurgical research at the School of Mines

(Photograph Cla-fam-004 )

School of Mines Staff ~1936

William George Clarke is seated

at the left of the photograph.

(Photograph Cla-kal-101)

195/04 Copyright Eastern Goldfields Historical Society

William George Clarke

Photograph of WGC conducting metallurgical research within the Kalgoorlie School of Mines.

(Photograph Cla-kal-100)

195/07 Copyright Eastern Goldfields Historical Society

Kalgoorlie Municipal Councillors

W G Clarke is at the left of the top row.

(Photograph Cla-kal-103)

242/32 Copyright Eastern Goldfields Historical Society

Goldfields Rifle Shooting

William George Clarke is standing, second from the right in the photograph.

(Photograph Cla-kal-102)

253/37 Copyright Eastern Goldfields Historical Society

 

 

Plaque for William George Clarke at the Boer War Memorial, Kings Park, Western Australia

Compiled by Russell Hudson October 2007. Last revised 10 July 2008.

My maternal grandfather Sergeant William George Clarke (1878-1941) served with No. 1 NZ Battalion and Rhodesian Field Artillery during the Boer War in South Africa. A plaque, in recognition of his service to the South African and Imperial Veterans Association of Western Australia, was erected in a garden plot adjacent to the Boer War Memorial in Kings Park . He served as President of the Association’s Kalgoorlie Branch during the period 1929-1941.

William George Clarke was born in Vyasniki, Russia, one of nine children of Thomas Plummer Clarke, an English mechanical engineer, and his wife Frances Stelfox. Soon after their marriage in Bolton in 1865, his parents moved to Russia where his father was employed by a Bolton Company to install and maintain English-built steam engines used in Russian textile mills of the Vladimir and other industrial districts. In 1886, the family left Russia and moved to New Zealand where Thomas Plummer Clarke owned and managed a timber mill and he was later employed as engineer and battery manager on the Martha Goldmine at Waihi.

Before enlisting for the Boer War, William George had trained as an assayer and, following his discharge in 1901, he and his brother Robert, a mining engineer, went to the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia in search of work. In 1905, William George was employed as metallurgist on the Burbanks Main Lode (south of Coolgardie), where he met and married Elizabeth Annie Douglas, a schoolteacher at Burbanks. Her Irish-born parents had migrated to Dunedin, New Zealand in 1877, where they married and she and her brother David were born. The family then moved to Australia, firstly to NSW. and then to WA, arriving in the late 1890’s.

William George and Elizabeth Annie Clarke had four children at Burbanks - Frieda Francis (born 1907), Joyce Elizabeth (1909), Grace (1911) and Robert Douglas (1913). By about 1915, mining had declined at Burbanks and  the family moved to Kalgoorlie where William George worked as a metallurgist on several of the major goldmines. In 1928, he was appointed Research Metallurgist at the WA School of Mines (Kalgoorlie), where he remained until his death in 1941.

William George Clarke was a keen rifleman and, in addition to his role as President of the South African and Imperial Veterans Association of WA (Kalgoorlie Branch), he served as President of the Eastern Goldfields Rifle Club, and was an Honorary Life Member of the National Rifle Association. He also served on the Kalgoorlie Municipal Council between 1922 and 1926.

 

Acknowledgement:

The above summary is based on a contribution by Russell Hudson to Letters to the Editor of the “Western Ancestor”, the Journal of the Western Australian Genealogical Society Inc., Vol. 10, No. 8, page 299, December 2007.  The contribution was titled: "Somewhere in Perth - Boer War Memorial", and began:

Dear Editor, The c1902 photograph of the Boer War Memorial in King’s Park (Western Ancestor, June 2007-Somewhere in Perth) was not recognised by your readers, so in the latest edition (September 2007) you re-published the original photograph, together with a present-day view. This latter photograph struck a chord with me, as in the left foreground is a garden bed in which stands a small brass plaque in memory of my maternal grandfather Sergeant William George Clarke (1878-1941) ......

 

Correction:

Para 2 of the original publication incorrectly stated that William George Clarke was one ten children. This has been corrected here to read one of nine children.

Boer War Memorial, Kings Park, Western Australia

The commemorative plaque for William George Clarke is standing in the small garden plot, front left of the photograph.

(Photograph Cla-kpm-101 , Russell Hudson 2007)

Plaque in memory of William George Clarke (1878-1941)

(Photograph Cla-kpm-102 ,Russell Hudson, 2007)

William George Clarke

(Photograph Cla-fam-002)