Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/682

 with Servia in 1885. In the Greco-Turkish war of 1897 he was attached to the Greek army in Thessaly. In a contribution to the ‘Fortnightly,’ June 1897, he attributed the defeat of the Greeks to the disastrous influence of politics. Williams's last service in the field was in Kitchener's Soudanese campaign of 1898. He accompanied General Gatacre up the Nile on his way to join the British brigade in January, and supplied the ‘Daily Chronicle’ with a vivid account of the battle of Omdurman and the recapture of Khartoum in Sept. 1898. The state of his health did not permit of his going to South Africa, but he wrote in London a diary of the Boer War for the ‘Morning Leader.’ He published in 1902 a vigorous pamphlet entitled ‘Hushed Up,’ protesting against the limited scope of the official inquiry into the management of the Boer war.

Williams was a strong adherent of Lord Wolseley's military views and policy, and had an intimate knowledge of military detail. On these subjects he wrote much in the ‘United Service Magazine,’ the ‘National Review,’ and other periodicals. In 1892 he published a somewhat controversial ‘Life of Sir H. Evelyn Wood,’ independently vindicating Sir Evelyn's action after Majuba Hill in 1881 (cf. Sir, From Midshipman to Field-Marshal, ch. 37). Williams also tried his hand at fiction, and wrote some ‘Songs for Soldiers.’ He was a zealous churchman, and presented to Bishop Creighton as a thank-offering for his safe return from Khartoum an ivory and gold mitre designed by himself. Williams vainly contested West Leeds in the conservative interest in 1886, against Mr. Herbert (now Viscount) Gladstone. Although of irascible temper, he was chairman of the London district of the Institute of Journalists in 1893–4, and was president in 1896–7 of the Press Club, of which he was founder. He died at lodgings in Brixton on 9 Feb. 1904.  WILLIAMS, CHARLES HANSON GREVILLE (1829–1910), chemist, born at Cheltenham on 22 Sept. 1829, was only son of S. Hanson Williams, solicitor, of Cheltenham. His mother was Sophia, daughter of Thomas Billings, solicitor, of Cheltenham. After private education he obtained his first scientific employment as a consulting and analytical chemist (1852–3) in Oxford Court, Cannon Street, London, E.C. He then spent three years as assistant to Prof. Thomas Anderson at Glasgow University, and left to undertake work at Edinburgh University under Lyon (afterwards Lord) Playfair. Subsequently he was successively lecturer on chemistry in the Normal College, Swansea (1857–8); chemist to George Miller & Co., manufacturing chemists, at Glasgow; assistant to (Sir) William Henry Perkin at Greenford Green (1863–8); partner with Edward Thomas and John Dower at the Star Chemical Works, Brentford (1868–77); and chemist and photometric supervisor to the Gas Light and Coke Company, London (1877–1901).

Greville Williams's special studies were the volatile bases produced by the destructive distillation of certain shales, cinchonine, and one or two groups of hydrocarbons. He discovered cyanine or quinoline-blue (Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. 1857), the first of the quinoline dye-stuffs. To him is due the isolation of the hydrocarbon isoprene (Phil. Trans. 1860).

To the ‘Journal of Gas Lighting’ he contributed many papers on the chemistry of coal-gas. In 1890 that journal described a method he had devised for producing artificial emeralds from the refuse of gas-retorts. To the Royal Society he sent in 1873 and 1877 two papers: ‘Researches on Emeralds and Beryls’; part i.: ‘On the Colouring-matter of the Emerald’ (Roy. Soc. Proc. vol. xxi.); and (part ii.). ‘On some of the Processes employed in the Analysis of Emeralds and Beryls’ (ib. vol. xxvi.). He showed that emeralds lost about 9 per cent. of their weight on fusion, the specific gravity being reduced to about 2.4. At a meeting of the British Association of Gas Managers (1890) he delivered a lecture on ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Coal Tar.’ Two years later he contributed to the Gas Institute a paper on ‘The Determination of the Specific Gravity of Gas.’

Greville Williams's independent publications were: ‘A Handbook of Chemical Manipulation’ (1857; Supplement, 1879) and ‘Manual of Chemical Analysis for Schools’ (1858). For King's ‘Treatise on Coal Gas’ he wrote the article ‘Tar and Tar Products,’ and he was a contributor to Watts' ‘Dictionary of Chemistry’ and other technical compilations.