Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/326

 drained added forty-seven thousand acres of rich alluvial soil to the country, and being situated in the midst of populous provinces proved of material importance. King William expressed his satisfaction, and on 13 March 1848 Husband was elected a member of the Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs. In 1849 he suffered so severely from ague, from the effects of which he never fully recovered, that he resigned his situation and returned to England. While in Holland, in conjunction with his friends Colonel Wiebeking and Professor Munnich, he invented a plan for drying and warehousing grain at a small cost, and preserving it in good condition for years. On 2 May 1851 he submitted to Sir George Grey a plan for a powder magazine in the Mersey, on the recommendation of the Liverpool town council. At the invitation of T. E. Blackwell, C.E., he went to Clifton to assist in some works in the Bristol docks, when he planned a bridge for the Cumberland basin. In September 1852 he undertook the management of the London business of the firm of Harvey & Company; in June 1854 he returned to Hayle to take the charge of the engineering department, and in 1863 became managing partner. He resumed the management of the business in London in October 18551885 [sic], where he remained until his death.

In practical knowledge of hydraulic and mining machinery Husband was surpassed by few. In June 1859 he submitted to the admiralty a plan for a floating battery, and patented the following inventions: the balance valve for water-work purposes (this superseded the costly stand-pipe), the four-beat pump-valve, a safety plug for the prevention of boiler explosions, and a safety equilibrium cataract, used with the Cornish pumping engine for the prevention of accidents. He also effected many improvements in pneumatic ore stamps, finally perfecting and patenting those now known as Husband's oscillating cylinder stamps. During the last two years of his life he was employed in carrying out contracts for the pumping machinery at the Severn tunnel, and at the time of his death was planning further improvements in Cornish pumping engines. On 1 May 1866 he was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and during 1881 and 1882 served as president of the Mining Association and Institute of Cornwall. He actively supported the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. In 1855 he planned and superintended the erection of a breakwater at Porthleven in Mounts Bay, thereby making it a safe harbour. He helped to secure a water supply for Hayle and a system of drainage. He originated and became first captain of the 8th Cornwall artillery volunteers in April 1860, a post which he held till 1865. He established science classes at Hayle in connection with South Kensington. In spectrum analysis and astronomy he took a great interest, and made observations with a 10¼-inch telescope. On 28 and 29 March 1887, in company with Sir John Hawkshaw and Mr. Hayter, C.E., he was employed in inspecting nine pumping engines which his firm had erected in the Severn tunnel for keeping down the water. He died on 10 April of an attack of gall stones at his lodgings, 26 Sion Hill, Clifton, Bristol, and was buried at St. Erth, Cornwall, 16 April. On 20 June 1850 he married Anne, fifth daughter of Edward Nanney, by whom he had a family of four children. In 1890 a sum of 800l. was raised to establish a Husband scholarship for the technical education of miners.



HUSE, WILLIAM (d. 1495), chief justice. [See .]

HUSENBETH, FREDERICK CHARLES, D.D. (1796–1872), Roman catholic divine and author, born at Bristol on 30 May 1796, was the son of Frederick Charles Husenbeth, a wine-merchant in that city, and his wife Elizabeth James, a protestant lady of a Cornish family, who afterwards became a Roman catholic. The father, a native of Mentz in the grand duchy of Hesse, resided for some time at Mannheim as a teacher of the classics and languages. He came to England to learn the language, and the French revolution preventing his return to Germany, he settled in Bristol. He was an excellent musician, and was intimate with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The son was educated at Sedgley Park school, Staffordshire, and in 1810 was placed in his father's counting-house, where he remained three years. On expressing his desire to take holy orders, he was sent back to his studies at Sedgley Park, 29 April 1813, and in the following year was removed to St. Mary's College, Oscott, where he was ordained priest in 1820. Soon afterwards he was sent to Cossey Hall, Norfolk, as chaplain to Sir George William Stafford Jerningham, bart., who succeeded to the