HAWKSHAW, SIR JOHN (1811-1891), English engineer, was born in Yorkshire in 1811, and was educated at Leeds grammar school. Before he was twenty-one he had been engaged for six or seven years in railway engineering and the construction of roads in his native county, and in the year of his majority he obtained an appointment as engineer to the Bolivar Mining Association in Venezuela. But the climate there was more than his health could stand, and in 1834 he was obliged to return to England. He soon obtained employment under Jesse Hartley at the Liverpool docks, and subsequently was made engineer in charge of the railway and navigation works of the Manchester, Bury and Bolton Canal Company. In 1845 he became chief engineer to the Manchester & Leeds railway, and in 1847 to its successor, the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway, for which he constructed a large number of branch lines. In 1850 he removed to London and began to practise as a consulting engineer, at first alone, but subsequently in partnership with Harrison Hayter. In that capacity his work was of an extremely varied nature, embracing almost every branch of engineering. He retained his connexion with the Lancashire & Yorkshire Company until his retirement from professional work in 1888, and was consulted on all the important engineering points that affected it in that long period. In London he was responsible for the Charing Cross and Cannon Street railways, together with the two bridges which carried them over the Thames; he was engineer of the East London railway, which passes under the Thames through Sir M. I. Brunel’s well-known tunnel; and jointly with Sir J. Wolfe Barry he constructed the section of the Underground railway which completed the “inner circle” between the Aldgate and Mansion House stations. In addition, many railway works claimed his attention in all parts of the world—Germany, Russia, India, Mauritius, &c. One noteworthy point in his railway practice was his advocacy, in opposition to Robert Stephenson, of steeper gradients than had previously been thought desirable or possible, and so far back as 1838 he expressed decided disapproval of the maintenance of the broad gauge on the Great Western, because of the troubles he foresaw it would lead to in connexion with future railway extension, and because he objected in general to breaks of gauge in the lines of a country. The construction of canals was another branch of engineering in which he was actively engaged. In 1862 he became engineer of the Amsterdam ship-canal, and in the succeeding year he may fairly be said to have been the saviour of the Suez Canal. About that time the scheme was in very bad odour, and the khedive determined to get the opinion of an English engineer as to its practicability, having made up his mind to stop the works if that opinion was unfavourable. Hawkshaw was chosen to make the inquiry, and it was because his report was entirely favourable that M. de Lesseps was able to say at the opening ceremony that to him he owed the canal. As a member of the International Congress which considered the construction of an interoceanic canal across central America, he thought best of the Nicaraguan route, and privately he regarded the Panama scheme as impracticable at a reasonable cost, although publicly he expressed no opinion on the matter and left the Congress without voting. Sir John Hawkshaw also had a wide experience in constructing harbours (e.g. Holyhead) and docks (e.g. Penarth, the Albert Dock at Hull, and the south dock of the East and West India Docks in London), in river-engineering, in drainage and sewerage, in water-supply, &c. He was engineer, with Sir James Brunlees, of the original Channel Tunnel Company from 1872, but many years previously he had investigated for himself the question of a tunnel under the Strait of Dover from an engineering point of view, and had come to a belief in its feasibility, so far as that could be determined from borings and surveys. Subsequently, however, he became convinced that the tunnel would not be to the advantage of Great Britain, and thereafter would have nothing to do with the project. He was also engineer of the Severn Tunnel, which, from its magnitude and the difficulties encountered in its construction, must rank as one of the most notable engineering undertakings of the 19th century. He died in London on the 2nd of June 1891.
HAWKSLEY, THOMAS (1807-1893), English engineer, was born on the 12th of July 1807, at Arnold, near Nottingham. He was at Nottingham grammar school till the age of fifteen, but was indebted to his private studies for his knowledge of mathematics, chemistry and geology. In 1822 he was articled to an architect in Nottingham, subsequently becoming a partner in the firm, which also undertook engineering work; and in 1852 he removed to London, where he continued in active practice till he was well past eighty. His work was chiefly concerned with water and gas supply and with main-drainage. Of waterworks he used to say that he had constructed 150, and a long list might be drawn up of important towns that owe their water to his skill, including Liverpool, Sheffield, Leicester, Leeds, Derby, Darlington, Oxford, Cambridge and Northampton in England, and Stockholm, Altona and Bridgetown (Barbados) in other countries. To his native town of Nottingham he was water engineer for fifty years, and the system he designed for it was noteworthy from the fact that the principle of constant supply was adopted for the first time. The gas-works at Nottingham, and at many other towns for which he provided water supplies were also constructed by him. He designed main-drainage systems for Birmingham, Worcester and Windsor among other places, and in 1857 he was called in, together with G. P. Bidder and Sir J. Bazalgette, to report on the best solution of the vexed question of a main-drainage scheme for London. In 1872 he was president of the Institution of Civil Engineers—an office in which his son Charles followed him in 1901. He died in London on the 23rd of September 1893.
HAWKSMOOR, NICHOLAS (1661-1736), English architect, of Nottinghamshire birth, became a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren at the age of eighteen, and his name is intimately associated with those of Wren and Sir J. Vanbrugh in the English architecture of his time. Through Wren’s influence he obtained various official posts, as deputy-surveyor at Chelsea hospital, clerk of the works and deputy-surveyor at Greenwich hospital, clerk of the works at Whitehall, St James’s and Westminster, and he succeeded Wren as surveyor-general of Westminster Abbey. He took part in much of the work done by Wren and Vanbrugh, and it is difficult often to assign among them the credit for the designs of various features. Hawksmoor appears, however, to have been responsible for the early Gothic designs of the two towers of All Souls’ (Oxford) north quadrangle, and the library and other features at Queen’s College (Oxford). At the close of Queen Anne’s reign he had a principal part in the scheme for building fifty new churches in London, and himself designed five or six of them, including St Mary Woolnoth (1716-1719) and St George’s, Bloomsbury (1720-1730). A number of his drawings have been preserved. He died in London on the 25th of March 1736.
HAWKWOOD, SIR JOHN (d. 1394), an English adventurer who attained great wealth and renown as a condottiere in the Italian wars of the 14th century. His name is variously spelt as Haccoude, Aucud, Aguto, &c., by contemporaries. It is said that he was the son of a tanner of Hedingham Sibil in Essex, and was apprenticed in London, whence he went, in the English army, to France under Edward III. and the Black Prince. It is said also that he obtained the favour of the Black Prince, and received knighthood from King Edward III., but though it is certain that he was of knightly rank, there is no evidence as to the time or place at which he won it. On the peace of Bretigny in 1360, he collected a band of men-at-arms, and moved southward to Italy, where we find the White Company, as his men were called, assisting the marquis of Monferrato against Milan in 1362-63, and the Pisans against Florence in 1364. After several campaigns in various parts of central Italy, Hawkwood in 1368 entered the service of Bernabò Visconti. In 1369 he fought for Perugia against the pope, and in 1370 for the Visconti against Pisa, Florence and other enemies. In 1372 he defeated the marquis of Monferrato, but soon afterwards, resenting the interference of a council of war with his plans, Hawkwood resigned his command, and the White Company passed into the papal service, in which he fought against the Visconti in 1373-1375. In 1375 the Florentines entered into an agreement with him, by which they were to pay him and his companion 130,000 gold florins in three months on condition that he undertook no engagement against them; and in the same year the priors of the arts and the gonfalonier decided to give him a pension of 1200 florins per annum for as long as he should remain in Italy. In 1377, under the orders of the cardinal Robert of Geneva, legate of Bologna, he massacred the inhabitants of Cesena, but in May of the same year, disliking the executioner’s work put upon him by the legate, he joined the anti-papal league, and married, at Milan, Donnina, an illegitimate daughter of Bernabò Visconti. In 1378 and 1379 Hawkwood was constantly in the field; he quarrelled with Bernabò in 1378, and entered the service of Florence, receiving, as in 1375, 130,000 gold florins. He rendered good service to the republic up to 1382, when for a time he was one of the English ambassadors at the papal court. He engaged in a brief campaign in Naples in 1383, fought for the marquis of Padua against Verona in 1386, and in 1388 made an unsuccessful effort against Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who had murdered Bernabò. In 1390 the Florentines took up the war against Gian Galeazzo in earnest, and appointed Hawkwood commander-in-chief. His campaign against the Milanese army in the Veronese and the Bergamask was reckoned a triumph of generalship, and in 1392 Florence exacted a satisfactory peace from Gian Galeazzo. His latter years were spent in a villa in the neighbourhood of Florence. On his death in 1394 the republic gave him a public funeral of great magnificence, and decreed the erection of a marble monument in the cathedral. This, however, was never executed; but Paolo Uccelli painted his portrait in terre-verte on the inner façade of the building, where it still remains, though damaged by removal from the plaster to canvas. Richard II. of England, probably at the instigation of Hawkwood’s sons, who returned to their native country, requested the Florentines to let him remove the good knight’s bones, and the Florentine government signified its consent.
Of his children by Donnina Visconti, who appears to have been his second wife, the eldest daughter married Count Brezaglia of Porciglia, podestá of Ferrara, who succeeded him as Florentine commander-in-chief, and another a German condottiere named Conrad Prospergh. His son, John, returned to England and settled at Hedingham Sibil, where, it is supposed, Sir John Hawkwood was buried. The children of the first marriage were two sons and three daughters, and of the latter the youngest married John Shelley, an ancestor of the poet.
Authorities.—Muratori, Rerum Italicarum scriptores, and supplement by Tartinius and Manni; Archivio storico italiano; Temple-Leader and Marcotti, Giovanni Acuto (Florence, 1889; Eng. transl., Leader Scott, London, 1889); Nichol, Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, vol. vi.; J. G. Alger in Register and Magazine of Biography, v. 1.; and article in Dict. Nat. Biog.