I agreed to forward the following and hope someone can help him:
Can you help with a J H Greathead website? Do you have any J H Greathead heirlooms in the attic?
David Lumb BA (Oxon), MA (Oxon), MSc (Sheffield)
contact david@kinderclan.co.uk or David Lumb 10 Hogarth Rise Dronfield S18 1QG
I am contacting you with permission from Jan Cooper (née Greathead) with a request for your help.
I am planning to build a website on the sole subject of James Henry Greathead, the engineer. I will incorporate all material I can find on his life and achievements. This will be free access and available to be shared by all, though anything you request as confidential will be treated strictly as such. These days writing a book is less fashionable and I have no need of the income. So publishing free to the web seems the best way to celebrate a man who I feel is an unrecognised genius. Clearly much material is alreadily available through the web, including Jan's own www.greathead.org.
However I have almost nothing which is personal: private letters, photos, artefacts. For example, many families never throw away old letters and pass them on from generation to generation, hating to throw them away. When JHG addressed a parliamentary sub-committee to persuade them to allow permission for the first underground, he is recorded as showing them a brass model of his tunnelling shield. I imagine that would never be thrown away. Years ago, whilst in Grahamstown (his birthplace), a curator told me of a typewritten document from the 1930s by a direct descendant, discussing the hard life of an early pioneer. I guess that will not have been thrown away either.
So what I am asking you is this: do you have available any material that would help me: letters, photographs, artefacts? If so do please let me know about them. In this way John Henry's deserved fame might be enhanced and celebrated.
Thank you.
David Lumb
I am planning to build a website on the sole subject of James Henry Greathead, the engineer. I will incorporate all material I can find on his life and achievements. This will be free access and available to be shared by all, though anything you request as confidential will be treated strictly as such. These days writing a book is less fashionable and I have no need of the income. So publishing free to the web seems the best way to celebrate a man who I feel is an unrecognised genius. Clearly much material is alreadily available through the web, including Jan's own www.greathead.org.
However I have almost nothing which is personal: private letters, photos, artefacts. For example, many families never throw away old letters and pass them on from generation to generation, hating to throw them away. When JHG addressed a parliamentary sub-committee to persuade them to allow permission for the first underground, he is recorded as showing them a brass model of his tunnelling shield. I imagine that would never be thrown away. Years ago, whilst in Grahamstown (his birthplace), a curator told me of a typewritten document from the 1930s by a direct descendant, discussing the hard life of an early pioneer. I guess that will not have been thrown away either.
So what I am asking you is this: do you have available any material that would help me: letters, photographs, artefacts? If so do please let me know about them. In this way John Henry's deserved fame might be enhanced and celebrated.
Thank you.
David Lumb
