Frederick Lawson
LAWSON, Frederick Washington, Major, DSO MICE MIMechE MIEAust (1869-1924) Hydraulic and Mechanical Engineer
The hydraulic engineer, Frederick Lawson, who was the Engineer for Metropolitan Water Supply, Sewerage and Drainage from 1913 until 1924, played important roles in the establishment and the guidance of the Western Australian Institution of Engineers (WAIE) from 1910 until 1920, and also in the founding of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, from 1920. He was a founding Councillor of the WAIE and was one of its Vice-Presidents from 1914 to 1918. In October 1919 he and the civil and electrical engineer, Theophilus M. Carey, were the two representatives of the WAIE at the first Council of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, in Sydney. In 1920 Lawson was one of IEAust’s Vice-Presidents and he was also on the executive committees dealing with publications and the registration of engineers. But for his untimely death in 1924 he would in all probability have been the first Western Australian resident to be elected President of the Institution of Engineers, Australia.
Lawson was born in Launceston, Tasmania, on June 12, 1869 and was educated in Melbourne. The eighth child in a family of thirteen children he was destined to move into the workforce at an early age. He served engineering apprenticeships with John Buncle & Company of Melbourne and with the New South Wales Public Works Department. He also worked the New South Wales Government on a detailed survey of parts of Sydney.
Lawson married Christina Vernon in 1893 in Burwood, New South Wales and they had five children. Lawson divorced Christina in 1921 and married Frances Amelia Third in Sydney in 1924.
In 1896, he joined the Sewerage Construction Branch of the New South Wales Public Works Department which was the constructing authority for the Sydney Water Board. He worked on the construction of two of the Board’s major sewerage schemes and was also Secretary of the Sewerage Works Ventilation Board which was appointed to investigate working conditions for Public Works Department employees during the construction of sewers. After transfer to the PWD Water Supply Branch, Lawson worked on the construction of the Cataract Dam, the first of the large dams on the Upper Nepean Scheme supplying water to Sydney.
In 1906 Lawson moved to Western Australia to join the Western Australian Public Works Department as Assistant Engineer (sewerage) under Hugh Oldham, Engineer for Water Supply and Sewerage, working on the first sewerage scheme in the metropolitan area which serviced the central business district and surrounding suburbs. In 1912 the Scaddan Labor Government moved all the Government’s non-marine water-related activities into a new department, the Water Supply, Sewerage and Drainage Department in which Lawson was made Acting Engineer for the Metropolitan Area. In September 1913 he was appointed Engineer for Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage. In physical terms the state-wide water department only lasted until 1919 when the Minister for Water Supply, under pressure from the larger Metropolitan local authorities, instructed the staff dealing with Metropolitan affairs to relocate in a separate building. Lawson lived in the Engineer’s House at Mount Eliza from 1914 to 1923 with the simple address of “The Reservoir Kings Park”.
Lawson enlisted in the AIF at the end of 1915 and served with distinction in the Australian Engineers reaching the rank of Major. In 1916 he served in two Australian Tunneling Companies on active service. In 1917 and he was awarded the DSO for repairing a water supply line under fire, in France, and was also mentioned in dispatches. From March until December 1918 he was Water Supply Officer, under Chief Engineer General Foote, responsible for supplying drinking and washing water to the whole of the Australian Corps consisting of 110,000 fighting men and not less than 80,000 horses – each of the latter requiring a daily water supply ten times that provided to a soldier.
Lawson had complete control of the construction and maintenance of pipelines, pumping plant, purifying works and reservoirs for the Corps and as many as 1200 troops were employed on this work at any one time. It was a complicated and demanding task as the troops were changing their positions almost daily and, during the 1918 autumn offensive from Villers-Bretonneux to the Hindenburg Line, the Australian troops advanced 50km in three months. The water supply works implemented were was so effective that in the Australian Corps during 1918 there were no cases of serious diseases that could be attributed to the water supplied.
Lawson resumed his office as Engineer for Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage when his military service concluded in June 1919 at a time when criticism was mounting in the press over the limitations of the Metropolitan water supply. However, over the next five years, the total daily quantity of water consumed and the population serviced were both doubled. Additional artesian supplies were installed and Lawson prepared proposals for building impounding reservoirs in the Darling Ranges. After considerable public pressure, in 1924, the Mitchell Government finally accepted these proposals which were known as the Hills Scheme and which involved a dam on Churchman’s Brook, a pipehead dam on Wungong Brook and a large dam on the Canning River.
There was further controversy over pollution of the Swan River resulting from the high nutrient content of the discharge from sewage effluent treatment filters on Burswood Island. The plan to discharge similar treated effluent into other stretches of the river, as originally proposed by Charles Palmer, the Engineer-in-Chief who had succeeded O’Connor, was abandoned and Lawson designed a new treatment plant to be sited at West Subiaco from which treated effluent was to be discharged through an ocean outfall. Work began on the new plant in 1923 and, by the following year, the sewerage reticulation of Fremantle, Leederville, Perth, Maylands and North Perth had been fully completed.
Through most of 1924 Lawson was subjected to considerable press criticism, particularly from the Daily News, over the adequacy of the Hills Scheme and about the collapse of a concrete wall at the Mount Hawthorn artesian water filter beds. A Select Committee of the Legislative Council was formed to inquire into the operations of Lawson’ department. In a very questionable appointment Arthur Lovekin MLC, the proprietor of the Daily News and outspoken critic of Lawson and his department, was made Chairman of the Select Committee.
The hearings of the Committee which had no engineering or legal guidance were inquisitorial and one-sided from the start and took from August to December to complete. On 17 November 1924 Lawson took his own life.
The men who had served under Major Lawson contributed to a granite monument for his grave that was unveiled by the Minster for Works, Water Supply, Sewerage and Drainage, Alexander McCallum in November 1925.
Frederick Lawson had made a significant contribution to his country, his profession and his community with his only regret being that he had not completed an engineering degree. He bequeathed the bulk of his estate to his youngest son to be used for his education and professional development.
Lawson’s published papers include:
Adhesion between concrete and steel bars, Proceedings of the Western Australian Institution of Engineers (ProcWAIE) 1 (1910): 4- 8;
Institution of Engineers, Australia, Perth Division, Chairman’s Address, The Engineer: his training and his future, Proceedings of the IEAust, Perth Division (ProcIEAust Perth Div) 1920: 8-18;
Water supply to an army corps on the Western Front, ProcIEAust Perth Div 1920: 41-58;
Bickley Brook Reservoir (Abstract only), Transactions of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, 2, 1921: 260.
References:
Report of the Royal Commission on the Methods of Construction and Supervision of metropolitan Sewerage & Stormwater Works, Government Printer, Perth WA 1909;
Battye, Cyclopedia v.1 pp.497-8;
Report of the Royal Commission on State Implement Works, Government Printer, Perth, 1915;
H E Hunt, Perth’s early water supplies, 1984, pp. 25-31;
Cumming, WA Engineers (unpublished ms);
Frederick Washington Lawson War Service Record available at www.naa.gov.au
Beor, Perry, Recognising Wartime Service in Public Utilities, EHA Magazine, Vol 3 No. 8, May 2021.
