Daniel Pidgeon, Esq.
(1831-1900)
9 September 1862
Volume 9, page 152, sitting number 11,605
[The sitter is identified as ‘Daniel Pidgeon, Esq.’ in the Silvy daybooks. The National Portrait Gallery has mistranscribed this as ‘David Pidgeon, Esq.’ The preceding entry in the daybooks is his wife.]
This is probably the Daniel Pidgeon who was born at Weymouth in Dorset in or about 1831. His father was Daniel Pidgeon, a grocer, and his mother was Ann née Pickering.
He was baptised at Melcombe Regis on 10 June 1834.
On 14 March 1859 at St Mary’s in West Brompton (London) Daniel Pidgeon ‘of Thistlegrove, Brompton’ married Lydia Randell, third daughter of James Randell, coal merchant, of Devizes, Wiltshire. Daniel gave ‘Engineer’ as his profession.
The couple appear on the 1871 census living at 19 Horse Fair, Banbury, Oxfordshire, with their son, Winter Randell Pidgeon (aged 11) and four servants, all female. Daniel gave as his profession ‘Ag. Engineer & Ironfounder, Emp[loying] at these works in Banbury under the name of his firm (Samuelson & Co.) an aver[age] of 550 workmen, moulders, fitters, carpenters, painters & c.’
On 17 February 1871 he was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
In 1882 he published An Engineer’s Holiday, or, Notes on a Round Trip from Long. 0° to 0°, in which he gave ‘much interesting information respecting America, Japan, China and India’ (Hampshire Telegraph, 17 Mary 1882). Of America, he wrote that he was ‘convinced that so far as power and prosperity are concerned the great Republic is on its way to become the foremost nation of the modern world.’
Lydia Pidgeon died on 18 September 1890 at 14 Hartington Place, Eastbourne. She left an estate valued at £4447.
On 12 March 1891 at St George’s Hanover Square Daniel Pidgeon ‘of Walsingham House, Piccadilly,' married, secondly, Jane Mary Cooper ‘of Brook Green’ (The Globe, 17 March 1891).
In the same year he completed work on a large redbrick house at Leatherhead, originally called the Long House but later known as Milner House. Today the house is a care home. Daniel’s initials can still be seen on several of the building’s ornate drainpipes.
In 1895, he published Venice, in which he ‘describes happily the aspects of the place, the ways of its indwellers and visitors, the sights and the canals, and discourses with intelligence on its art and commerce’ (The Scotsman, 30 December 1895).
Daniel Pidgeon died at Aswan in Egypt on 13 March 1900. He left an estate valued at £100,782 .
According to an obituary that appeared in the journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
He ‘was educated at Crewkerne Grammar School, and became an articled pupil of Messrs, Barrett, Exall & Andrews of Reading. On the expiration of his articles Mr Pidgeon was for a time in the office of Mr Thomas Hawksley, Past President, as a draughtsman, and was subsequently employed by Messrs Cochrane & Co of Dudley, until 1862. During that period he was engaged in working out the details and on the erection of Westminster Bridge, and in the extension of the South Eastern Railway to Charing Cross, including the Charing Cross Bridge across the river.
‘In 1862 Mr Pidgeon settled in Banbury as junior partner in the works of Mr (now Sir) Bernhard Samuelson. At that time the firm was engaged in introducing the first successful self-raking reaping machines, and Mr Pidgeon’s talent for organisation was of great use in devising arrangements to meet the rapid increase in demands on the resources of the firm. […] Mr Pidgeon possessed an unusually active mind, and the deep interest he took in the progress of science, as well as in literature and the current topics of the day, fully employed his leisure. A frequent and appreciative visitor to the United States, he recorded his impressions and experiences of that country in two books, which met with a favourable reception on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society and a Member of Council of the Royal Agricultural Society, to the Journals of which he contributed Papers.
‘During the last few years of his life Mr Pidgeon suffered from an affection of the heart which made physical exertion impossible. He died on the 13th March 1900 at Assuan [sic], Egypt, after a few days’ illness.’