Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Engineer. Robert Joseph Hutton was born in Dublin on 22 April 1842 and was educated at Portora Endowed School, Enniskillen. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in the summer of 1858, obtaining a mathematical scholarship in 1861 and graduating at Michaelmas 1862 with the First Gold Medal for Mathematics and the First Silver Medal in Experimental and Natural Science. He then served a four year pupilage with B. & E. Blyth of Edinburgh. During the summer of 1868 he was employed by JAMES BARTON  JAMES BARTON as assistant engineer on the Carlingford Bar works, and from May 1869 until March 1872 he worked for Barton as resident engineer on the Dundalk and Greenore Railway. From March 1872 until 1873 he was employed by the Irish North-Western Railway Company as engineer of the line from Enniskillen to Derry and Bundoran.

Hutton worked out of Ireland from 1873 until 1878, first in England and then in South Africa. On returning to Ireland he invested in a large brick works near Cork, which he superintended. The enterprise failed, and he had to start again as a resident engineer under Barton on the Clogher Valley Railway. He then went to work in Argentina, where he died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage on 11 September 1890. His obituarist, describing him as a straightforward man, who was 'intolerant of anything approaching what he considered hypocrisy', suggests that 'some of the difficulties of his career are perhaps to be ascribed to his inability to bend his mind to take the views of others'.

Inst.CE: elected associate, 1 Apr 1873; transferred to member, 11 May 1880.



References

All information in this entry is from the obituary of Hutton in Min.Proc.Inst.CE 104 (1890-91), 293-4.