VANITY FAIR. (LONDON, MARCH 19, 1903).

Men of the Day.-No. DCCCLXX. (SIR CHARLES JOHN OWENS).
BORN in London eight-and-fifty years ago, he practi- cally began life on the London and South-Western Railway; of which he is now the General Manager. He has visited many foreign railways, and has inquired much; yet strangely enough he has served his one company from the beginning. When he succeeded Sir Charles Scotter rather more than five years ago he could hardly have known the work that was in store for him and his five- and-twenty thousand men; for no one thought then of war. Now he can look back upon a grand record; for of all the different departments of military machinery that worked during the Boer War there is none that worked so absolutely without hitch or mishap as his civilian railway company. He transported something like a quarter of a million of men to Southampton, and embarked them in 365 ships; together with more than ten thousand Officers, twenty-five thousand horses, and vast quantities of stores, guns, ammu- nition, and waggons, without a single accident of any kind. On his record day, indeed, when we began to wake up to the exigencies of the situation–it was on Friday, the 20th of October, 1899-he ran no fewer than ten special trains crowded with troops, as well as six other specials loaded with baggage and stores, into Southampton Docks, detrained and embarked on board five transports five thousand men besides much else in the way of guns, ammunition, and stores, with such organised speed that all the ships sailed before half-past four in the afternoon: which fine per- formance was achieved without really taxing his Company’s resources, and most properly helped to earn for Sir Charles Owens his Knighthood.
Personally he is a very bright, keen, cheerful fellow who says what he has to say quickly and knows what he wants. He is a man of determination who believes in the punctuality of trains. He is also a patriot who believes in the Volunteers; so that he is a Colonel of the Engineer and Railway Volunteer Staff Corps, as well as a member of the Army Railway Council; which is a very practical matter. He is an expert in traffic management; he is the first railway man in England to introduce automatic signals; he believes in making the public comfortable in his trains; he knows all about rates and Railway Law; he plays golf, and he is so fond of music that he was one of Henry Leslie’s choir, and was once commanded before Queen Victoria.
He is altogether a very efficient and a very popular railway manager.

JEHU JUNIOR.

Product Details