Harry Lionel Sargent died at his home at Southborough, Tunbridge Wells, on 14th March, 1955, at the age of 84.
From 1885 until 1889 he was articled to Mr. C. Algernon Moreing whom he then accompanied to the Transvaal where he remained, in association with Mr. Charles J. Alford in Johannesburg, for more than three years. He returned to the London office of Messrs. Bewick, Moreing & Co. in 1891. Two years later he was appointed as their resident engineer in Umtali, in what was then Mashonaland, remaining there until 1896. From 1896 until 1898 Mr. Sargent was employed by his firm in New Zealand at Auckland and at Dunedin and then, until 1903, in Western Australia, at Coolgardie and at Kalgoorlie. In 1905 he joined the late Mr. W.R. Feldtmann as a consulting engineer and during the ensuing six years he accompanied him to Canada, the United States and Siberia. From 1911 until 1924 he was in partnership with Mr. Feldtmann and retired from active mining practice in that year.
Mr. Sargent was first elected to the Institution as a Student member in 1892, the year of its foundation. He was transferred to Associate Membership in 1895 and became a full Member in 1902. In 1953, in recognition of his services to the profession and to the Institution, the Council conferred on him the distinction of Honorary Membership. Mr. Sargent occupied the position of Honorary Secretary to the Benevolent Fund of the Institution from its inception in 1925 until 1946.
Dr. S.W. Smith writes: Mr. Sargent was one of the diminishing number of those who, more than 60 years ago, felt it their duty to associate themselves in the foundation of the Institution, at that time a pioneering effort to establish the integrity of the metalliferous mining and metallurgical professions on a firm and irreproachable basis. Of those pioneers, many of whom he, the writer, had been privileged to count as his personal friends, there was none for whom he had had a greater regard that Mr. Sargent. When the Benevolent Fund was initiated some 30 years ago Mr. Sargent, already in retirement, at once stepped in to act as Honorary Secretary. The spirit in which the Fund has been administered is due in no small measure to the pattern which he, and those associated with him in the earlier years, had set for it.
Vol. 64, Trans I.M.M., 1954-55, p.644
