Benjamin Browne

Sir Benjamin Chapman Browne (26 August 1839 – 1 March 1917) was an engineer and shipbuilder, who served as the chairman of R. & W. Hawthorn, Leslie and Company between 1886 and 1916. The Major of Newcastle upon Tyne during 1885 to 1887, Browne also served as the deputy Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland in 1901.

Early life Browne was born on 26 August 1839 at Stouts Hill in Gloucestershire to Colonel Benjamin Chapman Browne and Mary Anne Lloyd Browne .

Educated at Westminster School from 1852 to 1855, Browne studied applied science for a year at King's College London. In 1856, Browne began a mechanical engineering apprenticeship under William Armstrong at the Elswick Ordnance Company. Browne had wanted the business to manufacture only marine engines but orders were buoyant for locomotives. Also in 1887, he was awarded an Honorary DCL by the University of Durham in recognition of the role he played in founding the College of Physical Science, which was later to become Armstrong College, in Newcastle.

Personal life On 9 February 1861, Browne married Annie Browne (née Atkinson), the daughter of the Newcastle mining engineer Robert Thomas Atkinson (1807–1845), and the great-niece of the mining engineer John Buddle. The couple had nine children, two of whom died in childhood. Their eldest son Edward Granville Browne was an Iranologist and Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic.