John Shae Perring

John Shae Perring was an English civil and railway engineer, born at Boston, Lincolnshire, on 24 January 1813 and dead in 1869 at the age of fifty-six. In 1826 he was articled to Robert Reynolds, surveyor of the port of Boston, and worked on the improvement of Boston harbour, Wainfleet Haven and the outfall of the East Fen. In 1836 he went to Egypt as assistant engineer to Galloway Bey on public works for the viceroy Mohamed Ali, building small railways and a road across the desert, joining the Board of Public Works and advising on embankment of the Nile. With Colonel Howard Vyse he explored the Pyramids, and their folio work The Pyramids of Egypt gave the first authentic details and measurements of those monuments. Returning to England in 1840, he became engineering superintendent of the Llanelly Railway, Docks and Harbour in 1841, then resident engineer of the East Lancashire Railway, and later engineer of Lancashire and Yorkshire lines, waterworks at Oswaldtwistle and other works. He also advocated a railway under the Mersey between Liverpool and Birkenhead.