Benjamin Blyth II

Benjamin Hall Blyth II FRSE (25 May 1849 – 13 May 1917) was a Scottish civil engineer.^[1]

Blyth, who was born in St Cuthbert's Parish, Edinburgh,^[2] was the eldest of the nine children of the railway engineer Benjamin Blyth.^[1] He studied at Merchiston Castle School between 1860 and 1864 before studying for a Master of Arts degree from Edinburgh University.

After the death of both parents – Benjamin Blyth in 1866 and Mary Dudgeon Wright in 1868 – Blyth and his siblings were brought up by their mother's sister, Elizabeth Scotland Wright.^[3][4]

Following his father's death Blyth entered the family engineering consultancy and became a partner five years later. Blyth served as a consultant to the North British Railway and the Great North of Scotland Railway and served in an advisory capacity to the British Army with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps. In 1872 he married Millicent Taylor with whom he had a son, Benjamin Edward, who died in infancy,^[5] and a daughter, Elsie Winifred.^[1] He became a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1877, being elected to its council in 1900. He served as vice-president in 1911 and in 1914 became the first practising Scottish engineer to serve as president.^[6] On 7 February 1898 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.^[7]

Blyth stood as the Unionist candidate for the East Lothian by-election of 1911. He lost. One of his platforms was opposing the giving of home rule to Ireland.^[8]

He was widowed on 12 September 1914 and died in North Berwick on 13 May 1917, of "spittielioma of tongue".^[9] He was survived by his daughter. His nephew, Benjamin Hall Blyth III – the son of his brother Francis Creswick Blyth – who was taken on by Blyth and Blyth in 1909,^[10] continued the consultancy after his death.^[1]

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