John Iles
ILES, John Maguire, MAusIME MIMM (1864-1934)
John was born in 1864 at Cooma, NSW, the eldest child of John Iles and his wife Amelia (Emily) Iles nee Le Compte.
In 1885 he was appointed Manager of the West Cumberland Tin Mine, in Tasmania. For the next seven years he was Manager of the South Good Intent & Ontario Silver Mining Company at Zeehan and Dundas, Tasmania.
John went to Western Australia in 1893 to take over the management of the Cue One Syndicate and the Kangaroo Gold Mining Company on the Cue-Murchison Goldfields. From 1896 to 1903 he was the General Manager of South Kalgurli Gold Mines near Kalgoorlie. He undertook a mill duplication project that resulted in an annual output of 31,000 ounces of gold in 1902. John was among the first engineers to erect a plant for the treatment of gold bearing telluride ore that had previously been discarded.
John married Kathleen Mack at St Mary’s Church, North Melbourne on January 10, 1898.
He left Western Australia with his wife in July 1903 and travelled to Sydney. He left Sydney via the “Moana”, in August 1903, to travel to the United States of America. By 1904, he was in Chile working as a mining engineer for the Central Chile Copper Company where he was associated in partnership for some time with Allan A Davidson (1873-1930) who had previously worked as Manager of the Richmond Gold Mine in Kalgoorlie.
In 1910, he went to Nigeria for ten years as General Manager of Rayfield (Nigeria) Tin Mines, Ltd., subsequently becoming joint Managing Director of that company, and a director of several other Nigerian tin companies.
Returning to England in 1920, he became associated with the late Oliver Wethered in Cornish mining and became Consulting Mining Engineer and joint Managing Director of Geevor Tin Mines, Ltd in Cornwall. Geevor is now operated by the National Trust and is the largest preserved mine site in the United Kingdom.
John was elected a Member of the Kalgoorlie Mine Mangers Association, the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers in 1901 and the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy in 1929. He was also a Member of the WA Chamber of Mines.
John died at his home in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England, on April 21, 1934, aged 69 and was survived by his partner Eileen Pickering.
References:
Denis A Cumming and Richard G Hartley, Westralian Founders of Twentieth Century Mining, Richard G Hartley, Rossmoyne, 2014.
John Maguire Iles – Northern Mine Research Society.
Obituaries Australia – Iles, John Maguire (1864-1934).
Transactions of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, 1934-35, Volume 44, pp. 567-8.
West Australian, 26.5.1934, p. 15.
