Mervyn Joseph Pius O'Gorman Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1871 - d. 1958

Mervyn Joseph Pius O'Gorman CB (19 December 1871 – 16 March 1958)[1] was a British electrical and aircraft engineer. After working as an electrical engineer, he was appointed Superintendent of what became the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough in Hampshire in 1909. In 1916, following a scandal over the quality of the aircraft used by the Royal Flying Corps, he was removed from this post but continued to act in an advisory capacity. After the war he concentrated his energies on motoring issues, particularly road safety and traffic management, and played an important part in the publication of the Highway Code. He died in 1958 in Chelsea, London.

Mervyn Gorman was born in Brighton on 19 December 1871, the son of Edmund Anthony Gorman (1821-1912) and his third wife Margaret Eliza Barclay Crawford (1849-1899). Later in life, Mervyn readopted the O' prefix to his surname, which had been dropped by his Irish great-grandfather Thomas O'Gorman (1724–1800) after he moved to England in 1747.


In 1891 O'Gorman went to London to study electrical engineering at the City and Guilds Central Institution. He was elected an associate member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1893, and obtained his City and Guilds diploma in 1894, his marks being amongst the best in his year. On graduating he obtained a position as an assistant engineer at the Fowler, Waring Cables Company, and was sent to take charge of the company's cable networks in Ostend and Grenoble. Back in England he assisted with the laying of 3000 volt systems in Salford, Leicester and Taunton, and took part in experiments on the use of celluloid as an insulator. He was rapidly promoted to chief engineer, and reorganised the company's factory near London before being sent to Paris in 1895 to set up a new cable factory for a French company; in 1896 he became Fowler Waring's general manager. In 1898 Fowler Waring became part of Western Electric and O'Gorman left the company and started an engineering consultancy at 66 Victoria Street, London in partnership with E. H. Cozens-Hardy. The partnership was brought to an end in October 1908 when Cozens-Hardy left London for St Helens to take a place on the board of the glass manufacturers Pilkingtons.

O'Gorman was a keen motorist, being an active member of the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland, and he published a book on the subject, O'Gorman's Motoring Pocket Book, in 1904; he also wrote articles on motoring for The Times.[1] In August 1908 at a race meeting at Brooklands, the mechanic accompanying one of the racers in the first O'Gorman Trophy race was killed in an accident after a Mercedes two-seater was taken high up on the banks to pass another car - both going at speed. The Mercedes lost control and careened across the track ejecting both occupants resulting in the death of the 21 year old mechanic.