Birch, John Bennis and Eugenius

By 1839 John Brannis and Eugenius Birch were both working for the engineer Rowland Macdonald Stephenson (1808–1895). In 1843 Stephenson left for Calcutta in connection with the East India Railway, of which he became managing director, following which the brothers entered into partnership.  Initially they were engaged in various unsuccessful railway schemes in the years of the ‘railway mania’ including the Leek and Mansfield and Salisbury and Swindon railways. In the late 1840s they moved to India to work on the route of the proposed Calcutta to Delhi Railway where they designed the numerous bridges and viaducts required to cross the numerous tributaries and inlets at the river estuary. They appear to have left India before construction commenced and were certainly back in England by 1853. In that year they obtained the commission to design their first cast-iron pier at Margate and continued to work in together until December 1860 when John Bannis Birch was found to be “of unsound mind” and was placed in a private lunatic asylum by Eugenius. After this Eugenius worked alone, although the partnership was not formally dissolved until the death of John Bennis Birch in 1882.