Sir Edmund Du Cane

Sir Edmund Frederick Du Cane (23 March 1830 – 7 June 1903) was an English major-general of the Royal Engineers and prison administrator.

Born at Colchester, Essex on 23 March 1830, he was youngest child in a family of four sons and two daughters of Major Richard Du Cane (1788–1832), 20th Light Dragoons; his mother was Eliza, daughter of Thomas Ware of Woodfort, Mallow, County Cork. After Dedham grammar school to 1843, and a private coaching establishment at Wimbledon (1843-6), entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in November 1846. He passed out at the head of his batch at the end of 1848, having taken first place in mathematics and fortification.

Du Cane received a commission as second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 19 December 1848. He joined at Chatham, and in December 1850 was posted to a company of royal sappers and miners commanded by Captain Henry Charles Cunliffe-Owen at Woolwich. He was assistant superintendent of the foreign side of the International Exhibition of 1851, and assistant secretary to the juries of awards.

From 1851 to 1856 Du Cane was employed in organising convict labour on public works in the colony of Swan River, in Western Australia, which was then first devoted to penal purposes under the command of Captain Edmund Henderson. Promoted first lieutenant on 17 February 1854, he was stationed at Guildford in charge of the works in the eastern district of the colony. He was made a magistrate of the colony and a visiting magistrate of convict stations.

Recalled early in 1856 by the Crimean War, Du Cane arrived home on 21 June to find the war over, and joined for duty at the war office, under the inspector-general of fortification, in August 1856. He was employed on designs and estimates for the new defences proposed for the dockyards and naval bases of the United Kingdom. Promoted second captain on 16 April 1858, he during the next five years designed most of the new land works at Dover, and the chain of land forts at Plymouth extending for five miles from Fort Staddon, in the east, across the River Plym, by Laira, to Ernsettle on the River Tamar.

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