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the tunnellers would be vulnerable to
ground instability and flooding.
Bartlett’s solution was the bentonite
tunnelling machine (BTM), which he
patented in 1964. It sprays the tunnel
face with a shield of bentonite slurry, a
mixture of clay and water, that is a gel
when at rest but a liquid when agitated
or in motion. The slurry shield balances
the water pressure in the ground, there-
by preventing it from flowing into the
tunnel and causing instability and tun-
nellers to work at normal air pressure.
In return for funding to develop the
BTM, Bartlett signed over his patent tothe National Research Development
Corporation. The prototype was built
by London Transport in 1971 to bore an
experimental tunnel near New Cross
that demonstrated the feasibility of ex-
tending the Tube network into south-
east London, where the ground was
thought too unstable for tunnelling.
The experiment worked perfectly,
but there was no public money for big
tunnelling projects. Bartlett’s tech-
nique was improved upon by compa-
nies in West Germany and Japan,
which developed their own slurry tun-
nelling machines and, later, earth pres-John Bartlett once laughed so much
while watching a Marx Brothers film at
the cinema that he gripped the back of
the seat in front of him and then heard
a loud crack as the entire row collapsed.
When it came to big tunnelling pro-
jects, his ability to laugh at absurdity
was as important as the civil engineer-
ing ingenuity that he possessed.
Bartlett had led the design of the Brit-
ish side of the Channel tunnel in the
1960s, but then watched as Harold Wil-
son prevaricated.The project was can-
celled in 1975, just as the vast tunnelling
machine was starting to bore its way
into position. “We just couldn’t believe
it when the thing was cancelled at such
short notice,” he recalled. At least Bart-
lett had the last laugh: his design was
adopted when Margaret Thatcher and
President Mitterrand agreed in 1986 to
build the tunnel. It finally opened in
1994, six years after he had retired.
During his 36-year career as a civil
engineer Bartlett distinguished himself
as project engineer for a stretch of the
Victoria Line tunnel in London, which
opened on schedule in 1968.
He could also make a claim for
having made a contribution to society
in general with the invention of a ma-
chine that could safely bore tunnels in
non-cohesive and watery ground,
thereby making many metro systems
feasible, improving connectivity and
decreasing pollution from car fumes.
Boring though hard rock, such as for
Alpine tunnels, or soft rock, such as the
chalk for most of the Channel tunnel, or
cohesive soft ground, such as the
London clay for most of the London
Underground, was relatively straight-
forward, if not cheap. In non-cohesive
water-bearing ground such as sands,
silts or gravels, bored tunnelling was
prohibitively expensive and dangerous.
Tunnelling in such ground would
take place in a sealed box or caisson that
was pumped with compressed air, but
His technique was used
on the Jubilee Line and
the Thames ‘super sewer’
Sir Joseph Hotung
Scion of a wealthy Hong Kong family who came to appreciate art in his forties and was a generous donor to the British Museum
Joseph Hotung’s flight connection was
running late and he had a couple of
hours to kill in San Francisco. “I drifted
inside this oriental gallery and saw
these beautiful, decorative Chinese
bowls,” he recalled of that delay in the
mid-1970s. “I bought them on a whim
and from then on I became more and
more interested in art.”
Soon he was displaying all the pas-
sion of a convert. “It has been fascinat-
ing because it’s given me a totally new
interest in life, and a new dimension,”
added Hotung, a scion of one of the
wealthiest families in Hong Kong. “It
helps me see things from different
angles, so I’m very happy.”
On trips to London he explored the
British Museum. “They had this enor-
mous gallery of oriental treasures dat-
ing back to around 4000BC, but the
lighting was absolutely atrocious,” he
said. “It was so bad that I got into the
habit of bringing a torch with me.”
Gradually he got to know Jessica
Rawson, keeper of oriental antiquities,
and one day offered to redo the wiring
for her. She countered by suggesting
that he refurbish the entire gallery,
“which took me back a bit”, he laughed.
The refurbishment of what became the
Joseph E Hotung Gallery of Oriental
Antiquities, widely seen as one of the
best showcases in the world for oriental
artefacts, cost him £2 million (about
£4.3 million today).
Hotung was consulted along the way.
“The only thing I objected to was that
they wanted gold leaf on all the walls.
And I thought, God, that sounds hide-
ous, it sounds tawdry. So I expressed my
disagreement. They went ahead and
did it anyway, so much for my opinion,
and it looks fantastic.” The gallery was
reopened by the Queen in 1992, as it
was again 25 years later when Hotung
paid for further renovations.
The experience widened Hotung’s
own artistic interests and before long
he had added positions at the British
Museum, the Freer Gallery of Art in
Washington and the Hong Kong Arts
Development Council to a boardroom
portfolio that included HSBC, Hong-
kong Electric Holdings and his own Ho
Hung Hing Estates.
In 1996 he helped to pay for the refur-
bishment of the Shanghai Museum. His
funding came with a rare condition: Ma
Chengyuan, the director who was due
to retire, had to promise to stay in post
until the work had been completed.
Joseph Edward Hotung was born in
Shanghai in 1930, the son of EdwardHotung, a founder of the Chinese Gold
and Silver Exchange in Hong Kong,
and his wife Maud (née Newman). He
had an elder brother, Eric, who died in
2017, and two sisters, Mary and Anto-
nia. His grandfather was Sir Robert Ho-
tung (1862-1956), known as “the grand
old man of Hong Kong” who by 35 had
become the richest man in the territory.
He was educated at St Francis Xavier
College, Shanghai, and St Louis Col-
lege, Tientsin, later regretting that he
never learnt to play a musical instru-
ment or to draw anything more compli-
cated than a flower. “All I can say is that
I admire beautiful objects,” he said.
After studying at the University of
Hong Kong he left to read economics at
the Catholic University of America in
Washington DC and did military
service with the US army. Some
years later he took an LLB from the
University of London. In 1957 he
joined Marine Midland Bank,
based in Buffalo, New York, working
as a security analyst. That same
year he married Mary
McGinley, a cancer re-
search nurse in NewYork. The marriage was dissolved in
1969 and he is survived by his children:
Joseph, who is retired; Patrick, who
works in the property empire; Ann, a
retired lawyer; and Ellen, who is also in
the family business. He had a brief
second marriage to Ann Carlo, from
Hong Kong.
The deaths of Hotung’s grandfather
and father barely a year apart took him
back to Hong Kong, where he started
Ho Hung Hing Estates, developing
commercial property in Hong Kong
and the US. Although he had long since
collected European paintings, he saw
his “conversion” in his forties to a wider
range of artistic matters as advanta-
geous. “There are people who go
through their whole lives with-
out art; I nearly did,” he said.
“But their life is perhaps not
as dimensional or as full of
colours as it could be.”
His appointment in 1994
as chairman of the Hong
Kong Arts Development
Council met with oppo-
sition from some
who felt that the
post would be bet-
ter suited to a
practising artist.He saw it as a challenge. “Sometimes
art practitioners are too involved,
which is not always for everyone’s best
interests,” he explained.
Hotung, who kept a low profile, was
briefly in the spotlight in 2009 as a wit-
ness in a New York case concerning the
$100 million will of Brooke Astor, the
socialite whose son, Anthony Marshall,
was convicted of fraud. Hotung had
visited Astor in 2004, two days after she
had changed her will to give her mil-
lions to Marshall, and gave the court
evidence of her senility by saying that
she had no idea who he was.
Latterly he lived in London, where
his philanthropy included support for
macular degeneration treatment at
Moorfields Eye Hospital. His collecting
extended to ancient Chinese jade
animals, but he was unable to say which
one he would save if his home was
burning down. “I regard them all like
pets,” he said. “I would be upset if any-
thing happened to any of them.”Sir Joseph Hotung, philanthropist, was
born on May 25, 1930. He died on
December 16, 2021, aged 91Hotung had all the
passion of a convert Email: [email protected]John Bartlett signed away the patent to his bentonite tunnelling machine, rightsure balancing machines. The tech-
nique was finally used in Britain for the
Jubilee Line extension, the Crossrail
river crossing and the Thames Tideway
“super sewer” in London.
John Vernon Bartlett was born in
1927, the eldest of three sons of Vernon
Bartlett, chief civil engineer for the
London Power Company in the Second
World War and later senior partner at
the engineering consultancy Mott, Hay
and Anderson (MH&A). His mother,
Olga (née Testrup), was half-Swedish.
At Stowe he was captain of rugby and
cricket. He read mechanical science at
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he
performed well enough in Footlights to
earn an audition for the D’Oyly Carte
Opera Company. He also learnt to fly,
captained his college at rugby and
played for Harlequins.
His studies were interrupted by
National Service with the 9th Airborne
Squadron of the Royal Engineers.
Returning to complete his degree, he
scraped by with a poor lower second
because of his other activities. He re-
mained for a year to take a law degree
with a view to being called to the Bar,
though never pursued a pupilage.
He joined the contractors John
Mowlem in 1952, having married Gilli-
an Hoffmann, a physiotherapist he had
met at a dance in Cambridge the previ-
ous year. She survives him with their
sons, Richard, Nicholas and Michael.Another son, Andrew, pre-
deceased him. In 1957 Bart-
lett did what he had vowed
not to do and followed his
father into MH&A, where
he remained for 31 years,
eventually becoming chair-
man. His first big tunnel-
ling project was as assistant
resident engineer on the
first Dartford tunnel. In
1959 he moved to Canada
to work on the first tun-
nelled section of the To-
ronto subway and in 1966
he became MH&A’s part-
ner in charge of the firm’s
tunnelling work, which in-
cluded design and super-
vision of the second Dartford tunnel,
the Tyne and Wear Metro and the
Melbourne Loop.
“One that got away,” he said, was the
design for a metro in Chile. When Bart-
lett and his colleagues met a Chilean
delegation in London, they demanded
to be taken to the Raymond Revuebar.
“Ghastly! I kept laughing, which was
not the thing to do,” he recalled of the
fruitless schmoozing. “They went on to
Paris, and the French got the contract.”
Meanwhile, he had led a remarkable
expansion of MH&A, from a small
London consultancy to worldwide firm.
He also led the negotiations with Sir
Murdoch MacDonald & Partners that
resulted shortly after his retirement in a
merger to form Mott MacDonald. Be-
yond engineering, Bartlett’s great pas-
sion was boats. He lived on the river at
Putney after getting married and col-
lected maritime books, donating 6,000
to the National Maritime Museum.
Bartlett never made any money for
his invention, but he did receive several
awards. He was also president of the
Institution of Civil Engineers in 1982,
taking up the role by calling on the state
to give infrastructure more importance
and urgency. After his experience with
the Channel tunnel, however, he did
not expect to be heard.John Bartlett CBE, FREng, civil engineer,
was born on June 18, 1927. He died on
November 17, 2021, aged 94John Bartlett
Civil engineer who invented a machine for tunnelling in unstable ground and designed the British side of the Channel tunnel
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