1883 he became
its chairman. Many honours were conferred upon him in the course of
his career--the Telford prize in 1853, gold medals at the various great
Exhibitions, including that of Paris in 1881, and a GRAND PRIX at the
earlier Paris Exhibition of 1867 for his regenerative furnace. In 1874
he received the Royal Albert Medal for his researches on heat, and in
1875 the Bessemer medal of the Iron and Steel Institute. Moreover, a few
days before his death, the Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers
awarded him the Howard Quinquennial prize for his improvements in the
manufacture of iron and steel. At the request of his widow, it took the
form of a bronze copy of the 'Mourners,' a piece of statuary by J. G.
Lough, originally exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, in the
Crystal Palace. In 1869 the University of Oxford conferred upon him the
high distinction of D.C.L. (Doctor of Civil Law); and besides being
a member of several foreign societies, he was a Dignitario of the
Brazilian Order of the Rose, and Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

Rich in honours and the appreciation of his contemporaries, in the prime
of his working power and influence for good, and at the very climax of
his career, Sir William Siemens was called away. The news of his death
came with a shock of surprise, for hardly any one knew he had been ill.
He died on the evening of Monday, November 19, 1883, at nine o'clock. A
fortnight before, while returning from a managers' meeting of the Royal
Institution, in company with his friend Sir Frederick Bramwell, he
tripped upon the kerbstone of the pavement, after crossing Hamilton
Place, Piccadilly, and fell heavily to the ground, with his left arm
under him. Though a good deal shaken by the fall, he attended at his
office in Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster, the next and for several
following days; but the exertion proved too much for him, and almost for
the first time in his busy life he was compelled to lay up. On his last
visit to the office he was engaged most of the time in dictating to his
private secretary a large portion of the address which he intended to
deliver as Chairman of the Council of the Society of Arts. This was on
Thursday, November 8, and the following Saturday he awoke early in the
morning with an acute pain about the heart and a sense of coldness in
the lower limbs. Hot baths and friction removed the pain, from which he
did not suffer much afterwards. A slight congestion of