KFA - Delamere always had his enemies, more perhaps in England than in EA, and it was put about - it was even hinted at in a book by W. McGregor Ross - that the duty (wrongly stated to be 100%) [on wheat] was imposed "to protect an infant industry largely conducted on an immense single estate". These accusations were entirely untrue. Delamere had given up wheat growing in 1914, and by 1922 most of the crop came from the farms of Dutchmen on the Uasin Gishu Plateau. As for Unga, Delamere never got a penny's profit out of it - quite the reverse.

Oscar - 'Chief engineer who resigned from the Colonial Service in 1926, resigned from one committee with the words "The government upheld in Legco the principle that no one in the government service could give truthful evidence .... if it was antagonistic to the views of the head of his department .... and took no steps to prevent native witnesses being browbeaten into giving evidence."'  

EAHB 1905 - Director of Public Works, Mombasa. Junior Asst. Engineer, Uganda Railway, April 1900  

KAD 1922 - Director of Public Works

KAD 1922 - Committee - EA and Uganda Natural History Society.

KAD 1922 - Committee Member, REAAA;

KAD 1922 - Committee Member, YMCA

North - Uganda Railway - Chartered Civil Engineer; Appt. Junior Asst. Engineer; engineer in charge of building Nairobi water works 1902; in charge of Nairobi's water supply 1903; Land Grant application 27/9/1903 Kikuyu; Issued with Public Officers Game Licence 15/10/1903 Nairobi; offered appt. as Acting Director of Public Works EAP 30/8/1904

Playne - The Director of Public Works, EAP, was appointed to that post on April 1, 1905, after having been for 5 years Assistant Engineer on the Uganda Railway. Mr Ross was educated at Southport Grammar School and Liverpool University. At his BSc examination he took Honours in Engineering, and at his BE examination he took Honours and Exhibition, Royal University of Ireland.

Drumkey 1909 - Public Works Dept. - Director

Advertiser - 4/9/1908 - Subscribers for St. Andrew's Church Building Fund - W. McGregor Ross - Rs. 157.50

Nicholls - The PWD ….. was hardly dynamic or efficient. It was run from 1905 to 1922 by William McGregor Ross, who had joined the Uganda Railway in 1900 as a junior assistant engineer. An ambitious and outspoken man of intemperate character, he was arrogant to a degree. He was heartily disliked by settlers for his attacks on them, and by his colleagues on the Legislative Council, peopled in his opinion by 'a troupe of farmers and hardware-merchants' and 'the dregs of the settler community'.

McGregor Ross's language was frequently tactless and extreme and Governor Northey was determined to be rid of him. In 1921 there was such an uproar about the PWD's ineffectiveness that a commission of inquiry was held. Its report was damning, as the 'East African Standard' described: "The abiding impression of a perusal of the document is that of an administrative officer purposefully and with calm deliberation accumulating in his own hands one after another of the public activities of the country, with a gaze embracing many future years, but withal with an impregnable vanity, serenely unperturbed by blatant evidences of failure in those duties for which he was first commissioned. [Ross displayed] unruffled indifference to criticism." McGregor Ross was obliged to resign.

Hughes - of Scottish stock, born in Southport, Lancashire in 1876. Having trained as a civil engineer, he came to BEA in 1900 to work as an assistant engineer on the Uganda Railway. He was Engineer-in-Charge of the Nairobi Water supply from 1903. By the following year, at the age of 28, he had risen to become Director of Public Works, but was forced to resign in 1923 after agitation from settlers over his alleged mismanagement of public funds. McGregor Ross's face had never fitted the colonial scene. He was fiercely teetotal, moralistic, bookish, aloof from clubhouse camaraderie, and seen as a bit of a prig. ………….. he became more and more anti-settler, forced to listen to "the crude, crass clamour of self-interest". ………. He also became a Quaker and pacifist.

Leader14 - Director, PWD

Red Book 1912 - Public Works Dept. - Director of Public Works

Red Book 1912 - Treasurer of the EA Nursing Association

Red Book 1919 - Public Works Department - Director of Public Works

Leys - He was the first to start the systematic industrial training of Africans in the Colony.

Arnold - Friendly with Jomo Kenyatta when he was in England, 1929

EA Diary - W.M. Ross - Assistant Engineer in charge

EAHB 1906 - W.M. Ross - Mombasa

EAHB 1907 - W.M. Ross - Mombasa

Red Book 1912 - W.M. Ross - Nairobi

Gazette - 12/11/1919 - Register of Voters - Nairobi, South Area - William McGregor Ross - Civil Engineering - Upper Hill Road and Mrs Isabel Ross - Upper Hill Road

The African Standard - 26-2-1903 - Invited to the wedding of H.R. Phelips & Miss Jacquette Edith Lambe in Mombasa

1939 England and Wales Register living in Ulverston with wife