The Dunhill Family: the Generations Behind the Brand

Dunhill is a business shaped, despite being known by its founder's name, not by a single person but by three successive generations. The brand's technical story on the pipe side is covered in the entry on Dunhill (White Spot); what concerns us here is the family and corporate decision-making that steered that story.

Alfred Dunhill

The founder was born on 30 September 1872 in a neighborhood in Hornsey, north London; he was among the children of Henry Dunhill (1842-1901) and Jane Styles (1843-1922). The apprenticeship he entered at sixteen was, in most sources, described as harness-making, the family trade; other descriptions of his father's profession also appear in sources. In 1893, at twenty-one, he took over the business and turned the workshop from horse-carriage equipment toward motor-vehicle accessories. The best-known product of this period is the pipe he filed a patent for in 1904, designed with a windshield so it could be smoked in an open automobile against the wind. To bring the legal side of his inventions under a separate roof, he founded a patent company in 1905; this company was not long-lived and was set aside at the end of 1906 as the tobacco business grew. The tobacconist's shop on Duke Street opened the following year.

The product of the truly productive years leading up to his retirement is two books. The Pipe Book, devoted to pipe history, came out in 1924; the same year saw the fifth edition of his earlier compilation, About Smoke. The interest the book aroused resulted in Royal Society of Arts membership the following year. His departure from management came in 1928, at fifty-six, for health reasons; he spent his remaining years on the Sussex coast and died in Worthing on 2 January 1959, at eighty-six.