Whitehall

Whitehall is a pipe brand that points not to a single workshop but to several separate manufacturers who used the same name at different times. The name comes from the street in London where government offices are gathered. Because it is a geographic place name, it proved hard to protect as a trademark, and no legal or commercial link has been established among the firms that adopted it.

Manufacturers Sharing the Name

Records show the brand was used by Civic in the 1930s and 1940s, by Ben Wade at the end of the 1950s, and by Philip Weisberg in the early 1960s. No partnership or transfer has been documented among these three uses. This scattered circulation of the name has caused lasting confusion among collectors, and filtered Whitehall pipes passing from hand to hand were long assumed to be Civic or Ben Wade production. In fact, during the period in question the rights to the Ben Wade name belonged to Charatan, and these workshops' product lines were entirely different.