| Gilbert Alan Hamilton Wills |
| The Times |
| Monday, December 3, 1956 |
LORD DULVERTON IMPERIAL TOBACCO PRESIDENT Lord Dulverton, who died on Saturday at his home at Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, at the age of 76, was president of the Imperial Tobacco Company and its chairman from 1924 until 1947. The Right Hon. Sir Gilbert Alan Hamilton Wills, O.B.E., first Baron Dulverton, of Batsford, in the county of Gloucester, second baronet, of Northmoor, Somerset, was born on March 28, 1880, the second son of Sir Frederick Wills, first baronet, and of Anne, daughter of the Rev. James Hamilton, D.D. He was educated privately and at Magdelan College, Oxford. The year after he graduated he spent in the Wills factories at Bristol in order to become acquainted with the processes of cigarette and tobacco manufacture. He joined the Royal North Devon Yeomanry and in that period formed, and was joint master of, the Dulverton Fox-hounds. Hunting was his passion in those days and he rode frequently at point-to-point meetings in the West Country. In 1908 he became an A.D.C. to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and during his four years in that country took full advantage of the sport that was offered, and also formed decided views on the subject of Home Rule. He succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father in 1909, and in 1912 he was returned to Parliament as Sir Gilbert Wills, as Unionist member for Taunton. He served throughout the 1914-18 War with the Royal Devon Yeomanry and later in the Machine Gun Corps, fighting at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. In the last year of the war he commanded a battalion of the Machine Gun Corps, and he was twice mentioned in dispatches and was appointed O.B.E. in 1919. He had retained his seat in the House of Commons, but in |
1918, his constituency having been affected by redistribution, he was returned as a Coalition Unionist for Weston-super-Mare.
For a time he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Postmaster-General, but he decided not to stand for re-election in 1923.
He had joined the executive committee of the Imperial Tobacco Company and he wanted to give his whole time to the business.
And in 1924 he became chairman on the retirement of his cousin, Sir George WIlls.
He was created a Baron in 1929 for public and political services.
He was largely concerned with the creation of the Tobacco Trade Association in 1931, and he once said that the two outstanding things that happened during his chairmanship were the establishment of the company's contributory pension scheme and the formation of the T.T.A.
A man of great wealth, he was munificent in his benefactions, especially in the city of Bristol. A gift of £85,000 made possible the restoration of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, in 1933; and another large gift to Bristol University was used for the restoration of the great hall and for other additions. In 1953 he presented Bristol Art Gallery with one of the finest collections of Chinese porcelain in the provinces. Earlier, as a governor of Guy's Hospital, he gave £50,000 to the hospital's bicentenary fund for extending and remodelling the out-patients department. He had been a director of the British-American Tobacco Company and of the Great Western Railway. In 1947 he resigned his chairmanship of the Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain and Ireland, and was elected president of the company. He was a Justice of the peace for the counties of Somerset and Gloucester, and was high sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1928. He married in 1914 Victoria May, daughter of Sir Edward Chichester, ninth baronet. There are three sons of the marriage, the eldest of whom, Major the Hon. Frederick Anthony Hamilton Wills, T.D., succeeds to the family honours. He married in 1939 Judith Betty, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Ian Leslie-Melville, and they have two sons and two daughters. |