David Dale
(1829-1906)
23 March 1863

Volume 10, page 125, sitting number 12,870.

David Dale was an ironmaster, a colliery owner and a director of the North-Eastern Railway Company. 

Born at Moorshedabad in Bengal on 11 December 1829, his father was judge in the service of the Honourable East India Company. His father died on the voyage home, and Dale's mother eventually settled with her infant son at New Lanark near Glasgow.

Dale's first business ventures were in railways, a field in which he showed such apptitude that he quickly became a giant of railway enterprise. His connection with the iron trade began in 1857 and the Consett Works which he eventually established grew to be one of the most substantial and flourishing concerns in the north of England. He served on several royal commissions, namely on trade depression (1885-86), mining royalties (1889-93) and labour (1892-94). He was also one of the four representatives of England at the Berlin Labour Conference of 1890. For his services to industry, he was created 1st Baronet Dale in 1895.

The 1881 census shows him living at West Lodge, Woodlands Road, Darlington, Durham, and gives his profession as 'colliery owner.' 

He married firstly in 1853 the widow of civil engineer Henry Whitwell. The marriage produced two children: James Backhouse Dale, who inherited his father's title, and Annie Marion Stuart Dale, who married Edward Hutchinson of Darlington. The first Mrs Dale died in 1886 and two years later, on 2 August 1888, Dale married his second wife, Alice Frederica Milbank (1855-1902), daughter of Sir Frederick Acclom Milbank.

Sir David Dale died on 28 April 1906 at the Station Hotel in York, 'the immediate cause of death being cardiac hypertrophy.' He had been suffering 'from a heart affection for some years past, and had been under the care of a specialist. Latterly he had been abroad for the sake of his health, and was returning home to West Lodge, Darlington, when he was seized with his last illness' (The Scotsman, 30 April 1906).

He left an estate valued at £121,831.