Sir Robert Francis Dunnell, 1st Baronet KCB

Order of the Bath

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

 (26 July 1868–16 July 1960) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

, civil servant and railway executive.

Dunnell was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

 and educated at Rossall School

Rossall School

Rossall School is a British, co-educational, independent school, between Cleveleys and Fleetwood, Lancashire. Rossall was founded in 1844 by St. Vincent Beechey as a sister school to Marlborough College which had been founded the previous year...

. He was admitted a solicitor in 1891 and joined the Solicitor's Department of the North Eastern Railway Company

North Eastern Railway (UK)

The North Eastern Railway , was an English railway company. It was incorporated in 1854, when four existing companies were combined, and was absorbed into the London and North Eastern Railway at the Grouping in 1923...

. He became assistant solicitor to the company in 1900, solicitor in 1905, and also secretary

Company secretary

A company secretary is a senior position in a private company or public organisation, normally in the form of a managerial position or above. In the United States it is known as a corporate secretary....

 to the company in 1906.

In 1917 he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Admiralty

Admiralty

The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...

 and the following year served as secretary to the British Naval Mission to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 under Sir Eric Geddes. At the end of the First World War he became secretary of the demobilisation section of the War Cabinet

War Cabinet

A War Cabinet is a committee formed by a government in a time of war. It is usually a subset of the full executive cabinet of ministers. It is also quite common for a War Cabinet to have senior military officers and opposition politicians as members....

 and in 1919 first secretary and solicitor to the new Ministry of Transport

Department for Transport

In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved...

. In 1919 he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB).

In 1921 he returned to his old company, which amalgamated into the London and North Eastern Railway

London and North Eastern Railway

The London and North Eastern Railway was the second-largest of the "Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain...

 Company in 1923, as chief legal adviser. In December 1921 he was created a Baronet

Baronet

A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...

 for his services to the Ministry of Transport. He retired in 1928, but in April 1930 was appointed a Railway and Canal Commissioner.

In 1947 he moved to Nairobi

Nairobi

Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...

, Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, where he died. His wife Ruby (née Garrett) had died in 1901, after only four years of childless marriage, and the baronetcy thus became extinct upon his death.