James Benjamin Dunn
James Benjamin Dunn (1827-1874)
1875 Obituary [1]
MR. JAMES BENJAMIN DUNN was born in the year 1827, and, being early thrown upon his own resources, at the age of fourteen he left home to enter a merchant’s office, where he remained for three years; afterwards taking service for a similar period with Messrs. Bailey and Jansen, solicitors.
In the interval young Dunn had acquired a consderable insight into mercantile affairs, combined with no slight knowledge of law, and these qualifications brought him under the notice of Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., who engaged Mr. Dunn, then barely twenty years of age, as their chief correspondent, a position he occupied for several years, and in which he was greatly esteemed and respected.
When Mr. Dunn left Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., he set up on his own account as an engineering agent and contractor, in which business he achieved a fair measure of success; but it was not until in 1864, when he was appointed Sub-Manager of the London Financial Association, that Mr. Dnn’s special aptitude for finance was displayed.
In the congenial sphere in which his energies were now engaged Mr. Dunn soon made himself a name. In 1868 he was appointed Manager, and in that capacity assisted considerably towards raising the association in public esteem, at the same time that his own reputation as a man of business was unsurpassed.
He was also a director of several railway companies. But the constant strain of City life was too much for a constitution never strong, and, he died on the 28th of August, 1874, at the age of forty-seven.
Mr. Dunn was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers on the 6th of December, 1859.