Sir Robert Francis Dunnell, 1st Baronet, KCB (26 July 1868 – 16 July 1960) was an English

solicitor A solicitor is a legal practitioner who traditionally deals with most of the legal matters in some jurisdictions. A person must have legally-defined qualifications, which vary from one jurisdiction to another, to be described as a solicitor and ...

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

and railway executive. Dunnell was born in

Bury St Edmunds Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as Bury, is a historic market town, market, cathedral town and civil parish in Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

and educated at Rossall School. He was admitted a solicitor in 1891 and joined the Solicitor's Department of the

North Eastern Railway Company The North Eastern Railway (NER) was an English railway company. It was incorporated in 1854 by the combination of several existing railway companies. Later, it was amalgamated with other railways to form the London and North Eastern Railway at ...

. He became assistant solicitor to the company in 1900, solicitor in 1905, and also secretary to the company in 1906. In 1917 he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Admiralty and the following year served as secretary to the British Naval Mission to the United States under Sir Eric Geddes. At the end of the First World War he became secretary of the demobilisation section of the War Cabinet and in 1919 first secretary and solicitor to the new Ministry of Transport. 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 The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At th ...

Company in 1923, as chief legal adviser. In December 1921 it was announced that he would be created a baronet for his services to the Ministry of Transport, with the creation being 11 January 1922. He retired in 1928, but in April 1930 was appointed a Railway and Canal Commissioner. In 1947 he moved to Nairobi, Kenya, 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.

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*Obituary, '' The Times'', 18 July 1960 1868 births 1960 deaths People from Bury St Edmunds People educated at Rossall School English solicitors London and North Eastern Railway people Permanent Secretaries of the Ministry of Transport Civil servants in the Admiralty Civil servants in the Cabinet Office Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath {{UK-gov-bio-stub