Page 11 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

20 Duncan Jones SHEDDEN (1862-1936) (Founder member, elected 22.5.1922; President 1924-25;
membership terminated 17.3.1930.) Auctioneer and Valuer, and Chartered
Accountant, practising as Duncan J Shedden from offices at 2 Priory Street.
Fellow of the Chartered Auctioneers’ Institute and Member of the Iron &
Steel Institute, he specialised in the sale and valuation of industrial premises,
plant and machinery. He started as an Accountant’s Clerk in 1881 but by
1890 had his own accountancy practice in Dixons Green, Dudley. This
continued for a decade but he was soon in partnership with his father James
and devoting more and more time to his father’s auctioneer’s business at
Priory Street. He took over the business after James died in 1913 and
continued almost up to his own death in 1936. He was a Dudley councillor from 1901 to 1918
and Trustee of the Dudley Conservative Club. In his youth he was an active sportsman, playing
football (for the first Association Football club formed in Dudley) and cricket, and helped found
the Hockey Club and Dudley Swimming Club. He was a celebrated raconteur and after-dinner
speaker, and for a time President of the Dudley Grammar School Old Boys’ Association and
latterly Chairman of the school Governors. His home was at Edgbaston for many years.

21 James SMELLIE, JP MBE (1861-1948) (Founder member, elected 22.5.1922; second President of
the club, 1923-24; resigned 30.5.1932.) Hearth furniture manufacturer.
Managing Director of James Smellie Ltd of Cellini Works, Oxford Street,
Dudley. He was a Dudley Councillor from 1903 to 1946, Alderman from
1924, and Mayor 1924-25 & 1925-26; chairman of the Education
Committee 1904-27, a governor of Birmingham University, the Girls’ High
School, the Training College and Technical College. He was a Dudley
magistrate from 1917 to 1939. During the First World War he was
chairman of the local Military Tribunal, which considered applications for
exemption from military service on grounds of occupation, hardship, ill-
health or conscientious objection, for which he was awarded the MBE in 1920. He presented
the town with the meteorological instruments that are mounted on the wall of the Museum &
Art Gallery in Priory Street, in memory of his first wife who died during his period as Mayor. His
home was ‘Portland House’, Pedmore.
He grew up in Ayrshire, served four years as an outdoor ironmongery apprentice in Dumfries,
then had experience in ironmongers’ shops in London and Penrith before coming to Birmingham
in 1887 as commercial traveller for a hardware manufacturer. In 1893 he went into partnership
with Benjamin Willetts Adshead (brother of Thomas Adshead, another founder member of the
Club) as fender and grate manufacturers, art metal workers and hardware merchants in Dudley.
Through his remarkable efforts as travelling salesman he soon increased the business until the
firm was the largest manufacturer of hearth suites in the UK. In 1904 he bought out Adshead
and continued in his own name, making goods under the ‘Ivanhoe’ brand. Items supplied by the
firm included a fireplace for HRH Princess Mary, metalwork to Balmoral Castle, and the brass
railings for the Sultan’s tomb in the Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail, Meknes, Morocco.

22 Thomas Stewart STEWART SMITH, JP (1876-1937) (Founder member, elected 22.5.1922;
resigned 20.9.1926.) Export woollen merchant. Director of Grainger &
Smith Ltd, woollen merchants, drapers and clothing manufacturers, with
retail outlets in Dudley High Street and New Street and the ‘Town Mills’
factory in New Mill Street. Born in Dudley he joined the firm in 1893 aged
17 straight from boarding school in Colwyn Bay where he was sent by his
father Edward ‘Sunny Jim’ Smith, Chairman and Managing Director of the
company. Thomas himself became a Director before 1909 and was
Chairman from c.1916 to 1936. During the First World War, as Captain
Stewart Smith, he commanded a Bewdley Company of the Worcestershire