William Rolle Malcolm ²³⁹

  General Notes:

Found in The Times, February 5, 1923

We regret to announce that Mr. William Rolle Malcolm, the senior
partner in Coutt's Bank, died on Saturday at his house in
Prince's-gardens, at the age of 83.
The fourth son of John Malcolm, of Poltalloch, and brother of the late
Lord Malcolm and of Colonel E. D. Malcolm, now of Poltalloch,
Argyllshire, he was born on January 10, 1840. He went to Eton and
then to Balliol as a scholar. Having obtained firsts in the classical
schools, he was elected a Fellow of All Souls in 1864, and was called
to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1865. He served for a time in the
Parliamentary draftsman's office under Lord Thring. In 1870 he
entered the railway department of the Board of Trade as Assistant
Secretary, and in 1874 he was transferred to the Colonial Office as
Assitant Under-Secretary. Four years later he left the Civil Service
and joined the famous bank found by George Middleton in 1692 and
strenghened and extended by Thomas Coutts (1735-1822), and had no
small share in the successful management of the bank in the last forty
years. During this period it was incorporated as a joint stock
company with unlimited liability in 1892; it moved, in 1904, from the
old house of Thomas Coutts, 59, The Strand, to a new building nearly
opposite; and in 1820 its business was affiliated with that of the
National Provincial and Union Bank of England. Last Thursday Sir
Harry Goschen, presiding at the annual meeting of the National
Provincial Bank, congratulated Messrs. Coutt's directors on the
excellent position disclosed by their balance-sheet. Mr. Malcolm took
the chair at a meeting of directors only ten days before his death.
He was a member of the committee appointed to assist in the transfer
of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway to the Indian Government; he
was also a member of the Council of the Corporation of Foreign
Bondholders and a director of the Phoenix Assurance Company.
Mr. Malcolm had a country house, Walton Manor, near Epsom, and was
devoted all his life to country pursuits, especially farming,
shooting, and salmon-fishing in his native Scotland. He married,
1874, Georgina, youngest daughter of Major-General Lord Charles
Wellesley and sister of the third and the present Duke of Wellington
and of Lady HolmPatrick and Lady Mary Jervoise Scott. She died in
1880, leaving two sons and a daughter. The elder son, Mr. Ronald
Malcolm, who married a daughter of the late Right Hon. Sir R. W. Duff,
of Fetteresso, is a director of Coutt's and of the National Provincial
Bank. The younger, Mr. Dougal Orme Malcolm, became like his father,
an accomplished scholar, a Fellow of All Souls, and a member of the
Colonial Office, which he, too, left for a career in the city. The
daughter, Angela, married her cousin, Major-General Sir Neill Malcolm,
K.C.B., D.S.O., now commanding the troops at Singapore. Mr. Malcolm
married secondly, in 1882, Ruth daughter of the Right Hon. Edward
Pleydell Bouverie

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Census UK 1911: 1911, 1 Prince's Gardens, London. ¹⁰

2. Resided: 3 February 1923, 1 Prince's Gardens, London. ¹³

3. He had an estate probated on 30 April 1923 in London. ¹³

William married Ruth Pleydell Bouverie, daughter of Edward Pleydell Bouverie and Elizabeth Anne Balfour, on 27 March 1882. (Ruth Pleydell Bouverie was born in 1852 in London and died on 19 November 1944 in 1 Prince's Gardens, London.)

William next married Georgina Wellesley, daughter of Charles Wellesley and Unknown, in 1874. (Georgina Wellesley died in 1880.)