Sir Dougal Orme Malcolm ⁵⁴

  General Notes:

Found in The Times, August 31, 1955

Sir Dougal Malcolm, K.C.M.G., for many years president of the British
South Africa Company, who died in London yesterday less than a month
after his seventy-eighth birthday, was a leading authority upon South
African affairs.
After a brilliant career at Oxford - he was an excellent classical
scholar - he entered the Colonial Civil Service and having spent some
years in South Africa became a director of the British South Africa
Company and thereafter devoted himself chiefly to the tasks of
development which the late Cecil Rhodes inaugurated in 1889. An
economist and an educationalist he also rendered useful services in
connexion with Imperial and public affairs. Shrewd and wise in his
judgment and sound in his assessment of facts, he was never dogmatic
and was always willing, and indeed anxious, to maintain discussion
until all relevant issues had been ventilated. He was a courtly and
urbane man, who impressed all who met him by a charm of manner which
clearly had its origin in genuine good nature.
Dougal Orme Malcolm was born on August 6, 1877, the son of the late
William Rolle Malcolm, of Walton Manor, Epsom, at one time senior
partner of Coutt's Bank, and Georgina, daughter of the late
Major-General Lord Charles Wellesley, M.P., and sister of the fourth
Duke of Wellington, K.G. He was educated at Eton, where he was in
Walter Dunrford's house, and at New College, Oxford, where he obtained
first-class honours in Classical Moderations and Literae Humaniores.
In 1899 he was elected Fellow of All Souls and, 1900, entered the
Colonial Office. Having for a time been private secretary to the late
Lord Milner in London, he went in 1905 to South Africa as private
secretary to Lord Selborne, the High Commissioner, a position which he
held for the five years Lord Selborne served as High Commissioner.
For a short time he served Lord Grey, the Governor-General of Canada,
as private secretary. In 1911 he was transferred to the Treasury,
where he was appointed secretary of the Dominions Royal Commission,
but retired at the end of 1912 in order to become a director of the
British South Africa Company.
The company, one of the last of the old type of company incorporated
by Royal Charter, was formed by Cecil Rhodes to exploit the
territories of Matabeleland and Mashonaland, now known as Rhodesia.
As it turned out the mineral rights, which under its charter the
company enjoyed in perpetuity, were far and away its most valuable
asset. The movement towards self-government in the Rhodesians
naturally called in question the special position occupied by the
Chartered Company and after a long and complicated negotiations the
company surrendered its perpetual rights in 1949 for a term of 37
years, during which it would pay 20 per cent. of its net revenue from
mining to the Government of Northern Rhodesia, the amount to be
regarded as an expense for the purpose of Northern Rhodesian
income-tax. In return the Northern Rhodesian Government agreed that
no special tax should be imposed on mineral royalties as such within
its territories. Sir Dougal Malcolm who had become president of the
Chartered Company in 1937, had the main burden of these negotiations
and of recommending their terms to the shareholders.
From 1926 to 1928 Malcolm was chairman of the Committee on Education
and Industry appointed by the President of the Board of Education and
Minister of Labour, and in the latter year was a member of the British
Economic Mission to Australia. In a speech which he made on his
return he expressed the view that Australia tended to advance in
certain directions "further and faster than was quite wise", and
commented upon large projects there which had proved unremunerative.
Malcolm wrote The British South Africa Company, 1889-1939, and on
September 12, 1940, the jubilee of Rhodesia, contributed a
retrospective article to The Times. He also wrote Nuces Relictae, a
light, amusing, and scholarly book, which was published in 1926.
Concerned in the direction of serveral public concerns, he was
vice-president of the British North Borneo Company. He was also
honarary treasurer of the Children's Country Holiday Fund and
vice-chairman of the Court of Governors of the London School of
Economics and Political Science.
In 1910 he married Dora Claire, daughter of the late Hon. John
Stopford. She died in 1920 and he married, secondly, in 1923, Lady
Evelyn Farquhar, daughter of the fifth Earl of Donoughmore, K.C.M.G.,
and widow of Colonel Francis Farquhar.

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Resided: 30 August 1955, 53 Bedford Gardens, Kensington, London. ¹³

2. Resided: 30 August 1955, Woodside, Hewsholt Lane, Liphook, Hampshire. ¹³

3. He had an estate probated on 19 November 1955 in London. ¹³

Dougal married Dora Claire Stopford in 1910. (Dora Claire Stopford died on 11 November 1920 in Acland Home, Banbury Road, Oxford ¹³.)

Dougal next married Evelyn Hely Hutchinson, daughter of John Luke George Hely Hutchinson and Unknown, in 1920.