David Dale

David Dale (1739–1806) was a leading Scottish industrialist, merchant and philanthropist during the Scottish Enlightenment period at the end of the 18th century. He was a successful entrepreneur in a number of areas, most notably in the cotton-spinning industry and was the founder of the world famous cotton mills in New Lanark, where he provided social and educational conditions far in advance of anything available anywhere else in the UK. Scotland’s leading historian, Professor Sir Tom Devine, described Dale as ‘the greatest cotton magnate of his time in Scotland’.

New Lanark attracted visitors from all over the world. Dale’s daughter (Caroline) married Robert Owen in 1799 and by 1800, Dale had sold the mills to a group of businessmen led by Robert Owen. Owen (often described as Utopian Socialist) saw New Lanark as a testing ground for what he called his New Social System – an experiment in communitarian living, where education was the key to character formation. He managed New Lanark for nearly 25 years, and the community continued to attract visitors from across the globe.

David Dale was born in Stewarton, Ayrshire in 1739, son of William Dale, a general dealer in the village. His date of birth is normally given as 6 January but there is no officially recorded date of birth. However, parish records show that he was baptised on 14 January 1739. As a child, he worked with the cattle as a ‘herd laddie’ in very basic conditions. This was the period of runrigs and impoverished tenant farmers – all before the so-called Age of Improvement. Dale’s family was not wealthy, but he did not experience the absolute poverty and near starvation of many of those involved in tenant farming.

His father apprenticed him to a handloom weaver in Paisley & then he became an agent in Hamilton and, later, Cambuslang – putting out yarn to be woven and collecting the finished cloth. He arrived in Glasgow c1763 as a clerk to a silk merchant and began his own small business in the High Street, importing linen yarns from France and Holland.

The business grew rapidly and Dale became a wealthy merchant in the city. In 1777, at the age of 38, he married 24 year old Anne Caroline (Carolina) Campbell, whose late father had been the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland. A wealthy merchant needed a suitable house and in 1783 Dale had a grand mansion built in Glasgow’s fashionable Charlotte Street. The couple were together for 14 years until the untimely death of Carolina. During that period, she bore him no less than nine children, four of whom, including their only son, died in infancy. Their first born – also named Anne Caroline – later became Mrs Robert Owen.

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