Thomas Pullinger
Thomas Charles Willis Pullinger
Early career
Eldest son of
Following a stretch as a draughtsman at
Keen to design and build his own car, he moved back to England seeing more opportunity there than in France, and arrived at the Sunbeam Motor Car Company in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire on a motor-quadricycle he had built himself. He prepared a report for the Sunbeam directors and delivered it on 11 November 1902. He recommended that Sunbeam should buy in a car from an established firm then, as sales built up, buying them without certain components which would instead be made by Sunbeam until all that was bought in would be an engine. At the close of his report he recommended the cars be bought from Berliet in Lyon.[1]
He left Sunbeam before the formation of the separate car company in 1904, taking up an appointment of general manager at Humber's Beeston, Nottinghamshire works. Humber's Beeston Works closed and operations transferred to their more modern Coventry factory.
Arrol-Johnston
In 1910 he was taken on by William Beardmore, 1st Baron Invernairn, businessman and shipbuilder, as manager of the Paisley works of his Arrol-Johnston Car Company Limited. Pullinger and his large family settled in Swinlees farm, just outside Dalry, Ayrshire, where their eldest child Dorothée created a sketchbook of drawings and simple paintings of the area.[3]
He travelled to the USA to research mass production methods and car factory design, resulting in the erection of a new steel reinforced concrete and glass factory for Arrol-Johnston at Heathhall, Dumfries. This is believed to be the first building of its kind in Britain. It was designed by Albert Kahn, architect of the Ford factory at Highland Park, Michigan.
He oversaw a second new factory at Kirkcudbright in 1916 which was conceived as an engineering college for young ladies (see Dorothée Pullinger) with a structured apprenticeship system building aero engine components for the Heathhall Dumfries Works. Following the end of the war the factory switched to the manufacture of Galloway cars, Arrol-Johnston cars but in a medium price range.
During the First World War Thomas Pullinger carried out design proposals made by Frank Halford to create the Beardmore Halford Pullinger aero engine used in many wartime aircraft and later developed into the Siddeley Puma.
He seems to have remained with Beardmore's businesses until his retirement. Beardmore died in 1937.
Personal life
On retirement he lived at The Brae in the parish of St Brelade, Jersey and described his recreations as farming and yachting.[4] He died in July 1945 at a hospital in London's Kensington while still reported to be living on the island of Jersey.[5]
In 1893 Pullinger married Aurélie Berenice Sitwell (1871–1956) and they had four sons and six daughters,[4] the eldest being Dorothée Pullinger, a pioneering automobile engineer and businesswoman.
References
- ^ a b Ian Nickols and Kent Karslake, Motoring Entente, Cassell, London 1956
- ^ page 17, Ian Nickols and Kent Karslake, Motoring Entente, Cassell, London 1956
- ^ "The Dalry Connection to the Arrol Johnston - Garnock Connections". www.garnockconnections.org.uk. Retrieved 3 September 2021.
- ^ a b Who's Who, 1938
- ^ Deaths, The Times, 24 July 1945