William Dunn (industrialist)

Three or four years later he was in Messrs. Black & Hastie's works at Bridge of Weir, from which he went to Pollokshaws, to the factories of John Monteith.

[1] About 1800, having acquired a few hundred pounds by the sale of his patrimony of Gartclash, he resolved to start in business for himself, and accordingly opened a manufactory of machines in High John Street, Glasgow.

In or about 1802, he bought a small spinning-mill in Tobago Street, Calton of Glasgow, and in 1808 he purchased the Duntocher mill, some seven miles distant from that city.

[1] In 1813, he became the proprietor of the Dalnotter Ironworks, which had been used for slitting and rolling iron, and for making implements of husbandry; and after having greatly enlarged the two mills he already owned, he was encouraged by the rapid increase of his business to build upon the site of these ironworks the Milton mill, the foundation of which was laid in 1821, and which was destroyed by fire twenty-five years later.

Previously to his first purchase in 1808, the hands employed at the works did not exceed a hundred and fifty; at his death their number was about two thousand.