Arthur Du Cros

Sir Arthur Philip Du Cros, 1st Baronet (26 January 1871 – 28 October 1955) was a British industrialist and politician.

Du Cros was born in Dublin on 26 January 1871, the third of seven sons of Harvey du Cros and his wife Annie Jane Roy. In his childhood, his father was only a bookkeeper with an income of £170 a year and Arthur grew up in modest circumstances. He attended a national school in Dublin and entered the civil service at the lowest-paid grade.

In 1892 he joined his father and brothers in Dublin's Pneumatic Tyre and Booth's Cycle Agency. This business had been set up in 1889 by Harvey du Cros and J B Dunlop to exploit Dunlop's pneumatic tyre. Arthur was made general manager. His brothers had been or were later sent to Europe and America to develop their family's pneumatic tyre interests there.

After J B Dunlop retired in 1895. Terah Hooley bought the business, now named Pneumatic Tyre Co, in 1896 for £3 million and for a return of £5 million floated a new listed company on the stock market to own it. Hooley called the new company The Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company though J B Dunlop had no financial link to it. Arthur was made a joint managing director alongside his father but Harvey du Cros was also chairman.

From 1890 Pneumatic Tyre and Booth's Cycle Agency (later Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company) made its (cycle) tyres in Coventry by assembling bought-in components on its own machines and through its 1894 investment in Byrne Brothers also made cycle tyres in Birmingham. Byrne Brothers was renamed Rubber Manufacturing Company in 1896 and again, in 1900, renamed Dunlop Rubber Company. By 1914, 4,000 were employed at Castle Bromwich and 12,000 in 1927 when Dunlop controlled 90 per cent of national tyre production though imports limited their share of the UK tyre sales market to 60 per cent.

In August 1912 the Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company went out of business though retaining certain financial commitments. It passed its activities to Dunlop Rubber in exchange for shares. Then it changed its name to The Parent Tyre Company Limited. Dunlop Rubber purchased certain of its assets including goodwill and trading rights and in exchange the tyre company shareholders now owned three-quarters of Dunlop Rubber. The amalgamation was intended to bring about a substantial reduction in overhead and clarify what had been seen as a confusing relationship between the two enterprises when they shared most shareholders.

Du Cros was made managing director and deputy chairman in 1912 and retained that position after his father's death in 1918 when A L Ormrod became chairman until 1921.

In 1928 Du Cros and his brothers Alfred and George finally resigned as president, vice-president and director of Dunlop though they had been on leave of absence from the board since March 1924.