Most Amer­i­can boys who col­lect­ed Dinky Toys in the 1950’s had seen the name H. Hud­son Dob­son Inc., either on the front of cat­a­logs, or print­ed on the side of Dinky Toys box­es. Many prob­a­bly just assumed that was the name of a com­pa­ny, with­out any regard of who H. Hud­son Dob­son real­ly was. There are two H. Hud­son Dobson’s: the com­pa­ny, last locat­ed in Kenil­worth, New Jer­sey, and the man it was found­ed and named for, also H. Hud­son Dob­son.

Try­ing to find out much about either the com­pa­ny or the man is some­what dif­fi­cult, both due to the pas­sage of time, but also just the fact that scant infor­ma­tion sur­vives. For some­one who had a his­to­ry with the par­ent com­pa­ny, Mec­ca­no Ltd., of Liv­er­pool, Eng­land, for about 40 years, it is both odd and strange almost noth­ing of him is even men­tioned in books writ­ten about Dinky Toys, leav­ing us to piece togeth­er the his­to­ry from extant records and doc­u­ments that sur­vive.

From England to New Jersey

Hen­ry Hud­son Dob­son was born on April 9, 1891, in Liv­er­pool, Eng­land. His father passed away when he was a young boy, and by the 1911 British Cen­sus, he is list­ed as work­ing as a “ledger clerk” for a pho­tog­ra­phy sup­pli­er (like­ly East­man Kodak, as was lat­er learned). The very next record of him is arriv­ing on a ship in 1913, in New York City, as a “com­mer­cial trav­el­er”. This is fol­lowed by anoth­er arrival in New York City in Sept. 1914, also list­ed as a trav­el­er, but with a des­ti­na­tion of Chica­go. Then, a big break, as in August 1916, he again arrives, but this time his occu­pa­tion is list­ed as “Sec­re­tary”. I was then left to won­der what “Sec­re­tary” meant for a young man?

Then anoth­er clue came when in June of 1917, he reg­is­tered for the U.S. mil­i­tary draft, due to World War I. This doc­u­ment asks for much more spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion on each indi­vid­ual, so now he lists his occu­pa­tion as “Secretary/Treasurer”, and his employ­er as “Mec­ca­no Incor­po­rat­ed”. So now we know he has been work­ing for Mec­ca­no Ltd. since at least 1916, and Sec­re­tary or Secretary/Treasurer is nor­mal­ly an offi­cer posi­tion with­in a com­pa­ny... inter­est­ing!

A brief inter­lude from his employ­ment at Mec­ca­no Ltd., was his enlist­ment in the Roy­al Fly­ing Corps, in Toron­to, Cana­da, on Octo­ber 2, 1917. He was then dis­charged on May 22, 1918, to accept a com­mis­sion in the Roy­al Air Force. No oth­er infor­ma­tion was found on his ser­vice, and World War I end­ed on Novem­ber 11, 1918, so would assume he left the ser­vice around that time.

In the 1920 U.S. Cen­sus, he is list­ed as liv­ing in New York City, sin­gle, and work­ing as a “Sales Man­ag­er for Toys”. Short­ly after this, he mar­ries Helen Fowler, an Amer­i­can born woman, work­ing as a sec­re­tary. Did he mar­ry some­one from their office?

H. Hudson Dobson with wife Helen

Then, in short order, he starts a fam­i­ly, with son Hen­ry Hud­son Dob­son Jr. born in 1921, fol­lowed by daugh­ter Mar­i­an Bar­bara Dob­son in 1923, and final­ly son James Dob­son, born in 1935. All of the chil­dren were born in New Jer­sey, so he has moved from New York, to New Jer­sey by 1921.

H. Hudson Dobson with son Henry Hudson Jr. and daughter Marian Barbara holding brother James Lane

Meccano and the Start of Dinky Toys

In the mean­time, I have found out that the Mec­ca­no Com­pa­ny of Amer­i­ca Inc. was formed in 1913, in New York, but not pro­duc­ing any­thing, just an office and ware­house that also import­ed Mec­ca­no Con­struc­tion sets (Mec­ca­no Con­struc­tion sets are very sim­i­lar in design and pur­pose to the Amer­i­can Erec­tor Sets). Then in 1922, Mec­ca­no set up a fac­to­ry in Eliz­a­beth, New Jer­sey, for the express pur­pose of man­u­fac­tur­ing Mec­ca­no con­struc­tion sets in Amer­i­ca. So it now appears that H. Hud­son Dob­son was ini­tial­ly involved with the New York office, then like­ly was instru­men­tal in set­ting up and man­ag­ing the fac­to­ry in New Jer­sey, and this also explains his move from New York to New Jer­sey. Around 1928, Frank Horn­by (founder and own­er of Mec­ca­no Ltd.) made a deci­sion to sell or trans­fer the Amer­i­can pro­duc­tion rights for Mec­ca­no to A.C. Gilbert (the Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­er of Erec­tor Sets, and lat­er, Amer­i­can Fly­er trains), so that plant was not used by Mec­ca­no after that, but Gilbert did for some time, then moved his oper­a­tion to Con­necti­cut.

This like­ly explains why the 1930 U.S. Cen­sus shows H. Hud­son Dob­son as Pres­i­dent of a pot­tery works named Fleu­ron Pot­tery, locat­ed in Tonawan­da, New York. A news­pa­per arti­cle from North Tonawan­da in 1933 states that his fam­i­ly is now mov­ing back to New Jer­sey, where appar­ent­ly he is once again either work­ing for or rep­re­sent­ing Mec­ca­no Ltd. Dur­ing this peri­od from 1928 to 1933, there were no Dinky Toys yet, and Mec­ca­no con­struc­tion sets were no longer being man­u­fac­tured there, so appar­ent­ly, he had to tem­porar­i­ly find employ­ment else­where. In 1937, he again sails to Eng­land, now list­ed as Toy Man­u­fac­tur­er. Since Dinky Toys were intro­duced around 1934–1935, it would be nat­ur­al for him to man­age the imports to the U.S.

The first record­ed instance of there being an H. Hud­son Dob­son Co., is in the 1938 Mec­ca­no cat­a­log, where that name is shown on the front cov­er, but my assump­tion is he was back with Mec­ca­no Ltd around 1933, as new prod­ucts were being rapid­ly devel­oped, and they would need his ser­vices again. So I am also guess­ing that around that time, he ceased being just an employ­ee of Mec­ca­no, and start­ed his dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny, H. Hud­son Dob­son, based in New York City. A news­pa­per arti­cle from May, 1939, states that, as a mem­ber of the Vol­un­teer Speaker’s Com­mit­tee of the New York World’s Fair, he will speak before the Rochester Ad Club, his top­ic “The World’s Fair—Its inner sig­nif­i­cance”. This arti­cle also states that he was edu­cat­ed at Stony­hurst Col­lege, in Black­burn, Eng­land, and had pre­vi­ous busi­ness expe­ri­ence with East­man Kodak Com­pa­ny in Lon­don, and Mec­ca­no Ltd. in Liv­er­pool, and had served in the Roy­al Air Corp in Eng­land.

Between 1940 through 1959, he made sev­en trips by ship and one by air­plane, to vis­it Liv­er­pool, Eng­land, pre­sum­ably to vis­it Mec­ca­no Ltd. and dis­cuss or plan busi­ness oper­a­tions. On one of those trips, in 1956, he took his wife along, but nor­mal­ly he trav­eled alone, and was gone 4–6 weeks each time. His very last record­ed trip to Eng­land was in Jan­u­ary, 1959, and by then, Mec­ca­no was already begin­ning to expe­ri­ence sales prob­lems with all of their prod­ucts, includ­ing Dinky Toys, Horn­by mod­el trains, and the Mec­ca­no Con­struc­tion sets, which ulti­mate­ly led to their demise only a few years lat­er. At this time, Hen­ry Dob­son was about 68 years old, and for those times, an old man indeed. We can only guess that this trip was like­ly about him wind­ing down his busi­ness with Mec­ca­no and retir­ing, but there is no writ­ten record of what actu­al­ly tran­spired as to clos­ing his busi­ness.

H. Hudson Dobson aboard the Queen Elizabeth

There are sur­viv­ing let­ters from his firm dat­ed in mid to late 1960, so my guess is that H. Hud­son Dob­son, Inc., ceased to exist by the end of 1960. Fur­ther proof of this is the fact that the 1959 U.S. Dinky Toys cat­a­log was the last one list­ing him as the dis­trib­u­tor. Just a few years lat­er, in 1963, the A.C. Gilbert Com­pa­ny is briefly list­ed as the new dis­trib­u­tor. But we do not real­ly know exact­ly when the busi­ness was closed, or the exact rea­son. Anoth­er news­pa­per clip­ping con­cern­ing his old­est son, H. Hud­son Dob­son, Jr., men­tions that he “ran” his dad’s com­pa­ny from 1951 to 1960, which leads one to won­der why this son did not con­tin­ue the com­pa­ny, even if his father was ready to retire. A pos­si­ble rea­son was that H. Hud­son Dob­son, Inc., with declin­ing Dinky Toys sales, real­ly was not doing that well by the end of 1960, and clos­ing it the only option. One anoth­er note, we also do not real­ly know the exact rela­tion­ship between Hen­ry Dob­son and Mec­ca­no Ltd. It is very pos­si­ble that Mec­ca­no Ltd. owned part of H. Hud­son Dob­son, Inc., mean­ing deci­sions could have come from Liv­er­pool, Eng­land and not just New Jer­sey.

Timeline

Hen­ry and Helen Dob­son lived out their remain­ing years in Eliz­a­beth, New Jer­sey, with Helen pass­ing away in Sep­tem­ber, 1967, fol­lowed by Hen­ry Dob­son in Sep­tem­ber 1975, and thus the end of a long era. Hen­ry Hud­son Dobson’s long asso­ci­a­tion with Mec­ca­no stretched for near­ly 47 years. I also not­ed that on one of the U.S. Cen­sus forms, it asked when he immi­grat­ed to the U.S. He answered in 1913, the same year that Mec­ca­no set up an office in the U.S. So here is my over­all assump­tion and sum­ma­ry of his career with Mec­ca­no Ltd.:

• 1913 He is hired by Mec­ca­no Ltd. on the pre­tense of agree­ing to immi­grate to the U.S. to open up and run an import office, which will be locat­ed in New York City. He appar­ent­ly lives in New York until around 1921, when he relo­cates, with his fam­i­ly, to Eliz­a­beth, New Jer­sey.
• 1917 Hen­ry Dob­son enlists in the Roy­al Fly­ing Corps, in Toron­to, Cana­da, on Octo­ber 2, 1917
• 1918 Hen­ry Dob­son is dis­charged from the Roy­al Fly­ing Corps, to accept a tem­po­rary com­mis­sion in the Roy­al Air Force, on May 22, 1918. No oth­er infor­ma­tion, but WWI is over on Novem­ber 11, 1918, so would assume he left the ser­vice around that time.
• 1922 Mec­ca­no Ltd. has decid­ed to open up an man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty in the Unit­ed States for the pur­pose of fab­ri­cat­ing Mec­ca­no Con­struc­tion sets, in Eliz­a­beth, New Jer­sey. Why New Jer­sey we do not know, as their office was in New York. By then, Hen­ry is mar­ried and has start­ed his fam­i­ly, and he has already moved to New Jer­sey and is involved in the oper­a­tion there.
• 1928 Mec­ca­no Ltd. made a deci­sion to sell or trans­fer the U.S. rights to the Mec­ca­no sets to the A.C. Gilbert Com­pa­ny, and aban­dons mak­ing the prod­uct in the U.S. Hen­ry Dob­son has a fam­i­ly to sup­port, so short­ly after finds employ­ment as Pres­i­dent of the Fleu­ron Pot­tery com­pa­ny, in North Tonawan­da, New York. It is pos­si­ble that he is still rep­re­sent­ing Mec­ca­no Ltd. in some less­er capac­i­ty.
• 1931 Hen­ry Dob­son applies for Nat­u­ral­iza­tion, in New York, in 1931.
• 1933 Hen­ry Dob­son and his fam­i­ly leave North Tonawan­da, New York, and return to Eliz­a­beth, New Jer­sey, pre­sum­ably to return work­ing full­time for Mec­ca­no Ltd., who are ready to intro­duce a new line of toys (Mod­elled Minia­tures, and short­ly lat­er, Dinky Toys).
• 1935 Mec­ca­no Ltd. intro­duces Dinky Toys and they already have an office in New York City, called the Mec­ca­no Com­pa­ny of Amer­i­ca, Inc. At least by 1933, H. Hud­son Dob­son has been back work­ing for them, in the office in New York City, which is now import­ing the new toy lines. In 1937 he sails once again to Eng­land to meet with Mec­ca­no staff.
• 1938 or ear­li­er. A deci­sion has been made for Hen­ry Dob­son to form the H. Hud­son Dob­son Com­pa­ny, for the express pur­pose of being the sole U.S. dis­trib­u­tor for Mec­ca­no Ltd. and Dinky Toys. It is not clear if Hen­ry Dob­son financed this ven­ture him­self, or if Mec­ca­no Ltd. owned a piece of it. Hav­ing a sep­a­rate import agent will like­ly allow Mec­ca­no a wider dis­tri­b­u­tion of Dinky Toys through­out the U.S. and also with some­one who under­stand the retail mar­ket­ing there. At some point in time, I am guess­ing after WWII, H. Hud­son Dob­son became a cor­po­ra­tion.
• 1941–1945 Dur­ing these war years, Mec­ca­no Ltd., and vir­tu­al­ly all oth­er toy man­u­fac­tur­ers cease pro­duc­tion, and instead, help with pro­duc­ing items vital for the war effort. There will be few toys to even sell. We have no idea what H. Hud­son Dob­son does dur­ing this time frame, or what his ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with Mec­ca­no Ltd. con­sist­ed of.
• 1938 (or earlier)-1950 H. Hud­son Dob­son, Inc., is locat­ed in New York, New York.
• 1951–1952 H. Hud­son Dob­son, Inc., is locat­ed in Eliz­a­beth, New Jer­sey.
• 1953–1960 H. Hud­son Dob­son, Inc. is locat­ed in Kenil­worth, New Jer­sey.

• 1946–1959 The post war years were gen­er­al­ly very good ones for Mec­ca­no Ltd. and H. Hud­son Dob­son, with sales par­tic­u­lar­ly very good in the mid-1950’s. But by 1959, the mar­ket has changed con­sid­er­ably, with increased com­pe­ti­tion from many oth­er toy man­u­fac­tur­ers and Mec­ca­no is increas­ing­ly unable to adapt, and their mar­ket share and prof­it drops dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Some toy stores in the U.S. are not sell­ing Dinky Toys any longer and sell­ing off their exist­ing stock. Hen­ry Hud­son Dob­son is now 68 years old, and his Dinky Toys import­ing busi­ness has fall­en off the last two years. He sails to Liv­er­pool one last time in Jan­u­ary, to dis­cuss wind­ing down his affairs with Mec­ca­no Ltd. This will be the last year he is list­ed on the U.S. cat­a­log, and my last piece of cor­re­spon­dence with H. Hud­son Dob­son is dat­ed May, 1960.

So it appears that some­time in the lat­ter part of 1960 his busi­ness rela­tion­ship with Mec­ca­no Ltd. ends, and H. Hud­son Dob­son, Inc. ceas­es to exist.

Some final thoughts

The big sur­prise to me, at least, is that appar­ent­ly he worked for or had an asso­ci­a­tion with Mec­ca­no Ltd. for well over twen­ty years before Dinky Toys were even intro­duced. He also made four­teen trips by ship and one by air­plane, to Eng­land, dur­ing his life­time. I do not think many peo­ple in the Dinky Toys com­mu­ni­ty had any knowl­edge of these facts.

Very telling is that Hen­ry Dob­son does not make any trips from New York to Liv­er­pool between 1926 and 1937. This is a strong indi­ca­tion that after the Mec­ca­no oper­a­tion closed in New Jer­sey, he had at best a min­i­mal posi­tion with Mec­ca­no, and had to aug­ment his income by work­ing else­where from 1928 until 1933.

In addi­tion to research­ing Hen­ry Dob­son, I also decid­ed to take anoth­er look at the founder of Mec­ca­no Ltd., Frank Horn­by. In doing so, I was astound­ed to dis­cov­er that he also made many sail­ing trips to New York, start­ing in 1912 with the last being in 1930. There was anoth­er trip sched­uled for 1935, but was can­celled, I am sure due to ill health, as he died short­ly after. In all, Frank Horn­by made six­teen trips to New York, most­ly by him­self, with his wife on a few, and son Roland on only one.

In prepar­ing this, I was able to track down a descen­dent of Hen­ry Dob­son, a grand nephew, liv­ing in the U.S. He and oth­ers of his age knew of Hen­ry Dob­son and had vis­it­ed at his home in New Jer­sey as a child, but knew noth­ing of the busi­ness, oth­er than he had import­ed Dinky Toys. Sad­ly, only the one pic­ture of him remains. Henry’s old­est son, Hen­ry Hud­son Dob­son Jr., appears to have worked in some capac­i­ty in his father’s com­pa­ny, from 1951–1960, and lat­er moved to Texas, where he died in 1999. The younger son, James Dob­son, was list­ed in a New Jer­sey direc­to­ry in the 1950’s as a sales­man for H. Hud­son Dob­son, Inc. He died in 1975, and did not appear to be much of a fac­tor in the busi­ness. Sad­ly, none of Hen­ry Dobson’s three chil­dren are liv­ing to help uncov­er more of this sto­ry.

Most of this, the time­line por­tion, is based on known facts, but what exact­ly hap­pened and why is based on assump­tions that make sense to me. It would be great if oth­ers have facts or infor­ma­tion to either add to or refute what I have found. Oth­er cat­a­log ref­er­ences or pre-war box­es that can add infor­ma­tion to this are most wel­come. The Dinky Toys or Mec­ca­no archives in Liv­er­pool would be won­der­ful to research to see if there is any men­tion of H. Hud­son Dob­son and his role with Mec­ca­no. For a man who spent most of his life asso­ci­at­ed with the com­pa­ny, there is pre­cious lit­tle left to share.

Sources and Acknowledgments

• Ancestry.com U.S. World War I Draft Reg­is­tra­tion Cards, 1917–1918. Pro­vo, UT., USA. Ancestry.com Oper­a­tions Inc., 2005
• Ancestry.com 1920 Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Cen­sus. Pro­vo, UT., USA. Ancestry.com Oper­a­tions Inc., 2012
• Ancestry.com 1930 Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Cen­sus. Pro­vo, UT., USA. Ancestry.com Oper­a­tions Inc., 2012
• Ancestry.com 1940 Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Cen­sus. Pro­vo, UT., USA. Ancestry.com Oper­a­tions Inc., 2012
• Ancestry.com New York Pas­sen­ger Lists, 1820–1960. Pro­vo, UT., USA. Ancestry.com Oper­a­tions Inc., 2010
• Ancestry.com 1911 Eng­land Cen­sus. Pro­vo, UT., USA. Ancestry.com Oper­a­tions Inc., 2011
• Ancestry.com U.S. City Direc­to­ries, 1822–1995. Pro­vo, UT., USA. Ancestry.com Oper­a­tions Inc., 2011
• Ancestry.com U.S. Social Secu­ri­ty Death Index, 1935–2014. Pro­vo, UT., USA. Ancestry.com Oper­a­tions Inc., 2011
• usmeccano.com web­site titled “Mec­ca­no in the Unit­ed States”
• Dinky Toys cat­a­logs and orig­i­nal H. Hud­son Dob­son cor­re­spon­dence from the per­son­al col­lec­tion of Ter­ry Hard­grave
• Fold3.com U.K., Roy­al Air Force Air­men Records 1918–1940
• Fold3.com New York West­ern-Nat­u­ral­iza­tion Index
• Sev­er­al news­pa­per clip­pings dis­cov­ered on the inter­net by Skip John­son and myself, relat­ed to Hen­ry Hud­son Dob­son. Thanks for any and all con­tri­bu­tions.