Francis Towle

Sir Francis William Towle CBE (18 April 1876 – 19 December 1951) was a British business man, Controller of the Navy and Army Canteen Board, managing director of Gordon Hotels, and President of the International Hotel Association.

Early life Born in Litchurch, Derby, in April 1876, and baptized into the Church of England on 20 May of the same year at Saint Andrew's Church, Towle was the son of William Towle and his wife Elizabeth. He was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1898 he graduated BA, later promoted by seniority to MA.

At the time of Towle's birth, his father was hotel keeper at the Midland Hotel, Derby.

Career Towle and his younger brother Arthur became joint assistant managers of the Midland Railway hotels under their father. During the First World War, Towle was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps and rose to the rank of honorary Lieutenant-Colonel. On 28 March 1931, shortly before the hotel opened for business, he gave Queen Mary a personal tour of it.

Towle was President of the International Hotel Alliance from 1935 to 1938 and of the International Hotel Association from 1946 until his death.

Personal life On 10 April 1901, at St John-at-Hampstead, Towle married Emma Annette, daughter of Thomas Carter and widow of Captain D. A. N. Lomax. They had one daughter, Dorothy Annette, born in 1902; and Towle became the stepfather of his wife's three sons by her previous marriage, one of whom was Cyril Lomax. Captain Lomax was killed at the Battle of Driefontein on 10 March 1900. His youngest son, Victor, was born a few days later on 16 March. He left an estate valued at £19,279 , nearly all to his wife and children.

In 1932, at St George's, Hanover Square, Towle's daughter married as his third wife Lieut. Colonel Thomas Walter Colby Carthew, a former Royal Flying Corps fighter pilot.

In 1949, Towle was living at Church Cottage, Winkfield, near Windsor.

Towle's wife died in Kensington on 17 July, 1951, he himself in December of that year.