The Abbey Church, Parnell Square, donated by Alexander the founder and popularly known as Findlater’s Church, copy of the original watercolour by Andrew Heiton of Perth, the architect of the church.
2. Alexander the Founder (1797-1873) and his Brothers
To young men entering upon business, no life is calculated to give more encouragement or better counsel than that of Alexander Findlater. The Irish Times, 14 August 1873
Alexander Findlater, the founder of the business in Dublin, was born in Glasgow, on 9 March 1797, the second son of John Findlater, Supervisor of Excise at Greenock (brother to Old Uncle Alex). His father died at a comparatively early age, leaving a widow with a large family in circumstances requiring that Alexander should soon begin to earn his own living. A letter to Alexander from his brother Joseph describes their mother as ‘not overloaded with money’. To supplement her income she had a lodger: ‘We have a Mr Bennet in the house at present, he is a very fine young man—he has the parlour and bedroom for half a guinea.’ (This gentleman, who became Alexander’s business contact in Glasgow, struck up a friendship with the youngest daughter, Janet, born in 1804; the couple were married at the Manse, Newlands on 6th August 1834 by Rev. Charles Findlater (see chapter 3). She died of typhus in Glasgow in 1850, aged 46.)
Scotland’s industrial revolution was under way in the 1820s and people were flocking to the towns; in the country the old farming patterns were changing. The population of Glasgow, which in 1780 was 42,000, was to reach 274,000 by 1840. As usual, there was a human cost. The tenement slums were (at the time) said to be far worse and more squalid than in Dublin, with their occupants existing in frightful degradation. In towns all over Scotland, merchants and industrialists were laying the foundations for the shipping and industrial empires of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Glasgow was establishing its great industries, mainly shipbuilding and cotton. There was an increasing concentration of business power in a few families: to achieve efficiencies shipping was consolidated into a small number of large firms. Successful industrialists amassed colossal fortunes, and lawyers, doctors and small businessmen also did well. However, Scotland, at the height of its industrial success, was a most unequal society.1 It is easy to imagine that an ambitious young man whose family connections were more with the excise than the great shipping or industrial firms might explore options outside the country.
Alexander began his career in his early teens in the office of his elder brother William, a shipbroker in Greenock, where a large portion of Clyde shipping then berthed. William was born in Glasgow in 1792. In 1813, aged twenty-one, he was the hero of a remarkable incident in Greenock; the story, told by George
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Williamson, another participant, gives a good impression of the young man’s mettle.
The following circumstance occurred in the year 1813, about the time I was appointed Procurator-Fiscal of the town of Greenock. I happened one day to go down the quay (now the Steamboat or Customhouse Quay), when I saw a great crowd of persons assembled at the corner of the harbour, west of where the Customhouse was afterwards built. It was low water at the time, and I observed two lads, having the appearance of apprentice seamen, standing up to the waist in the water, having hold of a woman, who was also in the water, and whose head they were attempting to put under water, with the evident intention of drowning her. At the same time I observed also in the water, a young gentleman whom I knew to be Mr William Findlater, a clerk in a counting-house in town, doing his best to protect the woman. I did not hear any words uttered by the persons in the water. As I could not bear the sight, I resolved to endeavour to rescue the woman. I learned that the offence was that she had given information to the Press-gang against some sailors.
A war with France was then raging, and every effort was being made by the Government to procure men for the navy. The vulgar supposed that certain persons gave information where sailors were to be found, and that the Press-gang somehow or other got hold of these men more readily than those of whom they had no information. I am not aware that this was the case, for I do not remember hearing anything said of the gang having gone to houses to pick up men. They used to prowl about the quays and shipping to catch men, and I have seen them myself do so. Be that as it may, the name of Informer was odious, and it was supposed that every insult might be offered to such as bore the character, and that even life might be forfeited, as seemed likely to be the case in the instance I am now detailing.
I have said that I resolved to endeavour to extricate the woman from her very dangerous position. A stair at that time led down to the water, but as the parties were at some distance from the stair, I did not think it prudent to go into the water. Luckily, or, I should rather say, as a special Providence directed, I observed a boat belonging to Allan M’Lean, pilot, coming into the West Harbour, with M’Lean on board. The boat came alongside a vessel at the Quay, not far from the spot where the people in the water were. I leaped directly into M’Lean’s boat, and desired him to push her over to where the woman was, but he at first peremptorily refused to do so, fearing, no doubt, that he would participate in the odium attached to the name of Informer, if he gave any assistance. He afterwards yielded, and came ashore, saying he would hold me responsible for the safety of the boat.
I took an oar, and pushed the boat over without any resistance from M’Lean. On reaching Mr Findlater, I gave him my hand, and he got into the boat. Before I had this done, the young sailors had got the woman out of Mr Findlater’s hands, and put her into another boat, into which they themselves also went, and proceeded out of the harbour. We followed in our boat. At the harbour mouth, as the wind drove the boat out into the river the young men used all their force [trying] to throw the woman into the sea. Mr Findlater and I got our boat alongside of the other, on which one of the young men lifted an oar, and aimed a blow at me with it, but I warded it off with the oar I held, and then stretched out my hand, and called to the woman to give me hers.
She was lying in the bottom of the boat with her hands grasping the gunwale, and her feet firmly pressed against the opposite side. One of the young men was in the act of beating her fingers with a thole pin to make her let go her hold, when our boat got
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
alongside. Had a few more minutes, or perhaps seconds, elapsed before we reached her, she would without mercy have been thrown into the sea, and a foul murder would have been committed in presence of hundreds of men, women, and children, who stood on the Quay, idle spectators of what was going on. When I held out my hand, the woman eagerly grasped it, and I drew her into our boat. I then addressed myself to a number of persons who were standing on the end of the West Quay, and implored them to assist me in landing the woman, and protecting her from further violence. I knew some of the persons I addressed, particularly a ship master of the name of L . . . n, but he would not interfere, and my appeal was answered by a volley of stones from the crowd.
We let our boat drift out of reach of the stones into the river, and proposed to row down to Mr Scott’s building-yard, and there put the woman on shore. On getting abreast of the yard, the carpenters were all assembled (it being dinner hour), and I made an appeal to them, but they would not allow the woman to land. There appeared, therefore, no alternative but to row alongside the Press-tender, then lying at the Tail of the Bank, which we did, put the woman on board, and left her there. Mr Findlater and I returned to the harbour with the boat.
Had the police of the town done their duty, a scene so disgraceful could not have been witnessed. I had the principal actors apprehended and imprisoned, but so little account was made of the offence, that no conviction followed. One of the young men apprehended was under indenture to a tradesman in town. Mr Reid, hardware merchant, a decent, sober, religious man, who was his cautioner, appealed to the magistrates, who ordered his liberation to prevent his forfeiting the penalty in the indenture. Such was the state of the police of the town, and such the state of public feeling, that persons who had attempted a deliberate murder were allowed to escape without any trial or punishment. There was no Sheriff in the place then, nor for two years afterwards, and there were only two or three police officers. I remember shortly before that seeing a man who was said to be an informer driven about the streets, all besmeared with mud and blood, then thrown down and abused, and no one dared to interfere to rescue him from the band of miscreants who were following him.
Outrages and homicides were of frequent occurrence, and little account was made of them. My predecessor in office paid no attention to such matters. No notice was taken of the above occurrence in the Greenock Advertiser. It was passed over as a thing unworthy of notice. I heard nothing of the woman for a month or six weeks after this. One day, while I was sitting at my desk, a woman came in and inquired if my name was Davidson. On my saying it was Williamson, she instantly dropped to her knees, pulled off her cap, and implored God’s blessing on me for having saved her life. I did not at first recognise her as the woman whose life had been attempted, as above. I inquired how she got on shore from the tender. She told me the people of the brig had landed her where some boats lay turned upside down on the beach, and that she had crept under one of the boats, and concealed herself for several hours, and then had found her way to a friend’s house, where she lay for several weeks, bruised and hurt all over by the cruel treatment she had received. I forget what she called herself. She was a little, short-made Irish woman, about thirty years of age. On reviewing this narrative many years after the occurrence, I feel some pleasure in reflecting that I was instrumental in saving the life of a fellow creature.2
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After some time with his brother, when he was in his sixteenth year, in 1813, Alexander accepted an assignment to the island of Newfoundland from the firm of Shannon, Stewart & Co. He was to operate as clerk, storekeeper and bookkeeper to the shipping company. The contract was not over-generous: he was sent out steerage, and was initially to be paid less than 10s a week (all found), for which he was ‘not to absent himself from said service day or night’. He was not to deal on his own account. The carefully indited contract survives in pristine condition.
At this time the economy of Newfoundland was undergoing a mini-boom, ‘brought on mostly by the reopening of the Spanish market for salt cod, on exceedingly favourable terms, two years earlier’. The boom conditions attracted immigrants, especially from the Waterford area of Ireland who quickly became a dominant group, so that by 1815 it was estimated that three-quarters of the population of the capital, St John’s, were Irish Catholics.3
As far as I can deduce from surviving letters, Alexander was stationed on Newfoundland’s Atlantic coast, in a fishing village called Ferryland, about fifty miles south of St John’s.* The principal product traded in was dried cod. Alexander’s role seems to have been to organise the catching and drying of an appropriate amount of fish, and to serve as a ‘feeder’, preparing cargo for the brig Bennett to take north to St John’s. It must have been a somewhat lonely period and he seems to have taken a bit of time to find his feet. In January 1814 his principal wrote bleakly: ‘I hope and trust that you will conduct yourself in a way to prevent fault being found.’ A year later the principal wrote again, when Alexander’s colleague in Ferryland had slipped away to St John’s: ‘I must remark my surprise at his appearance here leaving only yourself in charge of all our concerns at Ferryland, a circumstance that cannot fail to be taken notice of by everyone.’ However, Alexander steadily proved his worth, and in March 1816 he was appointed official Agent and Manager in Ferryland, with the power to bind the partnership.
This success was, however, short-lived. The Newfoundland economy had been hit a serious blow when Spain subjected its dried cod to ‘rapid and enormous tariff increases’. After the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, other European countries followed, and French fishermen began to provide increased competition. By late 1815 nervous creditors were demanding immediate payment, and the domino effect set in, with one bankruptcy causing another. ‘By mid December there were 700 writs issued and nearly forty insolvencies’.4 The local journal provided a ‘dismal record of insolvencies, dissolutions of partnerships, notices from merchants quitting the fishery or withdrawing from business in outposts, notices of sheriff ’s sales and other bleak testimonials of failure’.5 Shannon, Stewart were not immune. A month after Alexander’s appointment as
* St John’s, at that time, was the centre of the region’s fishing industry, with a population of 10,000 in 1815 (up from 5,421 in 1806).
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
manager, his principal wrote: ‘It is with the most heartfelt sensation that I have to communicate to you of Shannon, Stewart & Co having stopped payment about 10 January.’ The firm was bankrupt, and his contract of employment, which still had a year to run, was worthless. (The outcome throws a different light on Alexander’s careful preservation of the contract among his papers.)
He was sent a notably pompous, and cool, testimonial from his principal–‘I consider myself in duty bound in justice to your character to take this method of expressing my sentiments of your having acted during the whole of your servitude to my entire satisfaction.’ Alexander’s superior was probably in no mood for pleasantries. Bankruptcy was taken extremely seriously in Newfoundland: there was nothing abnormal about whipping civilians ‘for debt’. Thirty-six lashes on the bared back was not an unusual sentence.
It appears that nineteen-year-old Alexander went from Newfoundland to Quebec, in Canada, in July 1816, and later to Montreal, where a letter from William suggests that though he had work, it was very hard. (The winter of 1816–17 was one of the coldest the locals could remember.6) Alexander had evidently asked his brother what he should do. William could only suggest that if the work was endangering Alexander’s health, he should leave immediately. The advice was the more poignant because the original purpose of the letter was to announce the death of their brother—poor James, of a fever in St Croix. (Another brother, Charles, had died the year before, aged seventeen, at sea near New Orleans.) St Croix, a tiny island in the West Indies, was a Danish colony. James evidently had a rough time, as the letter says. ‘There is no telling what hardships he may have lived through . . . as he had no friends on the island his effects were confiscated by the Danes.’
Years later, on his death, one newspaper reported that Alexander had later been involved in a distillery in Canada, until a great fire led to the winding-up of the business. Returning to Scotland he worked for some years for Messrs Blarvey, eminent distillers, before deciding to set up on his own account in Dublin in 1823. In 1822 William, having married Sophia Huffington of Fahan, Donegal, settled as a shipbroker in Londonderry. They had one son and three daughters. No doubt reports from William led Alexander to believe that Ireland offered a field for energetic commercial enterprise. Contacts already in Dublin would have promoted the decision. His friend William Burns, thirty-one-year-old nephew of the poet, was busy laying down business roots there and was later joined by Gilbert Burns, another nephew of the poet. Alexander himself was well connected; he would have had an introduction from Old Uncle Alex, the Collector of Excise in Glasgow, to his opposite number in the Custom House Dublin. After all they were both employees of branches of His Majesty’s revenue service and co-operated on such items as smuggling and illicit distillations.7
Alexander was twenty-six years old when in 1823 the ship on which he was a passenger slipped into a berth on George’s Quay on the opposite side of the river
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The Custom House and River Liffey as it would have been when Alexander arrived in Dublin in 1823
Liffey to the Custom House. George’s Quay and Rogerson’s Quay were spectacular, the home of mariners, shipbuilders, ship brokers, rope and sail makers and ships’ chandlers.
Ireland in the first quarter of the nineteenth century was a much more populated country than Scotland. The 1821 census shows that the population of Ireland was almost seven million, compared to Scotland at two million and England and Wales at twelve million, giving Ireland one-third of all the people in the British Isles.* However, in 1823, Dublin was a busy place, with plenty of activity and potential. There was a still-thriving industrial sector but decline was setting in as a result of the withdrawal of protective duties following the Act of Union. Dublin was still the ‘second city of the Empire’ but its pre-eminence was rapidly to be overtaken by industrial towns such as Manchester, Liverpool and Belfast. Its 200,000 population lived between the canals that embraced the city centre. In 1830, although many of the aristocracy had removed to London, there were still twelve hundred nobility and gentry in the city, five thousand merchants and traders, supported by nearly two thousand lawyers, six hundred medical men but only twelve dentists. The Catholic merchant and professional classes were steadily growing in prosperity.
For visitors, Dublin was an impressive city, described by Walter Scott as ‘splendid beyond my expectations’. Karl Marx’s collaborator Frederick Engels was also impressed, but characteristically saw a little deeper: ‘The traveller to Dublin finds the approach as imposing as when he visited London’, he wrote. ‘Dublin Bay is the most impressive in the British Isles . . . the city itself is most attractive and its aristocratic quarter is laid out in a more tasteful manner than any other
* Ireland’s position was to change dramatically under direct rule from Westminster, as the census figures for 1901 illustrate. By then the population of Ireland had been overtaken by Scotland, and was down to four and a half million and declining. In the year 2000, the thirtytwo counties represent only one-tenth of the total population of the two islands.
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
British town. By contrast the poorer districts are among the ugliest and most revolting in the world.’
The peaceful invasion by Scottish merchants was in sharp contrast to all the warring factions that had invaded the land over the previous nine centuries. The new invaders were welcome, and quickly integrated into their adopted land, became citizens and contributed to its institutions. They did not crave after their roots, nor hold property elsewhere to
depart to. Their commitment was total. As Walter Thomas Meyler noted in his 1870 autobiography St Catherine’s Bells ‘instead of investing in the funds to lie idle and useless, they [the Scottish merchants] expended their profits in enterprises valuable to the country of their adoption, extending employment and circulating the wealth they have acquired amongst the community from whose support they derived it.’8
Seals with brass heads for branding the wax that seals the cork into the bottle
Foremost among them was John Jameson from Alloa who established his distillery in Dublin in 1780. Thomas Heiton followed in 1818 and served his apprenticeship in his brother-in-law’s coal and steel business before setting up on his own. John Arnott set up his first store in Cork in 1834.*
Other great names survive into the twenty-first century: for instance, Dunlop who re-invented the pneumatic tyre;† Millar who came over on the invitation of the Jamesons and opened a wine, spirit and cordial business in Thomas Street, then very much the hub of brewing and distilling; Mackey the agriculturist and horticulturist;9 Alexander Thom of Thom’s Irish Almanac and Official Directory who ran the leading firm in the printing industry of that time; Weir the prestigious Grafton Street jeweller and Johnston the Ballsbridge miller, one-third of the 1889 amalgamation that became Johnston Mooney and O’Brien.
As far as I can ascertain Alexander came to Dublin to trade in whiskey. He may have held the agency for the Glasgow Distillery Co. or represented a spirit merchant called Thomas Harvey in Glasgow. He arrived at an opportune time in the spirit business. In 1823 the duties on spirits, in Ireland and Scotland, were reduced by 56 per cent to 2s 4d per imperial gallon, a change, the commissioners observed, ‘the beneficial effects of which, in the great object of suppressing illicit trading, by enabling the legal distiller to carry on his trade in competition with the illegal trader, were found in both divisions of the kingdom to surpass the most sanguine’.
* John Arnott financed, engineered, owned or partially owned Arnott & Co., Belfast; Arnott & Co., Dublin; Cash & Co., Cork; Baldoyle and Cork Park Race Meetings; the City of Cork Steam-Packet Company; Arnott’s Brewery, Cork; the Passage Docks Shipbuilding Company, the Bristol Steam Navigation Company and The Irish Times.
† Dunlop came from the village of Dreghorn in Ayrshire in Scotland. The story of Boyd Dunlop who re-invented the pneumatic tyre is told in the Dublin Historical Record Spring 1996.
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In 1821 the quantity of spirits produced in Ireland on which duty was paid was 3.6m gallons, in 1825 it had increased to 8.8m gallons, and in 1836 to 11.9m gallons; certainly a good trade for Alexander to embark upon. Brewing, distilling and shipbuilding industries were in fact the only industries to increase as a result of the Act of Union.10
Alexander was to develop his business around family and trusted associates, mainly those with Scottish roots. His brother William was in Londonderry, and so was the eldest of the family his sister Helen, who was married to a merchant there, Robert Corscaden. In Glasgow William Bennet (who married Alexander’s sister Janet) acted as a general broker, assembling a wide range of produce, in particular rum, sugar and coffee which were shipped there from the Bahamas and Latin America. In Liverpool his brother John and his brother-in-law John Snowden, married to sister Susanna, were both ships’ captains. The youngest brother, Adam Seaton, went to Brazil at the age of sixteen to engage in trade.
From the beginning Alexander and his brothers set their sights high; in 1825 he received a letter from his brother Joseph in Glasgow, addressed to his lodgings ‘at Mrs Catherine Dawes, 5 Gardner Street (lower)’. As well as discussing the type of merchandise to be sent to Adam in Brazil, Joseph wrote:
‘You will have heard no doubt of the great failures amongst Banking Houses in England. They have created considerable distress amongst the lower classes in that quarter, the circulation of a number of them being small notes—I am much afraid there will be a few here [Glasgow] sharing the same fate . . . [he adds] James Johnston has got a fine situation in a Bank at Londonderry. His salary I believe is £250.’
Alexander certainly moved quickly to establish himself. In 1826, maybe earlier, he, with William Burns, was trading, across the river from the Custom House, as The Irish & Scotch Whiskey Stores at 7 Burgh Quay. By 1828 he had added Hawkins Street, North Wall, High Street and North King Street to his premises as well as recording sales for a ‘Spirit account’, which must have been wholesale. The North King Street premises had a store around the corner in Halston Street. By 1830 a branch at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) had been added (four years before the opening of the Dublin–Kingstown Railway), first trading as The Irish and Scotch Whiskey Stores, and in 1832 Hawkins Street was combined into the Burgh Quay operation, the former acting as the stores for the wholesale. From this date he traded under his own name ‘Alex. Findlater’.
This was an opportune location. Alexander’s arrival in 1823 had coincided with the foundation of the first Catholic Association, the focus of Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for Catholic emancipation which eventually culminated in the Act of Parliament passed in 1829 granting Catholics the right to sit in parliament and in 1832 the right to vote. Conciliation Hall, later the Tivoli Theatre (and in the twentieth century the Irish Press headquarters), was nearby and was the rendezvous for Daniel O’Connell, the father of Irish democracy, and the foremost politicians of the day. Another of Alexander’s Scottish friends, William Todd, had set up business just across the river, in the drawing-room of 10 Eden Quay, dealing in carpets.
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
The goods he traded in
The very earliest ledger entries in the Findlater archive are dated July 1826, three years after Alexander’s arrival in Dublin.* He is already in a reasonable way of business. He buys 13 puncheons of malt (whiskey) from Shaw & Turbett and 20 puncheons from William Burns. A puncheon was a large barrel containing 126 to 130 gallons—so he has bought the equivalent of nearly 40,000 modern bottles. This is over-proof whiskey, which requires to be diluted to bring it to normal sales strength.
Over proof whiskey
A perfect specimen of a
Findlater Whiskey jar
Whiskey is always distilled over-strength. A strength between 11 and 25 per cent over-proof as against the then standard resale strength of 25 per cent underproof (75 per cent proof) requires the merchant to increase the total volume by 40 per cent by adding pure water. Once the dilution process was complete, the contents of the barrels had to be bottled, corked and labelled. Alternatively the whiskey was despatched to publicans and small traders throughout the country in five and ten gallon earthenware jars now used as display pieces in pubs.
Alexander made several small sales of both Scotch and best Irish in that year to his landlady Catherine Dawes, charging 10s per gallon and pro-rata for half and quarter gallons. A Henry Major got much better value—he must have been a trader—paying 8s 6d per gallon for his supplies of 11 per cent over-proof Scotch. On another occasion a gallon of best rum was sold at 12s a gallon and a dozen Cape wine at 20s.
The first record of purchases of Guinness and Jameson (James) was in February 1827. Shop bills and lists of prices were used for promotion, 7s 6d was paid for 1,000 in February 1827, 4s in December 1829 and 5s in 1828. 6,000 bottle labels cost 12s, 20 gross corks £1 10s and bottles were charged out at 2s a dozen. The bottles came from the Dunbarton Glass Co., William Burns being
* Details survive of our trading for all but the first three years in the span of old Findlaters from 1823 to 1968. These are in bound ledgers, journals and cash books and form a wonderful archive with a wealth of information.
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their Irish agent here. Our main source for Scotch was the Glasgow Distillery Co. Alexander’s salary for the twelve months to June 1827 amounted to £80 [€7,000] and £150 [€13,100] for the eighteen months to December 1828, plus his share of profits.
The business was faring well: on 30 June 1827 the retail account was showing a net profit of £465 [€40,700] and the spirit account (wholesale) £134 [€11,700]. Stock on hand for spirits was £700 [€61,100] and on the retail account £585 [€51,000]. In February 1828 the fine (today we would call it key money) for the North King Street lease was £50 [€4,370], and £250 [€21,830] for the North Wall premises. There was a match tax of £1 4s, two years’ pipe water cost £2 15s 5d, the Chamber of Commerce subscription was one guinea and he gave a 7s 6d [€30] donation to the Catholic church in Halston Street. On another occasion the minister received 16s 8d and the priest 5s.
Wages varied between 11s (a porter) and 17s a week; some of those employed were later to be partners of Alexander in his ventures here and across the water, Todd, Gladstone, Carmichael and McKie (or Mackie). There was a couple, Mathew and Mary, who worked in Hawkins Street; he earned 7s and she 5s, making 12s for the week; by 1828 this was up to 14s.
Interest on £1,000 [€87,000] for the North King Street branch was £2 12s 1d and duty on 4 puncheons containing 440 gallons came to £77 18s 4d. By 1829 annual sales were £8,900 [€738,000]. The inventory in January 1830 for the four outlets amounted to £2,740 [€230,000], wholesale accounting for £2,276 [€189,000] of the total. In May 1830 the new premises in Kingstown was stocked up with a wide variety of goods: ale, malt, Cape wine, sherry, port, rum, soap, sealing wax, a coffee roaster, coffee mill and imported Dunlop cheese. This was followed by raisins, figs and tobacco, the latter at 3s per lb. In Dublin the bulk, one-off nature of some of the purchases
In Dublin the bulk, one-off nature of some of the purchases suggests that Alexander was doing a substantial ships’ stores or export business from the North Wall premises on the north side of the river, from the Burgh Quay/Hawkins Street premises on the south side of the river and in Kingstown from his premises there. For example, in October 1830 Hawkins Street handled 2 loads of English meat, 2 loads of East country meat, 103 hams, 2 barrels of Dunlop cheese, 1 barrel of red herrings, and 5 bags of barley while across the river they handled in one particular instance 40 cwt of yellow soap and 20 cwt of white soap. But the main commodity was whiskey.
In January 1831 Alexander purchased 10 puncheons of malt and 20 puncheons of grain whiskey from the Glasgow Distillery and these sorts of purchases were made at regular intervals. They were not exclusively Scotch—for example, 5 puncheons were purchased from John Jameson in 1833. Sugar was bought in cone-shaped loaves. In August 1833 he bought 44 loaves of refined sugar totalling 12 cwt 1 qtr and 15 lbs at 86s per cwt; thus each loaf was 31½ lbs and 1lb of sugar cost about 10d.
Monthly sales for his outlets in Burgh Quay, Kingstown, North King Street, High Street and the North Wall rose from under £1,000 a month in 1828
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
[€86,000] to over £1,500 in 1830 [€129,000] and £2,400 by 1834 [€210,000]. This is the equivalent of annualised sales in the year 2000 of £500,000, £1m and £1.6m respectively and this was only the start of his great commercial career.
By 1830 Alexander, now thirty-three, was laying the foundation of a substantial commercial empire. He was able that year to bring his mother over from Glasgow together with a manservant, John Harries. The following year his brother William died, leaving a widow and four children, for whom Alexander took responsibility. Joseph had died in Glasgow three years earlier, at the age of twenty-one. He had not married.
In 1831 there was a revolution in Brazil, and Don Pedro I abdicated. Adam, Alexander’s younger brother, who had been in Brazil for eight years, was by then in partnership trading as Miller & Findlater. During the riots in Rio de Janeiro the firm’s premises were burned down. The firm relocated in Bahia (today called Salvador) and operated as both shipping agents and merchants dealing on their own account. Made-up fabrics and textiles were shipped out to Bahia and sugar and cotton back to Europe. Ships plied to and from Liverpool, Falmouth and Hamburg. In 1834, for example, silver coins were consigned to London and gingham, handkerchiefs, hair cords, shirtings, Indian books, book folds and Verona handkerchiefs, and special cloths such as madapottams, pullicates and osnabergs, went back out to Bahia.
The ledgers of the company, Miller & Findlater, 1830–1839, have survived in almost pristine condition. The most surprising discovery from these books is the export of large quantities of bottled porter during this period. The porter was brewed by Arthur Guinness, then bottled, corked, and labelled and packed in straw into barrels by Findlaters for despatch. The porter was sold as Findlater’s Pure Dublin Porter—in January 1832 10,000 porter labels were printed. In 1835 we consigned 45 barrels of bottled porter from Burgh Quay to Miller & Findlater in Bahia, each barrel containing 3½ dozen quart bottles. In another
In another consignment there were 108 casks containing 3½ dozen each, making 378 dozen, and 75 casks each containing 6 dozen pint bottles, making 450 dozen.
A good quantity of ale was shipped; for instance, in September 1834 Burgh Quay purchased 20 barrels of Cairns and North Wall 10 barrels. There were also purchases of 6 guinea ale from an Andrew Roy at £6 +s per hogshead less 7½ per cent. This compares with Guinness porter at £2 2s 3d and Cairns ale at £1 18s a barrel,* suggesting that Roy’s ale was of a much
* Guinness hogshead = 52 gallons (54 gallons in the industry generally), Guinness barrel = 32 imperial gallons until 1881 (36 gallons in the industry generally), Irish barrel = 42 Irish gallons = 32.96 imperial gallons (S. R. Dennison and Oliver MacDonagh Guinness 1886–1939 Cork: Cork University Press 1998 Appendix pp 271-2)
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Todd Burns 47 Mary Street after rebuilding following the very extensive fire that occurred in the early part of 1902 destroying the main structure; fortunately the premises and stock were insured.
superior quality. It is probable that this ale came from John Roy & Co., ale and table-beer brewers who in 1822 were at 28 North Anne Street, just around the corner from Alexander’s outlet in North King Street. In 1836 the street directory shows John Jameson as the brewer at this address.
The store proved one of the most profitable of his investments. He had a quarter- share in the profits from 1838 to 1848 and one-fifth from 1849 to 1873; he also received interest on loans and undrawn earnings. Dublin was obviously ready for a new department store.* Profits climbed from £9,296 [€7,100] in 1838 to £13,000 [€1m] in 1843.
A brig
In the years of the Famine, 1849–9, profits were down three-quarters, but rose again in the 1850s to an average of over £10,000 [€1,000,000] and increased to over £20,000 [€1.9m] in the 1860s, finally standing at £21,765 [€1.9m] at the time of his death in 1873. The highest was £27,870 [€2.5m] in 1866. These were superb profits.
In 1835 the builders and shopfitters were again at work for Alexander, this time in Sackville Street, where he had taken a lease at the upper end of the street. He began trading here as Findlater Lennox & Co.,
* In 1838 John Switzer set up at 91 Grafton Street as a woollen draper. In 1843 John Arnott started trading at 14 Henry Street and in 1848/9 Hugh Brown and James Thomas, both previously buyers in Todd Burns, set up as ‘general drapers and haberdashers’ at 16 and 17 Grafton Street.
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
tea merchants, Robert Lennox having
learnt his trade in one of his other outlets. The 16-year-old
monopoly of the East India Company had been
abolished in 1833 and Charles
Bewley, the most enterprising of his family at that
time, had chartered a small schooner
named Hellas, capable of carrying no more than two hundred
tons, and imported the first cargo (2099 chests) of free
tea from Canton
to Dublin in 1835. The ledgers record our first purchases
for the new outlet in 1835 as: 4 chests of Bohia
(414 lbs) at 8s 6¼d; 6 chests
of Congou
(484 lbs) at 1s 9¼d; 6 cases of Congou (493 lbs) at 1s
10½d and 5 boxes of Caper
(105 lbs) at 1s 2d— total £134 18s 6d. [The Helias
was built by Whites
of Waterford in 1832. 209 tons. 91ft x 23ft x 15ft: ref
'Shipbuilding in Waterford 1820-1882' page
239].
Tea was still an expensive luxury. In 1834 popular tea retailed at 4s per 1b., good Congou 4s 6d, strong Congou 4s 8d, fine full 5s, Pekoe 4s 8d and finest Pekoe 7s (5s represents about £14 in today’s money—by comparison, 1lb of Bewley’s breakfast tea in the year 2000 cost about £3.70). From then Findlaters’ tea business grew apace, in line with the rapidly growing Irish taste for tea. For more on tea see page 29, and 145 to 149 in chapter 6.
I made some interesting discoveries while looking through the old ledgers. Wine imports, for instance, were by no means all from France. Among the more obscure wines we shipped was ‘Bene Carlo’ (7s 6d a gallon in 1827) from Valencia, ‘Bucellas’ from Portugal, ‘Calcavella’ from Italy and ‘Constantia’ from the Cape, all in general circulation in this period. In 1830 good Cape wine retailed at 1s 2d a bottle, fine Cadiz sherry and fine port at 2s 3d bottle, Calcavella 2s 4d, old port 2s 6d, prime claret 3s 4d; but here’s the catch: were these quart or pint bottles? Most likely the former.
Shrub, which sold at 5s a gallon, was a drink made from sweetened fruit juice and spirit, typically rum or brandy. ‘Raspberry’ featured prominently; we had 2,000 labels printed in August 1827 at a cost of 4s and it sold at 7s to 8s a gallon which suggests it had an alcoholic content. Malt whiskey was 8s and 9s an imperial gallon which equals 6s 4d and 7s 2d an Irish gallon (1 gallon = 6 x 75 cl. bottles). Old Jamaica rum was advertised at 17s 6d an imperial gallon, 14s for an Irish gallon. In 1841 we were advertising best old Irish at 9s a gallon, Scotch at 8s 8d, and Islay at 1s an Irish gallon. White currant and ginger cordial of superior quality were also 10s a gallon. Later, rich raspberry vinegar was 9s a gallon; Guinness double stout porter 3s 10d per dozen quarts, Drogheda ale 4s and Cape wine of very special description 18s a dozen, again presumably quarts. In 1843 quarts of Guinness were 3s 6d and pints 1s 10d a dozen (2s in 1827), Drogheda ale 3s 8d and 1s 11d respectively, light bitter ale 2s 9d per dozen. Cider first appeared in 1827, but not very frequently afterwards.
In February 1836 there was an extension of porter exports to Quebec: 290½ dozen quarts and 156 dozen pint bottles, packed as usual in barrels; this consignment also included ale, 129½ dozen quarts and 54 dozen pints. In September there was a shipment to New York, in October to New Orleans and in November to Pernambuco, in Brazil. In January 1837 Guinness paid us a Christmas allowance on 630 hogsheads, 60 barrels and 36 half barrels of porter; I’d say that we were a valued customer. 1836 seems to have been the peak of the exports to the Americas.
FINDLATERS
Sackville Street in the early days of Findlater’s trading
In that year Alexander’s brother John (my great-great-grandfather) died at sea, aged just thirty-four. He was Master of the brig James Laurie which went down off the Bahamas with a total loss of life. We rely on the Nassau Royal Gazette for the sparse information we have on the disaster, in an article entitled ‘Melancholy Shipwreck’:
The early part of the 25th of March last was somewhat squally and threatening. Nevertheless, Captain Findlater was anxious to get out of the harbour without delay, as the wind was fast veering to the westward, which might detain the vessel in port for several days. The passengers, with their luggage, hurried on board. The bar was passed, only a few minutes before the wind had come round to north-west. By two o’clock it blew a strong gale from that quarter but being so far fair as to allow a course to be shaped out to sea from among the islands. The brig made sail and was soon out of sight of the town. The weather throughout the night was wild and stormy and in the morning fears were expressed for the safety of the James Laurie; and those fears were, some days afterwards, increased by several articles which had been on board being found on the shores of Abaco. No less than thirteen passengers, beside the master and crew, were hurried into eternity, it must be presumed, in a very short time after their departure from hence who, it is reasonable to believe, perished that night or the day after.
John had married twenty-year-old Mary Anne Hughes in Liverpool on 18 April 1827. They had four children: John (my great-grandfather) born in 1828, Helen in 1829, Joseph in 1831 and Elizabeth in 1833. A year after John’s death Mary Anne died of consumption (tuberculosis). The orphaned children were brought up with their Findlater aunt, Susanna Snowden and by their uncle Alexander who looked after the expenses.
Also in 1836 Alexander was associated with other prominent merchants in the establishment of a steam packet service between Dublin and Glasgow, as recorded in The Story of the Burns & Laird Lines.
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
It was in the year 1836 that the new shipping company, the Dublin and Glasgow Sailing and Steam Packet Company, began to trade. The new line began under auspices that could not well have meant other than success. The articles of association bore the signatures of great merchant princes of the Irish city, including Benjamin Lee Guinness and Arthur Lee Guinness; John Jameson [distiller]; John D’Arcy [D’Arcy’s brewery]; Alexander Findlater; Wm. Todd and Wm. Burns [Todd, Burns & Co.]; Alexander Maguire [wholesale linen and muslin commission agent] and Robt. Gatchell
Ceramic bin labels used in the cellars in Alexander’s time
[hardware and ironmongery merchants]; Alexander Ferrier and Andrew Pollock [wholesale haberdashers]; J. and H. Campbell and Company [wine merchants]; Daniel Miller [coppersmith and brass founders]; William Hopkins [carpenter and builder]; John North [hardware and ironmongery]; and John Thwaites [chemist and importer of mineral waters].11
This shareholding was held for a number of years.
The wine trade in England
In the meantime, in 1856, realising that London could take more than one outlet, Alexander established another wine merchants Findlater Mackie Todd & Co. with premises in Dooley Street until 1863 and then under the railway viaducts at London Bridge, known as Findlater’s Corner (replicating the name used for the premises in Sackville Street, Dublin). It was said that this position was probably passed or seen by more persons every day than any other spot in London. In this venture there were five partners: Ivie Mackie, a merchant of Manchester and thrice Mayor there, Bruce B. Todd, of the Dublin drapery family, Thomas Gordon of Warrington, near Liverpool, and John Findlater Corscaden, Alexander’s nephew. One of the partners dropped out from 1858. In 1864 profits
FINDLATERS
in this partnership overtook the other London outlet and averaged £6,000 to 1873 [€56,000].
John Findlater Corscaden owned a couple of ships and was a member of various of Alexander’s partnerships including Findlaters in Brighton—at number 19 Black Lion Street. (Alexander had a one-fifth share in the profits of this tidy earner which averaged over £4,000 [almost €400,000] in the five years to 1872.) In 1853 John married his own niece Helen, daughter of Captain John. They had no children and John died in 1887. Helen’s younger brother Joseph was also in the London partnerships; he also had no heirs and died in 1912.
Findlater Mackie Todd
Findlater Mackie Todd have had an illustrious history since the 1870s, mainly under the ownership of the Todd family. The firm was responsible for the worldwide sales of Findlater’s wines and spirits, the best known being Dry Fly sherry and Findlater’s Finest Scotch. In 1924, head office moved to 92 Wigmore Street W1, known as Findlater House. The firm at one time had fifty wine shops in and around London, Oxford, Cambridge and Cirencester. In 1968 the Todds sold the firm to their old friends the Bulmers of cider fame in Hereford. To clear the decks for a public quotation, Bulmers passed it on to Beechams, the pharmaceutical giant, in 1970, when it was fashionable for large international firms to diversify outside their core business. In 1987 it was subject to a management buyout and moved its headquarters to Great Queen Street in Covent Garden and then to Merton Cellars, south of London, which had been built in 1959. It is now a thriving part of the John Lewis Partnership concerned mainly with the mail order of wine. Findlater Scotch is distilled and marketed by Invergordon Distillers, under the banner of Findlater Scotch Whiskey Limited. The Chairman of Findlater Mackie Todd, Christopher Rowe, was President of the Royal Warrant Holders Association in 1998.
Adam returns from Bahia
Originally Adam lived in the commodious premises over the Rathmines property. The area was then surrounded by green fields and countryside. ‘In those
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
Findlater Mackie Todd head office at London Bridge, 1862
days Rathmines village commenced opposite Rathgar Road. The whole district was laid out in meadows and dairy fields. Rathgar Road was not formed, and the passage to Roundtown [Terenure] was by Old Rathmines. Leinster Road, then part of Mowld’s Farm, was formed to Harold’s Cross, in 1840.’12
In 1840 Alexander dropped out of the North Wall lease and the Irish and Scotch whiskey stores there were managed by Mackie and Gladstone. In 1842 Alexander’s ledgers show Mackie and Gladstone active in Liverpool, the home base of the Gladstone family. Another commercial offspring, although Alexander was not a member in the partnership, was that of Dunlop Mackie & Co. of Bristol, established in 1846. Their centenary catalogue records that Matthew Dunlop, Bruce Todd and Tom Gladstone, of Scottish stock, gained their early experience in the Irish capital with Alexander and then went on to be associated with Ivie Mackie in Mackie & Gladstone of Manchester. Robert Gladstone was a partner of Alexander’s in the Mountjoy Brewery (see Chapter 4). Robert and Tom were of the Scottish Liverpool Gladstone family of which W. E. Gladstone, the Prime Minister, was also a member.
[For
more on Mackie & Gladstone see "A Bottle of
Guiness Please" David Hughes page 137].
In 1848 Alexander ceased to sell groceries through North King Street, confirming the family understanding that Alexander was himself primarily a wine and spirit merchant with some dry goods, and that the main thrust into groceries was for the next generation.
In November 1847, at the time of the arrival of the first colonial settlers, Alexander became one of the original purchasers of a section of land in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand. This distant colony was gradually being taken
FINDLATERS
from the Maori; the Free Church of Scotland sponsored the New Zealand Land Settlement Company in its offer for sale of land sections to prospective migrants in Scotland. The purchase price for a mixed lot of town and country land amounting to sixty acres was £120 10s [€10,000]. Alexander’s town section became the site of the Bank of New South Wales, Princes Street, Dunedin. His suburban section was located at Deborah Bay, on the Otago Harbour near Port Chalmers, and his farm section was located at East Taeiri, Otago.
Original partners in the London firm of Findlater, Mackie, Todd. Standing, l-r; J. Findlater Corscaden, Bruce B. Todd, Thos. Gordon. Seated, l-r; Ivie Mackie, Alexander Findlater
The farm property at East Taieri was located in swamp land and under water, and situated next to a property on higher land owned by Andrew Todd, the location of the first recorded sod to be turned by plough in Otago.
While Alexander himself never visited the colony his namesake, a cousin from Edinburgh, arrived in Otago with his wife and five children in March 1850. They brought with them much essential equipment, small items of furniture, musical instruments, pictures etc., including a full-sized grandfather clock. Their first home was made of fern trees—‘bungis’ as they were called—a material which was much used locally for home making in the early days before there were organised timber sawing outfits operating. The nearest Maori settlement was located near the mouth of Otago Harbour twenty miles away, where there was a whaling station. 13
However that was not the end of our Alexander’s involvement in that far away country. His niece Sophia, daughter of his brother William, married for the second time Henry Morse of Otago and settled there. She was one of the beneficiaries of Alexander’s will. It appears that the town section of his property in Otago was transferred to Gilbert Burns and the farm property to Andrew Todd. By 1849 Alexander’s second eldest nephew, Captain John’s son twenty-one-year-old John (my great-grandfather), was well enough versed in the trade to be entrusted with an outlet of his own. He was set up in South Great George’s Street in the centre of Dublin and took up residence overhead. It was John’s lot to provide the succession that kept the Irish trading arm of Alexander’s empire in business into the 21st century.
All was not easy in Dublin at this time, as the effects of the Great Famine had hit trade hard, and caused many food merchants and traders to fail both in Ireland and in Britain. As Walter Thomas Meyler, in 1870, records in his autobiography Saint Catherine’s Bells:
The great commercial failures in Ireland in 1847, after the terrific famine, and again
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
in 1852, in Dublin, brought on by great mercantile collapse . . . decimated hosts of highly respectable and honourable merchants, who were swept off the lists by the occurrences, and many of whom disappeared from the stage.
(To add insult to injury, in 1853 Gladstone extended the income tax to Ireland for the first time. It started at just 3p in the £.)
The fact that laws for Ireland were enacted in the Westminster parliament at this time was frustrating for the Dublin merchants who found themselves remote from the centre of power, and so had great difficulty in getting appropriate legislation through the imperial parliament (this was to be a continuing grievance to the very end of the century). In January 1851 Alexander was one of two hundred merchants who put his name to the following:
On another occasion in the same month Alexander signed his name to the great campaign to take tax off paper, whose brilliant slogan was that a tax on paper was a tax on knowledge: ‘We the undersigned request your Lordship will be pleased to convene a meeting of Citizens on as early a day as may meet your Lordship’s convenience, for the purpose of petitioning Parliament for a removal of the Excise duty on paper.’ This was signed by sixty Dublin merchants. The tax on paper was finally removed in 1861.
* As early as 1835 it had been proposed to a select committee of the House of Commons that a great Atlantic railway should be constructed across Ireland as a step to connect England with America. The Erris area of Co. Mayo was suggested as the ideal location both on account of its seaward position and its magnificent natural harbours. It was said that it was capable of holding the whole British navy and a vast number of other vessels at safe anchorage afloat. It was also said that ‘it will create a spirit of improvement in Ireland, which will ultimately develop the great resources of a hitherto neglected country’. (P. Knight Erris in the Irish Highlands and the Atlantic Railway Dublin: Martin Keane & Son 1836.)
FINDLATERS
The Findlater épergne
possibility of building his own brewery. When he first came to Dublin whiskey was the drink of choice in Ireland. But over the century there was a significant decline in spirit drinking, and an equally significant rise in the consumption of beer. Contemporaries were well aware of these trends, and ascribed various reasons. Some said it was the temperance movement, notably Father Mathew’s campaign between 1836 and 1847, that started the shift; others looked more to rising educational standards, even the new enthusiasm for athletics and sports generally.
However this may be, in 1852 Alexander built a brand-new brewery which quickly became a major force in the burgeoning Irish porter and stout market. The brewery story is told in Chapter 4.
On 29 May 1857, fifteen of Alexander’s
partners, prominent amongst whom was Adam,
gathered together and presented him with a
magnificent silver épergne. It
was
made by John Samuel Hunt of Hunt
& Roskell, London, in 1856 at a cost
of 250 guineas [€25,000]. Hunt & Roskell
were favourite suppliers to the Russian
Imperial family, the British Court and for
King Louis-Philip of France for whom they made
a similar epergne, except silver-gilt.
The inscription and names of the donors are as
follows:
Presented to Alexander Findlater, Esq., of Johnstown House, County Dublin, by his 15 partners whose names are hereon inscribed as a token of their respect and esteem for his many excellent qualities.
William Todd, Bruce Todd, Robert Gladstone, John Carmichael, John Blood, Gilbert Burns, John Findlater, Ivie Mackie, William Williamson, Adam S. Findlater, John Smith, John F. Corscaden, W. T. McConkey, Thomas Gordon, Henry W. Todd.
It was said that Alexander was an exceedingly good judge of character, an attribute that enabled him to place implicit trust in all those whom he selected, and at the time of his death he had, it was computed, no fewer than twenty-two partnerships in various businesses. I asked a graphologist14 to examine his handwriting for clues to his character. His judgement was that Alexander was ‘zealous in approach to everything, he could motivate others with his enthusiasm. It was important that he be in charge. His sharp mind would ensure that he understood the rationale behind what was told to him. There was a strong element of generosity in his character. His emotions were always close to the surface.’
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
Family responsibilities
"In
2012
it
became apparent that Alexander had in fact a
daughter. She was born on 8th February 1846,
a seven month's baby, and died on 17th
December 1894, aged 48. She was christened
Janet (Jessie) Dempster, the name of his
mother. Her name remains a mystery. She died
in child birth and Alexander promised her
that he would look after their daughter and
he did. She was in a social position the
same as Alexander's. Jessie was brought up
in England, first by the wet nurse and then
various families. Alexander's sisters did
not know of her until she was eight. She
married Robert Geoghegan and had four
children. Robert is a different branch of
the Geoghegan already married into the
Findlaters. Alexander is quoted as saying,
in July 1868, 'She was my wife, my only wife
in the sight of god. I would have married
her if she had lived and God knows if I will
have another'.
Although he was to remain unmarried, Alexander had many family responsibilities, especially for the children of his deceased brothers, William and John. Straight away after William’s death in 1831 he was paying for seven-year-old Billy’s ‘teaching’ and did a good job judging from the letters in Chapter 3. He also contributed to the education of Billy’s sisters—Janet known as Jessie, Sophia and Margaret, a baby in arms. He paid his mother a regular allowance and in 1836 became responsible for Captain John’s four young children. They lived with his sister Susanna who was married to sea captain John Snowden. And then, as if that was not enough, his sister Helen, married to Northern Ireland merchant Robert Corscaden, was widowed in 1841 and he contributed to the upkeep and education of her two sons. Thus it is not surprising to find him investing in a larger house when in 1842 he paid £1,000 fine [€92,000] for the lease of Johnstown Farm, at the top of Knockmaroon Hill in Chapelizod, just outside Dublin. It was probably some 45 acres. The farm was well stocked with 26 Kerry heifers, 2 milch cows, 2 fillies, 2 mares, 4 pigs, and 1 donkey plus implements and feeding bringing the total value to over £500 [€50,000] in 1846. The house has, alas, now been demolished.
There was quite a little Scots community around there. His associate Gilbert Burns, who was married to Jemima Ferrier, lived nearby in Knockmaroon Lodge,* and her father Alexander Ferrier lived at Belvue Park. William English lived nearby in Farmley. (This house, now Farmleigh, was bought in 1870 by Edward Cecil Guinness, First Earl of Iveagh, and extensively remodelled as a spectacular Victorian neo-classical mansion. It was acquired by the state in 1999.) Another of Scottish ancestry, James W. Mackey, lived in Clonsilla House.
Alexander’s ledger records family expenditure. The annual account for groceries from Findlaters in 1848 was £81 6s 1d [€8,000], the man servant’s wages were £3 for three months. Catherine, the cook, received £2 10s, presumably also for three months, a dress for his niece Sophia cost £3 8s, Kelly the shoemaker got 10s, life membership of the nearby Zoological Gardens for the children’s pleasure and education cost £10 [€1,000], and in November 1849 for a family holiday, the passage cost £71 2s [€7,100] and he took £25 [€2,400] for expenses.
In 1852, 11 tons of coal from Thomas Heiton cost £7 13s [€870], the Chamber of Commerce was still £1 10s, the cook’s wages had increased to £3 for three months, he paid £21 for a new car with an old one in exchange. In 1855 he bought a brougham from the reputable coach builders John Hutton & Sons for £146 4s [€15,400] and in 1859 sold his old one for £75 [€7,500]. In 1868 he spent £68 18s 6d on repairs to one of his broughams. In 1853 he gave two of his nieces £500 [€50,000] each and in 1858 he took on the cost of his Blood grand-nephew’s schooling. The Scottish genre painter Erskine Nicol received the enormous sum
* Gilbert Burns lived here until his death on 9 October 1881 aged seventy-seven; he is buried in the Church of Ireland graveyard in Castleknock. His brother William died in Portarlington on 11 June 1878 aged eighty-six, and is buried in Mount Jerome.
FINDLATERS
Alexander 1797–1873
of £105 [€11,000] for a painting called ‘The Chiropodist’. He also gave his nephew Billy a present of £500.
Charitable donations
Alexander was now well-off, despite all his family obligations. This enabled him to fulfil the Presbyterian ideal of donating substantial sums of money to charity. His most conspicuous contribution to Dublin was his offer to finance a splendid new place of worship for the Presbyterian congregation of St Mary’s Abbey.
It is a curious feature of Dublin’s 19th-century history that in 1865 the brewer Benjamin Lee Guinness financed the refurbishment of St Patrick’s Cathedral; the distiller Henry Roe, in 1870, underwrote the reconstruction of Christ Church Cathedral, at a cost that staggered even his large fortune.* For a lesser, but still significant sum, Alexander, the wine merchant, built the Presbyterians a fine new place of worship in the city centre. The soda water manufacturer, Henry Bewley, proprietor of Bewley and Draper of Mary Street, in 1862, contributed a generous sum towards the completion of another place of worship, the Merrion Hall in Merrion Street15, now the Davenport Hotel.
The Rev. W. B. Kirkpatrick DD in 1865 told the story of Findlater’s Church:
It had been for some time a subject of friendly discussion amongst the members of the congregation of St. Mary’s Abbey whether they should continue to worship in the old church or build for themselves a new church in some more prominent position in the city. The difficulty was unexpectedly solved by the generous proposal of Mr Findlater, a member of the Presbyterian congregation of Kingstown, to build a church for the people of Mary’s Abbey at his own sole expense, so soon as they obtained a suitable site. An admirable site was selected in Rutland Square, [now Parnell Square] for which the congregation paid the sum of £2,600 [€240,000].†
The foundation of the new building was laid in November 1862, and the work was completed in October 1864. It was in the newly fashionable ‘Gothic’ style, richly decorated. The church cost ‘£13,394 9s. 11d. and included £1,000 alleged additions, the builder Samuel Bolton having claimed that he lost by the contract’– or so Alexander recorded in his private ledgers! The following description
* It was said that this munificence cost Roe his distillery and he died in poor circumstances. The industry attributed another reason: he imported a substantial shipment of barley from Russia that was not sweet and sound and affected his whiskey thus destroying his market.
† On this site formerly stood Headford House, the town house of the Earl of Bective; and an even earlier occupant was Thomas Cobbe, son of Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin 1743- 65 (M. D. C. Bolton, Headford House Dublin: The Fieldgate Press 1999).
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
of the building was given in Saunder’s Newsletter (19 November 1846):*
The church is in the early English style–a modification of the Gothic. It is built of Dalkey granite, dressed with Portland stone; and its carved ornamentation and lofty spire, wrought out in this material, form an object of peculiar beauty.
The frontage towards Frederick Street is 142 feet, and that towards Rutland Square [now Parnell Square] is 60 feet. The former or longer side of the edifice is divided into three bays, each having a pointed roof, and a large five-light window richly traceried at the head. The bays are divided by massive buttresses. The end towards Rutland Square has the principal entrance to the church. The light window, or rather series of windows, light a vestibule within, approached by the main entrance.
Public appreciation of
Alexander’s
contribution to St. Andrew’s church
in Suffolk Street,
now Dublin Tourism Offices
Above these vestibule windows is the grand window of the building, twenty eight feet in height by fourteen in breadth.
This is a ‘Memorial’ Window, erected by the congregation.
It contains, at the centre, the arms and monogram of Mr Findlater, and on blue glass at the bottom are the words: ‘To commemorate the munificence, and to perpetuate the name of Alexander Findlater, the founder and donor of this Church’. The entire window is filled with beautifully stained glass, presenting texts of Scripture on a variously ornamented ground.
Amongst these are the following cautionary lines:
Behold the heaven of heavens cannot
contain thee
Much less this house that I have built †
God forbid that I should glory
Save in the cross at our Lord Jesus
Christ.‡
The centre of the church is lighted by six handsome mediaeval coronas of thirty lights each, suspended from the roof. They were made expressly for the church, to the design of the Architect, Mr Heiton of Perth, by Messrs Edmondson and Co., of Capel Street, to whom the whole gas-lighting was entrusted. The effect is very good—quite in keeping with the building, and when lighted the whole church is brilliantly illuminated. The galleries and staircases are lighted by massive brackets, and the lobbies and vestibules by handsome circular lanterns, with mediaeval brass mounting. The pulpit and reading desk and choir, of stained woodwork, carved in Gothic style, form per-
* Samuel Bolton established the Rathmines Road Works in 1852, located on the corner of Lower Rathmines Road and the Grand Canal. Among the notable works he built were the Ulster Bank in College Green, Christ Church, Leeson Park, and the Iveagh Buildings, Patrick Street. The firm closed in 1929 and the premises were sold to Mr G. A. Brittain for the assembly of Morris cars.
† Based on King James version Kings 8 verse 27.
‡ King James version Galatians 6 verse 14.
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haps the chief embellishment of the interior. The seats are of red deal, carved and stained in imitation of oak, and constructed on the modern longitudinal plan, each being decorated with fleur de lis at the ends. The accommodation is sufficient for 850 persons. It is heated with hot air pipes. There is a suite of rooms at the end of the church, and a schoolroom underneath it. All the windows, it should be mentioned, are filled with richly stained glass, which has been supplied by Mr Ballantyne, of Edinburgh. The plans were prepared by Mr Heiton of Perth, Architect; and the contract was entrusted to Mr Samuel Bolton, of Richmond Street.
A sole surviving
invoice from 1873—
for the account of Lord Brabazon
Alexander’s munificence did not end with the Abbey Presbyterian Church, nor was it limited to the Presbyterian congregation. In 1869 he subscribed £1,000 [€100,000] to the completion of St Andrew’s, the Church of Ireland parish church in Suffolk Street (now Dublin Tourism’s main tourist information centre).* His regular donations to charity were sizeable and are all recorded in his ledgers. From 1860 to 1865 they averaged £750 per annum [€71,000]. In 1860 he made a £100 [€10,000] donation to the new Presbyterian Church in Rathgar. The Greenock Academy received £50 [€5,000] and the Scots Church in Kingstown £1,017 [€97,000]. From 1866 to 1869 he averaged over £1,000 [€100,000] per annum. For the subsequent four years to his death in 1873 his donations amounted to £2,796 [€270,000]; £4,807 [€500,000]; £4,796 [€430,000] £3,750 [€300,000] per annum. He selected his charities carefully. He looked after the Dublin hospitals generously; he was on the investment committee in the Royal Hospital for Incurables in Donnybrook with Frederick Stokes and William Digges La Touche. Dr Helen Burke, in the history of the hospital, writes:
They proceeded to plan the investment of legacies and donations and to change the hospital’s investments in accordance with their knowledge of the stock market. Under their stewardship the hospital’s annual income from investments went up from £583-0- 4 in 1862 to £1454-14-7 in 1872 [€132,000]. Very often stockbrokers who were friends of these men would carry out transactions for the hospital without charging any fee . . . Thanks to the commitment of these men the hospital got sound financial advice during this crucial decade.
In 1866, during a time of rapid expansion in the hospital, two new wings were added and the new wards furnished through the gifts of donors, Alexander contributing £250 [€24,000].
He gave £1,000 [€100,000] for a Findlater scholarship in Glasgow university
* This confirms my Aunt Sheila’s story that whenever she was in that part of town with her father, he would point up to the steeple and say: ‘That’s ours!’
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
Adam
Seaton—Alexander’s brother
and partner in Dublin
and £100 [€10,000] to Monkstown Roman Catholic Church, £100 to a Methodist Chapel and £25 to the Lord Mayor of London’s fund for Persian famine relief. As many as one hundred and fifty separate charities benefited each year and almost all the Dublin hospitals benefited in his will as they had in his lifetime.
His brother and partner, Adam, was equally active in charitable donations. In 1866 he was quietly dispensing £3,000 per annum [€290,000], in his latter years divided between some three hundred beneficiaries. Since he was a busy man, it seems likely that most of these donations were as a result of solicitations, which implies a formidable correspondence.
Alexander and Adam were particularly generous to the new Presbyterian theological college in Belfast. In 1870 Alexander gave them £1,000 [€100,000] of railway stock to provide for two scholarships with an annual value of £25 each [€2,400]. The following year Alexander was written to concerning the ‘bankrupt condition’ of the college. In due time he promised £1,500 [€140,000] on condition that another £3,500 [€300,000] be raised to reach £5,000 [€500,000] in all. There was a distinct possibility that this condition would not be fulfilled until a Mrs Gamble undertook to contribute a sum equal to Alexander’s. In addition to this he gave £300 [€29,000] for the purchase of books.*
In 1876, three years after Alexander’s death, the college approached his brother Adam about a professional endowment fund to increase the remuneration paid to the staff. After some reflection, Adam indicated that he would contribute £1,000 [€100,000] towards the fund on condition that four other donations of the same amount were forthcoming. They found these conditions exacting and just as his offer was in danger of lapsing owing to the non-fulfilment of the conditions, there was a turn of events. I quote from Robert Allen’s history of the Presbyterian College
In a conversation between him [Professor J. L. Porter] and Findlater there was some discussion regarding the buildings still required for the College—three more staff residences, a chapel and additional student chambers. ‘How much are these likely to cost?’ inquired Findlater. ‘About ten thousand pounds, I should estimate,’ replied Porter. ‘Very well,’ said the Dublin merchant, ‘let the Church raise the ten thousand pounds
* The library, opened in 1873, is now one of the country’s main theological libraries.
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Findlater’s stock of whiskey from various distilleries in bond, April 1860. ‘A year later the stock of John Jameson at 172 Puncheons surpassed that of Henry Roe at 63½ Puns and by 1877 our stock of Jameson had risen to 407 puncheons out of a total of 692’ [Puncheon = 130 gallons held at 20 per cent over-proof in bond as against a resale strength of 25 per cent under-proof ].
already agreed by the Assembly for the Professional Fund and I undertake, at my own expense, to complete the buildings. But I must insist on two things—that the money be raised by 30 June 1878, and that my name be not disclosed, at least for the present.’ . . . This was a bold and generous gesture on the part of Findlater. At one step, and in order to stimulate the Church to greater activity, he had increased his original offer eleven-fold, and the total sum now within the grasp of the trustees was twenty thousand pounds [€1.9m], one half of which was to be to the Endowment Fund, and the other half to the new buildings. This was the most munificent offer yet made to the College, and when it was stated in public that an ‘unknown friend’ had acted with such vision and altruism there was much speculation as to his identity; and, with a new sense of urgency, fresh efforts were put forth . . . The goal was reached at the eleventh hour.
The chief addition to the college, made possible by the increased endowment, was the chapel with the adjoining facility room. The windows of the chapel, which were donated by three families, including Adam’s widow who generously donated £500 [€50,000] towards the erection of two of them, were to be the cause of some controversy. The original plan for these had been to include religious symbols on these windows, but this raised purist hackles among the Presbyterian community, who feared ritualistic influences. The upshot was that two of the windows displayed the coat of arms of the college’s great benefactor. However during a renovation some years ago all the memorial windows were mysteriously removed from the chapel.
The association of the scholarship with Findlater’s drinks business was to cause
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
more trouble. In 1927 controversy in connection with temperance and the Church entered what a newspaper called ‘a new and regrettable phase’. The Presbyterian Church was accused of condemning the drink traffic while enjoying the fruits of the Findlater scholarships in the Assembly’s college—benefactions drawn from alcoholic liquors. So intense had feeling become that it was suggested in certain influential quarters that the Church should discontinue these particular scholarships altogether; but in that case what would become of the trust funds? Give them to charity? Happily the scholarships are still being awarded as we enter the 21st century.
Growth in wines
| Importer | Duty £ |
| R. J. Turbett | 7,423 |
| J. & G. Campbell | 3,937 |
| T. W. & J. Kelly | 3,549 |
| Wm. & P. Thompson | 2,996 |
| J. McCullagh, Son & Co. | 2,599 |
| A. Findlater & Co. | 2,523 |
| Bewley and Draper | 2,175 |
| Thompson, D’Olier | 2,143 |
| Kinahan & Sons | 2,047 |
| Drake & McComas | 2,006 |
| T. Bewley & Co. | 1,965 |
| H. Brennan | 1,912 |
| G. F. Brooke & Son | 1,912 |
Note: £1 in 1887 is equivalent to £60 in 2000
Growth in teas
As we have seen, we first sold tea in the 1830s when all tea came from China. By the 1860s the firm had considerably increased the volume of tea handled. In April of 1839 year we held 407 chests in stock, of which 349 were held in bond, i.e. the duty had not yet been paid on them. A chest held approximately 100 lbs of tea. The duty rate was 1s 5d per lb on a wholesale cost ex duty of between 1s 2½d per lb to 2s 10d per lb, quite some duty rate! Teas were advertised at 3s 8d for breakfast tea, 4s 0d for black tea and 5s 0d for orange Pekoe. The earliest arrival of Indian that I can trace was on 31 May 1861 when it is recorded in the cash book that we paid duty on 6 chests—528 lbs—of Assam which was shipped
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ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
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via London from Maxwell in Calcutta. We later claimed to have been the first Irish firm to import Indian tea. In that month we also paid duty of £443 18s 3d on 53 chests of China tea brought through brokers Thomas Bewley & Co. By the end of the century India had replaced China as the main source of tea. In 1863 Gladstone halved the tea duty from 6s to 1d per lb and Findlaters were receiving regular shipments from Calcutta, often shipped on The City of Poonah.*
The family
In 1860, with the family educated, Alexander sold his leasehold interest in the farm for £740 [€70,000] and paid £2,000 [€190,000] for a fine house called The Slopes in the fashionable Monkstown area by the sea in south county Dublin. There he was joined by his widowed sisters Helen and Susanna. Susanna managed the household and he paid her a regular sum. On 20 April 1846, Adam married Jane Martin Johnston–she was known as ‘The Aunt Jane’. (Her sister Mary was later to marry John, my great-grandfather.) His mother, whom Alexander had brought over from Glasgow in 1830, died in Rathmines two months later on 14 June 1846, and was buried in the family vault in Mount Jerome cemetery.
In the 1860s Jane and Adam lived near the ‘Scotch’ Church in Adelaide Road. Around 1870 they moved to a house called Melbeach in Monkstown, which, I am told, was specially designed for them, perhaps by the noted architect, John McCurdy, whose daughter was shortly to marry into the family.
By 1865 Alexander’s net worth was over £220,000 [€21m]. He was a director of the Royal Bank of Ireland and as we have seen an active contributor to the city’s main charities. In June 1865 his niece Elizabeth, sister of John, married Rev. William Clarke and Alexander paid Todd Burns £90 13s 6d [€8,700] for her outfit. His wedding present, a canteen of cutlery, was chosen in West & Son Jewellers in Grafton Street at a cost of £43 13s [over €4,000].
His niece Jessie had married Joseph Taylor of Melbourne, Australia in 1859 and in 1865 Alexander paid her expenses for a visit to Paris £22 17s 9d [€2,000]. Also in 1865 he paid Todd Burns £51 12s 2d [over €5,000] for goods despatched to Otago in New Zealand where his niece, one of Billy’s sisters, had taken Henry Porson Morse as her second husband. He paid £2 15s to W. H. Smith for The Times, £4 [€380] annual membership of the Royal Irish Yacht Club, £14 [€1,330] for a twelve-month rail ticket to and from town and £10 [€100] for his church seat in Kingstown. He purchased his groceries from Findlater’s Kingstown and wines from Findlater’s Sackville Street and discharged the accounts annually in December and January respectively. The grocery bill for 1866 amounted to £59 15s [€5,700] and wines £97 [€9,200]. The 1869 figure for groceries was £97 17s 5d. Vegetables were obviously grown at The Slopes and the gardener, James
* Tea had long been a favourite with the taxman. The first British tax on tea was in 1660, when it was taxed in liquid, made-up, form, and accordingly had to be prepared in advance before being assessed by the exciseman. This could not have done much for its flavour. By 1689 tea was being taxed on the leaf. A duty of 5s per lb nearly killed the trade, but the rate was brought down to 1s in 1692. A further 1s per lb was added in 1695 to pay for expenses incurred a few years earlier ‘for the reduction of Ireland’.
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
The family in 1869. Left to right: Adam, Susanna, Alexander, Helen
Barret, was paid 21s a week. (He was left £150 [€14,000] in Alexander’s will.)
After his sister Susanna died in December 1871 he employed a houseman, David Cantillon, who was paid 20s a week with a £4 Christmas gratuity and left £25 in Alexander’s will [€2,000]. The cook also received 20s a week and the housemaid 15s. There were also payments to a laundress. David noted sundry expenditure in the house book which Alexander discharged regularly. He continued to entertain and travel. On 27 February 1872 the account for dinner for fourteen amounted to £15 13s 2d [€1,400]. He liked his cigars and on this occasion paid £3 12s for six boxes of cigars, that is 12s a box. In October 1871 he took £35 [€3,000] cash for a trip to England, and in March the following year £17 10s. A trip to the continent required considerably more and in June 1873 ‘cash at starting for continent’ was £230 [€21,000]. But Susanna’s death hit him badly and visits to the health resort of Harrogate became more frequent. His well-worn bible showed him to be, as might be expected, a regular reader of the scriptures, and his expenditure in December 1872 of £146 [€14,000] on the granite monument over his vault in Mount Jerome cemetery showed some intimations of mortality. Although there are now sixteen interred there, not all are family, and the inscription simply states: ‘The family burial place of Alexander Findlater’. I may well join them there.
In July 1873 Alexander made his last entries in the ledgers which he had assid-
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The first show held at Ball’s Bridge, Dublin, in 1871, by the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland. These four provinces. Among the personalities portrayed in this typical Victorian panorama
uously written up through his life: £1 16s for 3 boxes of cigars and £1 [€100] for the poor of York Street church. On Friday 8 August 1873, aged seventy-six, he died while taking the waters in Harrogate in England. His death was copiously noticed in the newspapers. One obituary is worth quoting at length as it not only remembers Alexander’s fine character, but also paints a vivid picture of his funeral:
It is with the most extreme regret we announce the demise of Alexander Findlater, Esq., J. P., of 30 and 31 Upper Sackville Street, and of The Slopes, Kingstown. The melancholy event took place yesterday morning at Gascoigne’s Hotel, Harrowgate, where the lamented gentleman had gone for the good of his health, which had been failing for some time past. He had for a long series of years occupied a leading position amongst the merchants of our city, and was besides for several years a director of the Royal Bank. All classes thronged at the funeral and around his grave to do honour to the memory of a man distinguished as an enterprising merchant, a useful citizen, a public benefactor, and a generous friend and employer. The merchants and traders of Dublin—amongst whom the lamented gentleman occupied for years a foremost place—members of the learned professions, the clergy, members of the Municipal Corporation, of the Chamber of Commerce, the Dublin Port and Docks Board, Commissioners of the Kingstown and Rathmines and other townships, directors of banks and other public and mercantile institutions and companies attended in large numbers, and formed a funeral cortege not exceeded in extent and influence for many years in this city . . .
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
shows, the forerunners of the RDS Spring and Horse Shows, were held during August alternatively in the were the Prince of Wales, numerous lords and a few commoners, including Alexander Findlater.
It was announced that the funeral would leave The Slopes at nine o’clock this morning, but long before that hour a large number of carriages had arrived bringing gentlemen from Kingstown and Dublin and intermediate places. The funeral started at 9.15 and went slowly along the Rock Road to Ball’s Bridge, then by the Clyde Road, Leeson Street, Adelaide Road, Circular Road, Clanbrassil Street on to Mount Jerome Cemetery. Along the route there were constant accessions of carriages so that by the time the cortege reached the South Circular Road it was composed of over 200 carriages.*
The remains were enclosed in a leaden coffin, surmounted by one of polished oak, on the breastplate of which was the simple inscription:
Alexander Findlater,
Died August 8, 1873
The Irish Times (14 August 1873) also wrote fully about the death of Alexander:
Today the grave closes over the remains of one of the most enterprising, spirited, and successful merchants of this city. Although Alexander Findlater was a Scotsman born, once he settled amongst us he became as Irish as the Irish themselves. He firmly adhered to the belief and the Church of his native land, but he was not merely tolerant but generous to the charities of all creeds. If he erected, at a cost of more than £13,000 the tasteful Church in Rutland Square, and presented it to his fellow worship-
* There were 239 private carriages at Benjamin Lee Guinness’ funeral. (Michèle Guinness The Guinness Spirit: Brewers and Bankers, Ministers and Missionaries London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999, p 114).
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Bust of
Alexander, in marble, executed in 1857,
the work of Dublin sculptor
John Edward Jones
(1806–1862)
pers, he also gave most liberally to aid of Episcopalian communities. His name was constantly found in the lists of every subscription for any worthy public or charitable purpose.
Mr Findlater exhibited a wonderful ability—indeed almost an intuitive power—in the selection of his employees, many of whom, as time passed on, became his partners, and realised large fortunes. So early as 1834, in conjunction with Mr William Todd and others, he founded the well-known firm of Todd, Burns & Co., in which firm he continued to be a partner until death removed him. The Mountjoy Brewery, in Russell Street, is another of the numerous undertakings which the indomitable energy of Mr Findlater originated. At the time of his decease he was a partner, and that to a considerable amount in firms carrying on extensive business in London, Manchester, Brighton, Dublin and Kingstown. All of them are prosperous and flourishing . . . The biography of such a man must produce rich fruit, for example always is more impressive than precept. Fortunately for the future of this country, it is no longer considered to be outside the pale of gentility to engage in commerce or mercantile speculations. Industry is honoured and generally rewarded. The idle son of an indolent squire is no longer respected, and the excellence of the rule that what a true man finds to do he should do with all his might, is held by the autocracy itself. To young men entering
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
upon business, no life is calculated to give more encouragement or better counsel than that of Alexander Findlater.
After Alexander’s death Adam and Jane moved into The Slopes and nephew John and Mary to Melbeach. Adam lived on until 1879. On his passing at the age of seventy-one, it was reported: ‘Adam was a kindly, genial man of unobtrusive manners, but genuine ability for business. Like other members of the family he was a liberal contributor to all our charitable institutions, and his private benevolence was never withheld from any real claim brought under his notice.’
In 1881, two years after Adam’s death, his widow Jane was married again, to Dr John Blythe of Fitzwilliam Square, notwithstanding that her annuity from her late husband would halve to £400 a year [€38,000] in the case of that eventuality. However she was independently wealthy, not only as a Johnston of the milling family, but also through a slip-up by her late husband Adam. He failed to rewrite his will following the death of his brother Alexander in 1873, thus leaving many anomalies. In compliance with the Statutes of Distribution she became entitled to half the estate in addition to the fund set aside to provide her with an annuity. Thus in 1881 she had investments worth £89,000 [€10m] and was well able to buy The Slopes from the estate and live there in some style.
What the Blythes of Fitzwilliam Square drank 1880-99
Claret was in favour in the 1880s, averaging fifteen to sixteen cases a year, but later the 18s a dozen quality they were buying began to cloy and they moved on to a better standard of Burgundy—Beaune and Pommard, at 30s a dozen and got through some ten cases a year between 1892 and 1899. The only claret they bought in the 1890s were Chateau Margaux at 54s, 60s and 65s a dozen and Léoville Barton, mainly 1877, a well-rated prephylloxera vintage, at 60s a dozen. From 1880 to 1890 hock was the favoured white wine when it averaged four and a half cases, at 30s a dozen. Spirit purchases were modest at six bottles of brandy,
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Adam and his wife Jane
six bottles of VSO whiskey and the occasional Islay malt; maybe Dr Blythe received generous Christmas boxes of spirits from his patients. Bottled water was an occasional purchase: Oberselters, Carrara and Zoedone.
Alexander’s fortune
The values of Alexander’s assets were updated annually in his ledgers. They rise from £7,675 [€600,000] in 1838 to £354,996 [€33m] in 1873. After 47 of his 50 years in trade, in 1870, his commercial partnerships were valued at £77,494 [€7.37m], 4.7 times his income from them; bonds and loans were £13,927 [€1m]; bank and gas company shares (queer combination!) were £19,227 [€1.83m]; leasehold properties £13,550 [€1m] and railway investments, some 25, had a value of £171,448 [€16.4m]; making a total in 1870 of £295,648 [almost £18m].
Of his commercial partnerships totalling £77,494, investments in the brewery £44,796 [€4.3m] and Todd Burns £17,711 [€1.68m] accounted for over 80 per cent. The brewery gave him a poor return on assets at 4.5 per cent, and from time to time generated actual losses, as in 1868 and 1869 and again in 1872. Todd Burns was satisfactory at 18.5 per cent and the wine and spirit firms both here and in England gave excellent returns on account of their low capital base.
The combined wealth of Alexander and Adam amounted to some £550,000, the equivalent of £30m in the year 2000 values; not a bad sum for two of modest origins and who had been so generous in life. By comparison, Benjamin Lee Guinness, who died in 1868, left an estate of £1.1 million [€105m], the largest at that time,16 and from another great Irish wine dynasty Hugh Barton in Bordeaux estimated his wealth at £650,000 [€62m] in 1845.
ALEXANDER THE FOUNDER (1797–1873) AND HIS BROTHERS
So what happened to the fortune that Alexander created in his lifetime? The answer is that he dispersed it among his fourteen nephews and nieces, who were spread across the world, in Australia, New Zealand, England, the North of Ireland and of course Dublin. His residuary legatees and largest beneficiaries were his senior nephews Billy and John.
On the death of Adam, Billy, who was a solicitor, became sole proprietor of the brewery. Todd Burns and the English wine firms continued with their surviving partners. The Dublin business based around the Sackville Street shop (a mere 7 per cent of his total assets, but generating profits of £8,000 a year) went to his nephew John. We shall see how Billy and John fared in subsequent chapters.
Notes and references
- T. M. Devine The Scottish Nation 1700-2000 London: Allen Lane 1999 pp 134, 334, 263
- George Williamson Old Greenock from the Earliest Times to the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century 2 Paisley and London: Alexander Gardner 1886. The story was also published in Greenock Herald, 22 October 1881
- Patrick O’Flaherty Old Newfoundland: A History to 1843 St Johns: Long Beach Press 1999 p 122
- Op. cit. p 127
- Op. cit. p 127
- Op. cit. p 128
- See The Digest of the Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into Excise Establishments and the Management and Collection of the Excise Revenue through-out the United Kingdom, 1836
- Walter Thomas Meyler, Saint Catherine’s Bells Dublin: Cowen and Thomson 1870, Part Two p 271
- Op. cit. Part 2 pp 64-5
- E. J. Riordan Modern Irish Trade and Industry, London: Methuen 1920, pp 32, 33
- Ernest R. Reader The Story of the Burns & Laird Lines Glasgow: Burns & Laird Ltd 1951
- Meyler op. cit. vol. 1, p 43-4
- This information is based on a letter from Alexander Napier Findlater of Dunedin, New Zealand dated 27 January 1971 and his subsequent research
- Lawrence Warner, Personality Assessment Consultancy; he was certainly right in respect of his generosity. As we see later in the chapter he contributed large sums to charity
- Meyler, Part Two p 14
- Michèle Guinness The Guinness Spirit: Brewers and Bankers, Ministers and Missionaries London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999, p 139