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Tea Hero – Sir Thomas Lipton Part 2.

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Lipton’s hard slog years: realising the dream; becoming the man.

In the first part of Tommy Lipton’s story we saw him depart for the USA as a callow youth and four years later return to Glasgow having learned some valuable life skills, with US$ 500 in his pocket, an iconic bushy moustache and the dream of building a grocery empire.

Tommy made his homecoming truly triumphant – it was talked about afterwards for months – he had brought back for his mother a barrel of flour and a rocking chair so, hiring a horse cab, he tied these to the roof and paid the driver to drive slowly through the neighbourhood while he leaned out of the window shouting greetings and waving to all. That exultant return was on Saturday, but on the following Monday he was again working as his father’s assistant in the family basement grocery shop, and the slow pace of work after a bustling New York department store deadened him. He agreed with his father that “Quality tells” – but quality told all too slowly for Tommy’s liking. He had seen marketing in full swing in America and had plans to shake the public, to amaze them, to entrance them . . . but his father had no time for smart Yankee ways in his shop. Tommy needed to open a second shop on his own account.

Tommy always carried with him a few pounds in gold sovereigns – he believed in the motivating effect of a cash down payment – and, passing the Glasgow dock area heard of a ship from Philadelphia that had been delayed by bad weather. The owners were selling off the cargo on the quay to ensure a swift turnaround and Tommy bought a consignment of hams and bacon which he managed to sell in town and make an £18 profit. This set him thinking; if he could do this with a small outlay think what he could make from investing £100. And if one shop could make £5 a week he reasoned with his parents, two could make £10 and twenty could make £100 – why not a shop in every town in Scotland? But Tommy’s father, having dragged himself up from poverty to the security of his own tiny shop was not minded to risk expansion. Not so his son who, in 1871 on his 23rd birthday and with his mother’s blessing unrolled his plan and opened up his first shop – in a classier suburb of Glasgow than his parent’s shop. Typically Tommy always with an eye to a good news story told the local papers that it was his coming of age 21st birthday.
130 years before dot com booms, bankers’ bonuses and football superstars, money had to be made slowly and by hard work. In Tommy’s case by very hard work – and advertising – and “stunts”. It took him 30 years to build his shop empire – “softly, softly, catchee monkey!” – and his business methods were always impeccable. He was never accused of any dodgy dealing, he never borrowed money, he paid cash on the nail, he lived for his work and he re-invested every penny into the business. In his autobiography (published a year after his death) he remembered “I worked late and early. I was manager, shopman, buyer, cashier and messenger boy. If I had provisions to collect off the Irish boat I went down to the quay early in the morning with a handcart; if customers wanted goods delivered I would shut up the shop temporarily and take them in person”. After closing time he would work on the accounts and think up new selling ideas. Occasionally, dog tired, he would sleep the night under his own counter.

Tommy Lipton had several secrets to success. He sold good quality goods at lower prices than his competitors – by underpaying himself and (this was to become his slogan) by cutting out the middleman. He went straight to producers and bought for cash on the spot. But perhaps his most successful “secret” was showmanship. His shop was bright and attractive and he commissioned a weekly cartoon poster for the window. A memorable one was an Irishman carrying a weeping pig over his shoulder, while explaining to an onlooker that the pig was an orphan as all the rest of the pig’s family had gone to Lipton’s and out of pity he was taking him there too! Soon Tommy acquired large two porkers that he scrubbed and tied ribbons in their tails and had them driven though Glasgow – a different route each day – under the banner “Lipton’s Orphans” and painted on their sides “I’m going to Lipton’s, the best shop in town for Irish bacon”.

Tommy Lipton’s first shop assistant William Love started work on a six month contract but before it expired he had opened a second shop and the assistant became assistant manager – and remained as Lipton’s right hand man and fixer for 40 years.
Lipton was a genius at promotion and later in his career would refer to himself – in the style of a circus performer – as The Great Lipton. In 1877 a typical Lipton stunt was having fake bank notes printed and handed out in the streets declaring “I promise to give on demand in any of my establishments HAM, BUTTER and EGGS as given elsewhere to the value of one pound, for fifteen shillings”. An ingenious discount that generated a mass of trade; however fraudulent passing of Lipton’s fake but very realistic notes resulted in several court cases and Tommy obligingly withdrew them; but they had amply achieved their purpose.
By the start of the 1880s Lipton had shops in a dozen northern cities and their citizens, egged on by the press, were constantly wondering “What Lipton’s would be doing next?” Perhaps the most talked about of hundreds of stunts was the import of the largest cheeses ever made. In 1881 amidst great publicity at every stage he ordered two three tonne cheeses to be made in America. The public was fascinated by the production of these monsters and Tommy fed the newspapers minute by minute details – 4,000 gallons of milk was required; 800 cows were milked for 6 days; 200 milkmaids were employed; world cheese experts were consulted. The huge cheeses were destined for Christmas sale in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Edinburgh cheese first travelled south from Glasgow Port by rail and was displayed for a week at the London Royal Aquarium, the Victorian equivalent of the O2 Arena, and famous for attracting crowds to concerts, plays and circus acts.

The Glasgow cheese, by now dubbed “Jumbo” after an 18ft tall celebrity elephant at London Zoo, was hauled from the dock by traction engine at maximum speed (then 4 mph with a man walking ahead with a red flag) and quickly attracted a thousand followers, eager to see what Lipton was up to now. However on reaching his flagship High Street shop it was discovered that the door was too narrow, and so was the window. Lipton, sitting astride the cheese announced that it would now be displayed at his larger Jamaica Street shop, and so the entourage again slowly proceeded across Glasgow, stopping traffic and attracting publicity throughout the day.

When Jumbo was installed Lipton worked on how to milk further publicity from his cheese. His plan was to cut and sell it on Christmas Eve and to ensure a crowd advertised that, like the traditional silver threepences in Christmas puddings, Lipton’s Jumbo would contain gold sovereigns. On Christmas Eve a mass of customers crowded round the shop, controlled by special squad of policemen. Tommy Lipton, wearing his trademark black suit and crisp white apron personally cut cheese for eager customers who immediately rummaged through their purchase. Every time the shout went up that a gold coin had been found more customers crowded in while those who had been unlucky pressed through the doors to purchase more. Within two hours every crumb of the three tonne cheese was sold.

Giant cheeses containing gold coins were to become a feature of Lipton shops at Christmas for many years after and always with a new publicity angle. In 1893 at the Chicago Fair Lipton caused a stir by purchasing the Canadian exhibit – this time a twelve tonne cheese – but on subsequent arrival in Glasgow this monster proved by its aroma to be well past its best by date. Lipton rejoiced in the publicity, and claimed on the insurance.

Twenty years of building his fleet of shops hardly changed Tommy Lipton; every month his business grew larger and his workload was undiminished. But the source of his encouragement; his beloved and devoted mother was aging and died at 80 in the autumn of 1889. Tommy was distraught at her loss and threw himself into work even harder. When in the following spring his father also died Tommy was advised to take a holiday. He complied and booked a passage to Australia. History shows however that he had other plans than to take a restful vacation – he had sent ahead an aide to sound out commercial prospects in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) where he broke his voyage.

While Lipton’s grocery shops were best known for their Irish hams, eggs, butter and cheese they naturally supplied other provisions too – sugar, jams, meat pastes, coffee – and tea. In those days tea was displayed in bulk and weighed and packed to order. Lipton purchased his tea as he did his sugar, from an importer. What he discovered in Ceylon was to change his company, his life, and certainly the history of tea. Ceylon like China and India exported tea to Great Britain but was very much the new boy on the block. Ceylon had been a coffee growing country until coffee rust devastated the crop and was just picking up speed as a tea producer. Agricultural land prices were still depressed from the coffee crash and Tommy had gone on “vacation” with £75,000 to invest…

In Part Three: Lipton turns Ceylon tea into a brand – and emerges as a socialite.

Tea Hero – Sir Thomas Lipton Part One

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Lipton Tea, in the distinctive yellow and red box, is instantly recognised in 180 countries throughout the world. Even a hundred years after his heyday Sir Thomas J Lipton is remembered for the shrewd entrepreneurial streak that made him millions, his publicity stunts, his hob-nobbing with royalty, and his many challenges for the America’s Cup. But what exactly made Tommy Lipton the man, ‘tick’, is as Churchill said of Russia’s intentions in 1939 “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.

Lipton never smoked or drank, nor ever married. He never gambled yet took enormous commercial chances. As a household name familiar enough to be caricatured as Mr Tea in a popular stage play he shaped Victorian retail history, yet he took no part in politics, science, art or literature – asked once what his politics were he replied “To open a new grocery shop every week”. Until his forties he was virtually friendless and had no hobbies, often sleeping under his own counter rather than go home, yet he was to enter society as ‘one of the most eligible bachelors in the world’ and would become a close and discreet friend of King Edward VII. Without ever learning to sail he built and unsuccessfully raced five expensive yachts against the USA. Lipton was a man who had by his own endeavour raised himself from poverty to high society and who passionately believed in the power of self-help – yet left a million pounds in his will to the poor of Glasgow. A clue to the Lipton riddle can perhaps be found in one of his many after dinner speeches: “A man may have many friends, but he will find none so steadfast, so constant, so ready to respond to his wants, so capable of pushing him ahead, as a little leather covered book with the name of his bank on the cover.” This philosophy explains almost his every action – but his early life clearly shows the influencing factors that drove and enabled Mr Tea to achieve his empire.

Thomas Lipton’s parents fled the 1847potato famine leaving County Down for the slums of Glasgow. Engels after visiting the Gorbals in the 1840s wrote “I did not believe that so large an amount of filth, crime, misery and disease existed in one spot in any civilised country.” Tommy was born in 1848 during a cholera epidemic that killed 4,000 Glaswegians including his four year old sister Frances. Little wonder that to survive one had to be tough. Young Tommy thrived on the local turf wars: fist fights and narrow escapes from the police. Once he stood up to the local bully, a butcher’s son, who had been demanding protection money from children in the form of marbles. Tommy hadn’t a chance against the well fed bully and eventually his friends pulled him, battered and bloody, away from the fight. Lipton always remembered the lesson; that though he had lost the fight he had gained far more in admiration and respect. He recalled in later life “my stock soared high among all the boys of the district.”
The Clyde was all about shipbuilding and small boys in Glasgow made paper sailed models of sailing ships. Tommy organised his gang – the Crown Street Clan – in racing their toy yachts for marbles on the flooded abandoned clay pits. Tommy’s yachts were always called Shamrock.

Tommy’s family lived a precarious life. His father like many others was thrown out of his box printing job by the import trade downturn due to the American Civil War. Facing destitution, Thomas Senior, with his wife Frances set up a tiny grocery in their tenement basement selling fresh provisions shipped from friends with a farm in Ireland. Tommy left school at 13 and helped out in the shop, every week going to the dock with his barrow to collect the ham, eggs and butter from the steamer – never thinking that his name would in his lifetime be synonymous with groceries – and thereafter with tea. Yet his marketing genius was beginning to show in his advice to his father that “Mother should sell the eggs, as her hands are smaller, so it makes the eggs look larger.”

Glasgow was a busy port as well as a ship building city. A boy growing up on the Clyde heard sailors tales about far places and, throughout his young life saw waves of desperate migrants set sail for a better life in the New World. Tommy tried his hand at several jobs – printer’s errand boy and cutter in a shirt factory – but already six feet tall and strong, chafed against being confined in a routine low paid job. Through his contacts at the dock he heard that the Burns Line was looking for a cabin boy on its Belfast to Glasgow ferry. Despite this being hard work, waiting on sea passengers’ every whim, it doubled his pay and with meals on duty gave him the travel and freedom he craved. But the seventeen year old’s time on the Irish sea came to an abrupt halt when the chief steward discovered that Tommy had let a paraffin lamp go untrimmed overnight: the tell-tale smoke stain on the white ceiling betraying that his mind was on other things – listening to the old hands talking endlessly about the Americas – so Tommy was dismissed. However, long hours and free food aboard had built up some cash and his next act after collecting his pay was to invest five pounds in a steerage ticket for the SS Caledonia bound for New York. Many such lads, with stars in their eyes, slipped quietly away from family duties to make their fortunes, but through choice or failure never made the long voyage home again. Whole initially considering this as an option Tommy’s strong ties with his family ensured his winning their support, so he went with their blessing and parting tears. Without doubt Lipton saw his adventure as a necessary step on the path to success. He would later recall “The parting was sad, but my mother, at least, had such faith in me that she believed I would soon return a rich man”

Leaving behind the wretched conditions below deck for 300 migrants in steerage on a small steamer tossed for 14 days on the choppy North Atlantic, Tommy disembarked to earn his first dollar on US soil. Unencumbered by baggage he was soon off the ship and fell in with an Irish lodging house keeper. For a week’s free keep he undertook to fill Mike McCauligan’s beds and soon, back on the dock and, promising the “the best house in town” while relieving them of 10 cents a head, he shepherded a dozen of his bewildered fellow travellers to McCauligans dubious rooms.

Much like Glasgow, in 1866 the overpopulated poor areas of New York were cess pits of filth, disease and crime; recently exacerbated by the influx of 20,000 demobilised Union Army soldiers. Lipton’s first task was to find employment but in a trading city faced with war ravaged loss of markets, teeming with returned soldiers and hopeful immigrants, the competition was severe. Despite the many attractions of New York Lipton faced the reality of his precarious position and rather than spiralling down into drink and squalor as did so many immigrants, decided to go south to Virginia, where the Civil War and abolishment of slavery had caused labour shortages on the plantations. However he found that tobacco farm hands were worked just as hard as the slaves had been but, true to form, Tommy Lipton took on extra duties and saved a little money. He might have continued there but for an accident with an axe that nearly severed his foot. Nursed back to health by his employer’s wife, Tommy decided on a change of scene and gained a job on a South Carolina rice plantation where his literacy and rudimentary book keeping skills gained him a clerk’s position. Coincidentally the rice plantation was very close to where, a century later, T.J Lipton Inc. as part of Unilever, would set up their tea research station, now owned by the Bigelow family and operated as Charleston Tea Farm – “America’s only commercial tea garden”

Back in New York Tommy was to place his foot on a significant rung of the ladder to his success: he landed a job in a Scottish department store. The owner A.T Stewart whose commercial success came from his compulsive competitive drive, rigorous staff discipline and attention to detail would inspire the young Lipton. He took well to retailing, enjoyed selling groceries to customers, and noted the influence of Stewarts’ presentation of goods and the effect of customer service – and the power of advertising. The observant Lipton’s two years’ of 12 hour days in various departments at Stewarts was today’s equivalent of an MBA. Macy’s too was thriving just a block away. Macy was a friend of circus owner PT Barnum who dreamed up many of Macy’s advertising stunts and aggressive promotions. Tommy saw and absorbed all this and, with $500 in his pocket (a large sum then) and the bushy moustache that would soon make him instantly recognisable, he returned to his parents in Glasgow determined to become a merchant showman – and millionaire

Next week Part 2: bizarre stunts, opening up a new shop every week, and venturing into tea.

Tea Heroes The Twinings Tea Dynasty: Part One

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Twinings hit the headlines this week by substituting a new fangled Earl Grey blend for the 180 year old traditional recipe. Outrage among devotees has seen the reinstatement of “Classic Earl Grey” – but what is the history behind a tea company that has been in the same family for 10 generations?
Twinings is one of the world’s iconic tea companies. Old by any standard, it was established in London by Thomas Twining in 1706 and has remained in the same family ever since. Today, Stephen Twining is the tenth generation family member to work for the still expanding company, with its tea selling now into more than 100 countries.

In a few hundred words we can barely scratch the surface of the history of a tea company that has traded for three centuries, but in Part 1. of the saga we can at least record how Twinings Tea began business and follow its progress during the reigns of Charles II to George IV.

Back in the 17th Century the Twinings family were weavers and cloth fullers in Painswick near Gloucester, though they were named through having family connections with the tiny ancient Gloucestershire village of Twyning – near Tewkesbury, so called from Saxon times because it was ‘tween the Rivers Avon and Severn. Around 1680 a bad recession in the wool industry caused Thomas Twining’s father Daniel to uproot his family to try their luck in the London weaving trade. Young Thomas was born in 1675 and was apprenticed to his brother, a London lace maker, at the unusually advanced age of 19, probably to qualify him for becoming a Freeman for which a Guild trade training was necessary. Through hard work he progressed, and by the age of 25 was working with a wealthy East India Company merchant Thomas D’Aeth, and through his patronage was elected as a Freeman of the City of London in 1701. The East India Company imported many tropical commodities including spices, coffee and tea, about which Thomas learned sufficient to start his own tea and coffee business in 1706, during the reign of Queen Anne, by purchasing ‘Tom’s Coffee House’. This was situated in Devereux Court at the back of 216 Strand, strategically placed between the City trade and the Westminster aristocracy who had deserted the City after the Great Fire. The very same premises in the Strand remain today as Twinings’ London Tea Shop and Twinings’ museum.

There were of course many tea and coffee shops in London – by 1683 over 2,000 coffee houses were recorded, but Thomas Twining’s marketing niche was fine tea – or speciality tea as we would call it today. As his reputation for offering only the finest teas grew he attracted royalty and gentry as customers – not all of them good payers however – Hogarth the artist was often short of money because print sellers avoided paying him royalties and on one famous occasion could not meet his mounting tea bill at Twinings. Instead, he bargained with Thomas Twining who agreed to let Hogarth paint his portrait in lieu of payment. That portrait still hangs in the Twinings museum. Twining’s earliest sales ledgers are from 1715-20 and show tea prices during this period of 14 to 20 shillings per pound for Green Hyson, and 36 shillings for Finest Hyson. Coffee at 4 shillings per pound and drinking chocolate were much cheaper, the most popular chocolate being 2 shillings and 9 pence per pound, with brandy far cheaper than a pound of tea at a very reasonable 12 shillings per gallon!

When Thomas Twining died in 1741 his son Daniel took the reins and commenced an export business to America where ironically the Governor of Boston was one of his customers. Daniel Twining’s wife Mary succeeded him in 1762 and ran the business with considerable skill until her son Richard took over in 1771.

Young Richard Twining exerted a strong influence on both the company and the trade. The latter half of the 18th Century saw high taxation of tea and a great deal of smuggling – an activity that Twinings proudly boasted they never got involved in. Richard Twining became the Chairman of London Tea Dealers and argued that high taxes were the cause of tea smuggling. Prime Minister William Pitt was sufficiently persuaded by the trade’s argument that the government would earn more revenue if taxation was reduced, and the tea tax was slashed from around 80% to 12% by the Commutation Act of 1785. Tea prices to the consumer fell by nearly 3 shillings per pound overnight and tea consumption leapt – this increased Twinings’ sales and reputation as well. For the record, Pitt balanced the loss of tea tax by introducing the window tax – this was much more difficult to avoid. However, by 1819, to raise cash for fighting Napoleon, the tax on tea was back at 100% of the sale price.

In 1787 the Twinings name became what we would now call a brand. Thomas Twining’s grandson Richard built a handsome doorway to 216 Strand incorporating his grandfather’s ‘Golden Lyon’ symbol with two Chinese figures. The doorway survives today, surmounted by the Twinings name carved in the stonework in a distinctive font and without an apostrophe. Richard Twining had invented the concept of the logo – and one which still appears on the company’s tea packets today – exactly the same spelling and typeface has been used by the company ever since. In fact it is the world’s oldest logo in continuous use.


Richard Twining and his wife Mary were blessed with five sons and three daughters. Three of his sons joined Richard and his brother John as partners in the business – Richard Twining Jnr. in 1796, George Twining in 1805 and John Aldred Twining in 1811. During this period Richard Snr. was twice elected to the prestigious position of a director of the Honorable East India Company (1810-14, and 1815-17). This was despite his always taking a firm stance against the East India Company’s monopoly position as tea importer. A notable example of this was in December 1784 when at the East India Company’s quarterly tea sale some tea dealers objected to several lots of tea that had been damaged by sea water, and asked that these musty chests be withdrawn from sale. The Company withdrew 23 chests while the dealers had asked for 1,300 to be removed. Richard as Chairman of the Tea Dealers advised them to refrain from bidding for any tea. The Company retaliated by bringing in a silk broker to bid for the tainted tea and to sell it to the public by undercutting tea dealers’ prices. By the following April Richard had circulated a letter to his customers reassuring them that while “the East India Company have persisted in offering to Sale a considerable quantity of Tea that is musty and mouldy” that Twinings had “not purchas’d a single Chest of tea of any of the above mentioned descriptions” and that his customers “may depend upon every possible attention on our part, to supply them with the best Teas, at the most reasonable prices”.

Richard Senior retired in 1818, and by 1825 under his sons’ control the Twinings tea business had diversified into banking. In previous generations the Twinings business had banked with Hoare’s Bank in Fleet Street but now was sufficiently secure financially to establish their own Banking House, also in Devereux Court behind 216 Strand. This innovation became so popular that by 1835 the ‘Observer’ recorded that they had “erected a more commodious banking house in the Strand close to their celebrated warehouse”. There was a connecting door from bank to shop and cashiers were often asked to change cheques partly in cash or notes and with the balance in tea. Service indeed!

In Part 1. we have followed the Twining family and tea business through nine Reigns – in Part 2. we shall follow Twinings’ remarkable development through a further six Reigns.