On October 2nd 1931 Sir Thomas Lipton, grocer, tea merchant died.
In 1871 aged 23 Thomas Lipton used his small savings to open his own shop, in Glasgow, by the 1880s the business had grown to more than 200 shops.
By 1888 his empire had grown to 300 stores; he entered the tea trade and opened his tea-tasting office. He started by-passing traditional trading and wholesale distribution channels in order to sell teas at unprecedentedly low prices to the working class. In order to provide his shops with goods, Lipton bought plantations and in doing so - amongst other things - he established the famous tea brand, still going strong today.
Yeah, we all know about tea and the shops but he was also a keen sailor, he holds a place in the America's Cup heart as being the most reliably consistent and deftly congenial loser.
Five times he challenged for the Cup, five times being defeated. Despite his best laid plans and momentous effort to bring the Cup back home with him, the tea magnate simply didn't cut the mustard. Nonetheless, he did have a penchant for beautiful boats. His last challenger, Shamrock V, never really stood a chance of winning the race but it did win marks for pure beauty.
His well-publicised efforts to win the cup, which earned him a specially designed cup for him, and also made his tea famous in the United States., he has often been described as 'the world's best loser'
Back in Scotland I love this story about Lipton, in December 1881, a steamer docked in Glasgow, carrying an extraordinary cargo from America. The world's largest cheese.
The cheese, which was two feet thick and with a circumference of 14ft, was watched by hundreds of onlookers as it was transported by traction engine to the Lipton's store in the High Street - where it was found to be too large to fit through the door.
Undeterred, the parade continued to the Lipton's Jamaica Street store (which fortunately boasted a wider doorway) where the cheese was manhandled into the shop window.
Nicknamed Jumbo, for a fortnight crowds marvelled at the spectacle, said to be the product of milk from 800 cows and the labour of 200 dairymaids.
As a publicity stunt it was already a success - but Tommy Lipton had another surprise up his sleeve.
In a ruse worthy of Willy Wonka, he turned the giant cheese into a golden wonder by hiding a large quantity of gold sovereigns inside it.
A few days before Christmas, dressed in a white suit, Lipton began cutting up the monster.
Policemen struggled to maintain order while his assistants wrapped the slices and handed them out to the legion of customers who had gathered in the hope of a lucky purchase.
It was a piece of theatre from a man who was riding a wave of remarkable success, whose grocery stores were spreading far and wide - and a world apart from his childhood in the poverty stricken Gorbals area of Glasgow.
In his will he bequeathed the majority of his fortune to his native city of Glasgow, including his yachting trophies, which are now on display at the Kelvingrove, he also left his collection of photographs, newspaper cuttings and memorabilia to the Mitchell Library where it is still housed, it has all, as far as I know been digitalised, there is over 200 pages to see online here http://www.mitchelllibrary.org/lipton/index.php…
Pics include Lipton with Harry Laude and a statue of the man seated at Lipton's Seat, a high observation point in the tea plantation hills, Dambethenna, Haputale mountains, Sri Lanka
