Sir Thomas Lipton: Son of Ulster-Scots parents made his fortune through tea

Thomas Lipton Jnr was born in Glasgow on May 10 1848. Some accounts claim he was born in 1850 but the 1851 census firmly points to the earlier date being correct.

His parents, Thomas Lipton Snr and Frances Lipton (née Johnstone), whose Ulster-Scots ancestors had for many generations farmed in south Fermanagh, were married in St Mark’s Parish Church in Aghadrumsee, Co Fermanagh.

The first outbreak of potato blight in Ulster was reported in Fermanagh on August 28 1845. Between 1841 and 1851 the population of the county fell by over a quarter.

The Liptons moved to Scotland to escape the Famine’s dire consequences in the late 1840s and by 1847 they had settled in Glasgow. Thomas Snr worked as a labourer and as a printer in the 1840s and 1850s before opening a shop in the Gorbals, selling ham, butter and eggs.

On leaving school, one of Thomas Jnr’s first jobs was as a cabin boy on a steamer running between Glasgow and Belfast. He already had developed a passion for ships and the sea.

Other members of the crew fired his imagination with their stories of the United States, so much so that in in 1865, Thomas used his savings to pay for a passage to America. He spent the next five years there, travelling across the country.

During this time he had a variety of jobs, including working at a tobacco plantation in Virginia; as an accountant at a rice plantation in South Carolina; as a door-to-door salesman in New Orleans; as a farmhand in New Jersey; and, finally, as a grocery assistant in New York which transformed his life.

Having learned American marketing techniques, he returned to Glasgow to assist his parents in their shop before opening a shop of his own in the Anderston area of the city.

Goods were stacked in the American fashion, not for the convenience of the proprietors, but with the purpose of catching the customers' attention.

He lived, worked and breathed his shop. His days were 18 hours long and often he would sleep on a makeshift bed under the counter.

His efforts were rewarded with success, encouraging Lipton to establish a chain of shops, initially in Glasgow and then across Scotland, before expanding to cover the whole of the UK over the next 10 years.

During this period demand for tea was increasing among the middle classes and by 1888 Lipton had 300 stores. To bypass the traditional lines of supply for tea, Lipton purchased tea plantations in Ceylon.

The Lipton Tea brand he established offered good quality at low prices and proved hugely popular, expanding the market for tea to all parts of society and establishing it as Britain's national drink of choice. His slogan was ‘straight from the plantation to the kettle’.

Although Lipton did not invent teabags, he was the first to produce and sell them.

He also acquired his own packinghouse for hogs in Chicago and fruit farms, jam factories, bakeries, and bacon-curing establishments in England to supply his shops. In 1898 his business was organised into Lipton Ltd.

Lipton attracted favourable attention from the royal family when in 1897 he donated £25,000 to feed 400,000 poor people to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

He became close friends with the Prince of Wales (who succeeded his mother as Edward VII in 1901), with whom he shared a passion for yacht racing. His first bid to win the America’s Cup was in 1899.

Between 1899 and 1930 Lipton challenged the American holders of the America's Cup through the Royal Ulster Yacht Club five times with yachts he named Shamrock through Shamrock V.

He never won the cup but he was awarded a special trophy as ‘the best of all losers’. A canny businessman, his reputation as a good-natured and gracious loser made his name well known across the United States, and his tea very popular there.

Lipton was alert to the value of sports sponsorship for advertising.

Before the first football World Cup was held in 1930, Thomas Lipton donated the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy and The Lipton Challenge Cup in Italy.

In 1914 he presented the silver Sir Thomas Lipton Cup as a means of promoting the sport of rowing in the central portions of Canada and the United States. Since then the rowing clubs of the North West International Rowing Association (NWIRA) have fiercely battled each year for the honour of having their names engraved upon the Lipton Cup.

He also donated the Copa Lipton football trophy which was contested between Argentina and Uruguay from 1905 to 1992.

Although knighted in 1901 and made a baronet in 1902, this incredibly successful man was still a victim of late-Victorian and Edwardian snobbery.

He launched his bids to win the America’s Cup through the auspices of the Royal Ulster Yacht Club because his application for membership of the Royal Yacht Squadron, England’s most exclusive yacht club, was declined because he was a ‘merchant’, such was their prejudice against ‘trade’. He was only accepted as a member as late as 1929.

Kaiser Wilhelm II, another keen sailor, provides another example of this sort of snobbery when he sneered at Edward VII for ‘sailing with his grocer’.

During the Great War Lipton helped organisations of medical volunteers by placing his yachts at the disposal of the Red Cross, the Scottish Women's Hospitals Committee of Dr Elsie Inglis, the Serbian Supporting Fund and others, for the transport of medical volunteers (doctors and nurses) and medical supplies.

Lipton died at his home in north London on October 2 1931. He left most of his wealth to his native city. His yachting trophies are now on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Sir Thomas Lipton was buried alongside his parents in Glasgow's Southern Necropolis.