But beatings and squalid conditions are the daily reality for many of the African workers. This 'Sunlight Self-Washer Soap' was widely advertised using billboards and posters located at public places throughout northern England. Having persuaded his father and younger brother that it would be a beneficial strategy, William raised sufficient capital for the takeover to take place and in August 1885 Lever and Company, wholesale grocers, added soap manufacturing to its range of activities. NO TRUST PLEASE: WERE BRITISH sewing room (and other spaces) is located. However, the gardens were opened to the In 1911, he travels to the Belgian Congo to establish palm oil plantations. Combining his family name with that of his wifes is at his insistence and is against all precedents. Having spent the later years of his life in London, aged 74, he ends his days there. The result was an accord to put in motion changes that would effectively cartelise the industry by stifling competition and controlling prices to the consumer. His remuneration was "a shilling a week all found" which meant that his board and lodgings were provided, making the financial aspect of the contract more-or-less pocket money. [11] Malcolm Hardman writes that "Lever observed and respected the intelligence and integrity of the Congolese he was allowed to meet". the Arts and Crafts movement, it was destroyed in an arson attack in 1913, led Including Calendar and Kindred Matter, British Colonies and Dependencies, Geography, Literature, Science, Fine Arts, Commerce, Architecture, Agriculture, Army and Navy, Sports and Pastimes, Cycling Maps, The Household, Medical, Port Sunlight, etc. But this didn't extend to his African workers, with fatal consequences. Leverhulme refused to budge, believing that the break-up of his farms would lead to seriously inefficient, probably unsustainable, and ultimately abandoned smallholdings as crofters moved away in search of better incomes. Due to the merger of the two firms, many staff employed at the Warrington factory were moved to London, including senior managers. In reality, workers' social lives were policed from the head office, and some of Lever's employees clearly resented his paternalism. The Trade Mark Registration Act 1875 protected trade names from counterfeiters and imitators, and this opened the way for brand name recognition and consumer loyalty. The expanded activity necessitated a search for new suppliers, taking William to Ireland, France and other parts of Europe, appointing local agents to safeguard the firm's interests. Birthdate: March 25, 1888. [64] He is buried in the churchyard of Christ Church in Port Sunlight in what was then Cheshire, now Merseyside. tower that bears a similarity to the tower set within the courtyard of Glessner Father of William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme Such conditions inevitably led to a reassessment of the position and, following a meeting of all firms involved in the alliance, but without the wholehearted approval of Lever himself, a decision was made to bring the organization to an end. he began terracing 45 acres of the site for elaborate gardens and construction By then, serious financial difficulties were besetting Lever Brothers concerning the disastrous Niger Company, making his decision about the Western Isles project relatively straightforward. In 1911, Lever signed a treaty with the Belgian Government to gain access to the palm oil of the Belgian Congo, and opened his operation under a subsidiary of the Lever consortium named Huileries du Congo Belge (HCB) after buying a concession for 750,000 hectares (1,900,000 acres) of forest for palm oil production. Thornton Manor was restructured and the gardens greatly extended. He was the eldest son and the seventh child born to James Lever (18091897), a grocer, and Eliza Hesketh, daughter of a cotton mill manager. Father of Philip William Bryce Lever, 3rd Viscount Leverhulme and Hon Rosemary Gertrude Alexandra Whetherly. Rivington Gardens was one of a series of three major private gardens produced by Thomas Hayton Mawson (1861-1933) in collaboration with the industrialist and philanthropist William Hesketh Lever, Lord Leverhulme (1851-1925), the others being The Hill, Hampstead, London, begun in 1906, and Thornton Manor, Thornton Hough, Merseyside, also begun . Lord Leverhulme, also known as the Soap King, was born on September 19, 1851 and left a legacy that lives on to this day. Boltons largest park is created on land donated by him in 1914. The same year and somewhat more successfully, William stands for and is elected as a Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party in the Wirral constituency. The Small Landholders (Scotland) Act 1911 had empowered the Scottish Secretary, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, to acquire certain farms in the Highlands and Islands by compulsory purchase and to have them divided up to provide more crofts. His company, Lever Brothers, merged with Margarine Unie that year. By October, several newspapers were publishing articles about the Soap Trust and some began to represent Lever as the leading character in an infamous conspiracy. Although Stornoway had a good harbour, there were many disadvantages to Lord Leverhulme's plans for the port. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of theTerms and Conditions. . They had three children: Elizabeth Ruth Lever was born 9 April 1913 and died 16 April 1972; his son Philip William Bryce Lever, 3rd Viscount Leverhulme, was born 1 July 1915 and died 4 July 2000; his second daughter Rosemary Gertrude Alexandra Lever was born 23 April 1919 and died 16 October 1994. The title 'Lord Leverhulme' was conferred upon Lever in 1917 ('Hulme' being the maiden name of his wife, Elizabeth, who had died four years previously). footpaths. [60][61][62] The property contained a number of valuable paintings and the attack resulted in damage costing 20,000.[63]. At a time when urban poverty and overcrowded slums are endemic, William has Jacobean-Flemish gables, exposed timbering and leaded windows in country cottages for his workers. A valuable bust, by Sir Charles Wheeler, of William, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme, was stolen in 2009 from the plinth near his parents' tombs in Christ Church, Port Sunlight. Smith reportedly observed "There is no answer to this action for libel and the damages must be enormous." The three boating lake. By 1930, its employing 250,000 people and in terms of market value, is the largest company in Britain. [21], The success of the Sunlight brand, especially after Lever assumed full responsibility for the product's quality, was exceptional; so much so that by the end of 1887 it had become impossible to squeeze any more capacity from the Warrington plant. Castle. employees, along the lines of the Town of Pullman in Chicago. [52] And in late 1919 he bought the estate of South Harris for 36,000; both in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. engraved with the initials of William Hesketh and Elizabeth Ellen Lever, which From age six to age nine William attended a small private school run by the Misses Aspinwall in a house on Wood Street, not far from the Lever family home. Lever requests 750,000 hectares from the Belgium rulers. At this time, his flair for advertising and branding began to emerge as he successfully differentiated the Lever brand from generic commodities. The gardens included numerous terraces and a He was an advocate for expansion of the British Empire, particularly in Africa and Asia, which supplied palm oil, a key ingredient in Lever's product line. Comrades of Potomac Post. Having failed to either extend the site or find more space in the areas, Lever eventually decided to move the whole manufacturing facility to an 11 acres (4.5ha) green-field site near Birkenhead. However well intentioned, the power it afforded the company, even though it was rarely exercised, was viewed as an attack on workers' liberty and human rights. His father, however, had other, somewhat less erudite plans for his eldest son and thus, not long after his fifteenth birthday, he started work in the family grocery business. hopes of raising awareness for this little known treasure. Leverhulme's participation in this system of formalised labour has been documented by Jules Marchal, who contends that, "Leverhulme set up a private kingdom reliant on the horrific Belgian system of forced labour, a program that reduced the population of Congo by half and accounted for more deaths than the Nazi holocaust". Next, hell buy the village. William makes many social activities compulsory in his village. [65] In 1920 he donated 50 to the Selborne Society campaign to purchase land in west London, as the "Gilbert White Memorial" - it is now known as the Perivale Wood Local Nature Reserve. They invested in and successfully promoted a new soap-making process invented by chemist William Hough Watson. He was succeeded by his son, William Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme. In 1925 Leverhulme died (in the house) and the whole estate was bought by Lord Inverforth (1865-1955 . [57][58], In 1904, Lever purchased The Hill, an Edwardian mansion at Hampstead. The visit by Jane Heber-Percy and Susan Pakenham, daughters of the third and last Lord Leverhulme, was the highlight of a week-long festival in Port Sunlight. gardens and the recent efforts to preserve their faded grandeur and mystery ]]> 1851 in the town of Bolton, Lancashire. TWO surviving members of the Leverhulme family last night attended a founder's day service to mark the birth of their great-grandfather 150 years ago. tower. Lord Leverhulme was a major benefactor to his native town, Bolton, where he was made a Freeman of the County Borough in 1902. William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme, DL (25 March 1888 27 May 1949), was the son of William Hesketh Lever and Elizabeth Ellen, daughter of Crompton Hulme of Bolton. "The Forest and the Tree: Ben and Jerry's, Unilever, and Global Capitalist Apartheid" researching the dovecotes at Glessner House recently, we stumbled across an Tower (commonly known as the Pigeon Tower), completed in 1910. In 1915 Lever acquired a painting entitled Suspense by Charles Burton Barber (an artist who came to resent 'manufacturing pictures for the market'). Also Specially Written Story by Sir Walter Besant. He set in motion a campaign of investigative journalism, some of which seems to have verged upon persecution; the clear objective of which was to smash Lever's soap combine. Taken 8 August 2006.Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3848481, William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme, William Hesketh 1st Viscount Leverhulme Lever, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lever,_1st_Viscount_Leverhulme. He builds on marshes and creates Port Sunlight. That same year he was elected to Parliament, The garden of his former London residence 'The Hill' in Hampstead, designed by Thomas Mawson, is open to the public[67] and has been renamed Inverforth House. The largely Gaelic-speaking crofters, on the other hand, were mainly subsistence farmers and many of them were squatters; and it was this section of the population that Leverhulme hoped to develop and recruit. image of a dovecote tower in the Rivington Terraced Gardens, located in Leverhulme Family History Leverhulme Name Meaning Historically, surnames evolved as a way to sort people into groups - by occupation, place of origin, clan affiliation, patronage, parentage, adoption, and even physical characteristics (like red hair). Would-be house buyers can buy a home for 170,000 in a tree-lined village - but they would have to agree to a number of strict rules before completing the deal. United Reformed Church of St Andrew and St George, Bolton, Philip William Bryce Lever, 3rd Viscount Leverhulme, "Lord Leverhulme (William Hesketh Lever)", "Priceless bust of Lever stolen from memorial; Bronze sculpture may be melted down for scrap", Christ Church, Port Sunlight: Photograph of Leverhulme memorial, The United Reformed Church of St Andrew and St George, Its Origin and History, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Lever,_2nd_Viscount_Leverhulme&oldid=1088215827, Viscounts in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 2nd Baron Leverhulme, of Bolton-le-Moors, co. Lancaster, 7 May 1925, Honorary degree of Doctor of Law (LL.D.) William is 26 degrees from Lance Reddick, 30 degrees from Bruno Cremer, 26 degrees from Angie Dickinson, 22 degrees from Don Knotts, 26 degrees from Jimmy Little, 30 degrees from Helen Mirren, 34 degrees from Pat Morita, 25 degrees from Leslie Nielsen, 22 degrees from Kyra Sedgwick, 25 degrees from Tom Selleck, 26 degrees from Efrem Zimbalist and 22 degrees from David Draper on our single family tree. Genealogy for Margaret Ann Lever (Moon) (1916 - 1973) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. [49] Sir William Lever, Baronet, as he had become in December 1911, firmly believed that paid labour alongside the schools, hospitals and rations his company promised to provide would attract workers. From 1918 on, he spends around a million pounds in an attempt to transform the Isle of Lewis, an island off the west coast of Scotland, but local opposition slowly sinks his vision. In 1899, he bought Hall i' th' Wood, one time home of Samuel Crompton, and restored it as a museum for the town. Unlike the robust William, James will suffer from ill health throughout his short life. It was renamed Inverforth House in 1925 after his death. Life in Port Sunlight included intrusive rules and implied mandatory participation in activities. By then, the Lever family had moved from Wood Street to a larger house adjacent to the grocery business. House. They were, however, extremely reluctant to abandon old ways and most of them continued to espouse the crofting way of life. The description of the Liverpool castle site struck him as being similar to the promontory of Coblowe within his estate. By November 1906, Lever sales had fallen by sixty percent compared with the previous year and Lever Brothers shares had lost around twenty-five percent of their value; other members of the Combine experienced similarly devastating declines. [66], Leverhulme endowed a school of tropical medicine at Liverpool University, gave Lancaster House in London to the British nation and endowed the Leverhulme Trust set up to provide funding for education and research, the trust in 2017 became benefactor to Rivington and Blackrod High School and Harper Green School, both becoming Leverhulme Church of England Academies in Bolton. [citation needed], The 2nd Viscount Leverhulme's parents married at the United Reformed Church of St Andrew and St George in Bolton, on 17 April 1874. Towards the end of the war, in the summer of 1918, the Scottish Office first proposed to Leverhulme that under the Small Landholders Act, the Board of Agriculture should take possession of certain of his farms and create something fewer than a hundred and fifty crofts. Lever's legal team were in no doubt of the outcome; as F.E. http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/heritage_soap_boiler_social_reformer_ http://www.stmarksbolton.webspace.virginmedia.com/nleverst.htm, http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/lord-leverhulme, Birth of William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, Birth of William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme, Death of William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme. The Lever family were Congregationalists and James Lever, a teetotaller and a non-smoker, applied its principles in his business life as well as in his personal life. Lancashire, England. Thus, William's circle of friends tended to comprise children of similar backgrounds and beliefs. Perhaps Port Sunlight comes nearest to it in social work". Please enable JavaScript in your browser's settings to use this part of Geni. 3591. pool, a great lawn, a Japanese lake and pagoda, Italian-style gardens, an Lever had been justice of the peace for Cheshire, he was also High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1917. The chancel walls and the organ gallery were lined with carved Austrian oak panelling. If so, login to add it. In 1911 and 1914 he acquired two neighbouring properties to expand his garden. The crofters were poor, but they were used to an independent life style that was both long established and deeply ingrained in their psyche. William Lever built Britains largest company and in so doing, made the first modern multinational. See more. The son of a grocer and one of ten children, he joined his father's business as an apprentice at the age of fifteen. Nevertheless, retrenchments were set in motion, including the cancellation of several substantial press advertising campaigns. Ex-husband of Marion Beatrice Long. SPIRIT OF SOAP The Petition to form Mersey Lodge was signed by the Master and Wardens of the Royal Alfred Lodge on 8 September 1933. folly known as Rivington Castle, which was a scale replica of Liverpool and the property was put up for sale. He was also impatient with politicians' machinations and the laborious indolence of the political system that persisted with the "futile land reform" instead of adopting what he considered the most sensible course of action; to forget about new crofts and allow him, in the interests of expediency, to behave like the 'monarch' of the Western Isles. When the railway lines around the Congo River rapids were rebuilt between 1923 and 1932 the regime mobilised 68,000 forced labourers of which 7,700 died". Terraced Gardens begins with Lord Leverhulme, born William Hesketh Lever in He donated the land for Bolton's largest park, Leverhulme Park, in 1914. Thus, instead of selling soap by weight, he had it cut into small, manageable tablets which were individually wrapped. Heber-Percy was born in 1944, to Daphne Parker Bowles and the army officer Brigadier Algernon George William Heber-Percy (1904-1961), who remodelled a large part of the gardens at the Heber-Percy family's . Lever was responsible for the formation of Bolton School after re-endowing Bolton Grammar School and Bolton High School for Girls in 1913. His newly invented soap uses a colonial raw product, palm oil, and glycerine rather than tallow. Suffragette Confesses to Deeds of Violence, Says She Fired Sir W. Lever's Bungalow", "The Hill Hampstead at the Thomas Mawson Archive website", "Heritage: Soap-boiler, social reformer, MP and tribal chieftain the life of William Lever", "Hubris and colonial capitalism in a "model" company town. Williams brother, James Darcy Lever, joins the family three years later. local brewery owner. Leverhulme died in May 1925. (The company survives today under the name Unilever). //-->