Sir Thomas Lipton

October 8, 2018 by Alexander Meldrum

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Sir Thomas Johnstone Lipton, Sir Thomas Johnstone Lipton, 1st Baronet, KCVO (10 May 1848 – 2 October 1931), was a Scotsman of Irish parentage who was a self-made man, merchant, and yachtsman. He engaged in extensive advertising for his chain of grocery stores and his brand of Lipton teas. He boasted that his secret for success was selling the best goods at the cheapest prices, harnessing the power of advertising, and always being optimistic. He was the most persistent challenger in the history of the America's Cup. Parentage and childhood Lipton was born into an Irish family in a tenement in Crown Street in the Gorbals, Glasgow, on 10 May 1848. His Ulster-Scots parents. Thomas Lipton senior and Frances Lipton (née Johnstone), were from the townland of either Shannock Green or Shankillk (Tonitybog), both near Roslea, in the south-east corner of County Fermanagh in Ulster, not far from Clones in County Monaghan. His parents were married in St. Mark's Church of Ireland Church in Aghadrumsee, near Roslea. The Liptons had been smallholders in County Fermanagh for generations but, by the late 1840s, Thomas Lipton's parents had been forced to leave Ireland due to the potato famine of 1845. Moving to Scotland in search of a better living for their young family, the Liptons had settled in Glasgow by 1847. Lipton's father would hold a number of occupations throughout the 1840s and 1850s, including working as a labourer and as a printer. Although Sir Thomas Lipton would later state that he was born at his family's home in Crown Street in the Gorbals in 1850, there is no record of this in the parish register for that period. In the 1851 census, however, the family were recorded as living in the north of Glasgow, with young Thomas being listed as being aged 3 years old. It would appear that he was therefore born in 1848. Thomas's siblings, three brothers and one sister, all died in infancy, but Thomas, despite being the youngest, survived. 'Tommy' Lipton was educated at St. Andrew's Parish School close to Glasgow Green between 1853 and 1863. By the early 1860s his parents were the proprietors of a shop at 11 Crown Street in the Gorbals where they sold ham, butter, and eggs. It was with the aim of supplementing his parents' limited income that Thomas Lipton left school at the age of thirteen and found employment as a printer's errand boy, and later as a shirtcutter. He also enrolled at a night school, the Gorbals Youth's School, during this period. Go to Wikipedia for full History.

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