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Arthur Guinness

1725–1803

 

Ireland was once seen as a purely agricultural country.  Lacking natural resources other than its green fields, industry seemed a hopeless dream.  The figure who above all helped Ireland begin the transition from field to factory was the first Arthur Guinness, the founder of the now world-famous Guinness brewery in Dublin.  It is one of only a handful of businesses that have survived in Ireland from the eighteenth century, and as such it has a historic and influential place in Irish life.

      Arthur Guinness was a Protestant born in Leixlip, though both his ancestry and his paternity are mysterious.  Though the family later claimed to be descended from an ancient Ulster clan called Magennis, this was not so.  More likely, they were the descendants of a Cromwellian soldier from Cornwall called Gennys.  It has also been suggested that Arthur Guinness was the natural son of Dr Arthur Price, Anglican bishop of Cashel, who lived in Celbridge, employed his 'father' and left Arthur a legacy of £100, with which he was able to start his first small brewery.

      In September 1756 he leased a brewery in Leixlip, and this was the first stage of his career.  When he was thirty-four he moved into Dublin to continue his business there.  Such were the regulations against Irish exports at the time that at first he thought he might move to Wales to work, but in the end he settled in Dublin.

      In 1759 he bought a brewery at St James' Gate from another businessman.  At first he brewed beer and ale, but in 1768 he began to make porter, a dark beer made with roasted barley, which was named after the porters in the London markets who had begun to bring the dark brew into favour.  For a long time, until the middle of the twentieth century, porter was the mainstay of the business.  But stout, a heavier, even darker roasted beer, came to replace it.

      By 1799 the dark beers were the sole product of the firm.  At this time he began to develop an export trade to England and elsewhere.  Guinness was a leading figure among Dublin brewers, and was their member on the city council.  A religious man, he founded the first Protestant Sunday school in Ireland in 1786.  When the Orange Order was founded in Dublin, the toast was drunk with Arthur Guinness' Protestant beer.

      In 1803 Arthur died.  The business passed to his son Arthur, and when he died it passed to Benjamin Lee Guinness (who was made a baronet in 1867).  When he died he was followed by Sir Arthur Guinness, late Lord Ardilaun.  His son Edward Guinness, later earl of Iveagh, broke the immediate connection with Dublin, as he lived largely in London after 1900.

      His son, the second Lord Iveagh, presided not only over the growth of the business in Ireland and Britain, but also in the establishment of breweries in Nigeria and Malaysia.  His son, Viscount Elveden, was killed in the Second World War, and the business passed to his son.  It was in this generation that Guinness became a public company and control passed from the family.

      Arthur Guinness and his descendants are among the more remarkable Irish families of the last three centuries.  The extent of their success in business surpassed all others at home.  They were also generous to Dublin, to Ireland, and to charities elsewhere.  Their history was a mixed one, however, heavily marked with personal tragedies, so much so that many thought some kind of curse hung over the more recent generations, with deaths by suicide, drugs, and driving accidents.  Indeed, the social life of the Guinnesses and the scandals attached to them have kept countless journalists and several authors busy over the years.  (Books by the novelist Frederic Mullally and Michael Guinness give details not only of the main branches of the family, but also the multifarious side shoots, which are as full of human interest as the main ones.  They include respectable bankers, reckless jockeys, and dedicated missionaries.)

      Yet, in their overall impact on the Irish economy, they have been, until recently, one of Ireland's most successful companies.  Naturally, this meant personal wealth for the family, but it also meant prosperity for Dublin.

      The economic value of the firm was and is immense.  The materials were supplied by Irish farmers; the product employed thousands of Dubliners to make it, and even more thousands of people to sell and drink it.  Though now drunk and made around the world, Guinness stout is so closely associated with the image of Ireland as to be safely called its national drink.  It has become de rigueur for visiting dignitaries, whether American presidents or British prime ministers, to be photographed drinking the stuff - whether they like it or not.