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William Hesketh Lever Leverhulme

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"WILLIAM HESKETH LEVER LEVERHULME, 1ST Baron (1851-), British soap manufacturer, was born at Bolton, Lancs., Sept. 19 1851, and educated at the Bolton church institute. In 1867 he entered his father's grocery business at Bolton. In 1874 he devised a tablet of " Lever's Pure Honey Soap," which, on the passing of the Trademark Act in 1875, enabled him to register his name as a soap manufacturer. But it was not until 1886 that he and his brother D'Arcy Lever started soap manufacture in earnest at Warrington as Lever Brothers. Their immediate success, and the popularity of their " Sunlight " brands, led to rapid extension, and their works, christened Port Sunlight, became models of their kind. Schools, clubs, libraries, rest-rooms, a hospital and many other institutions for the benefit of the workpeople were included, and a system of copartnership was inaugurated in 1909 with successful results. The brothers also established works at Mannheim in Germany, as well as businesses in France; Switzerland; Sydney, N.S.W.; Boston, Mass.; Toronto; Japan, and elsewhere. In the Belgian Congo they acquired vast forests for their supply of palm-oil, and in 1911 they established there the settlement of Leverville. In 1900 Mr. Lever unsuccessfully contested the Wirral division of Cheshire as a Liberal, and in 1906 was elected, retaining his seat till 1910. In 1911 he was made a baronet, and in 1017 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Leverhulme. In 1912 he bought Stafford House, the London home of the Dukes of Sutherland, and presented it to the nation as a home for the London museum, and in 1918 he bought the island of Lewis in the Hebrides, Scotland, as a centre for a reorganized fishing industry.

See Mrs. Stuart Menzies, Modern Men of Mark (1920); H. M. Macrosty, The Trust Movement in British Industry (1907).