Vestey, William, first Baron Vestey (1859-1940)

Vestey, William, first Baron Vestey (1859-1940), industrialist and food importer, and his business partner, Sir Edmund Hoyle Vestey, first baronet (1866-1953), were both born in Liverpool. William was the eldest (b. 21 January 1859), and Edmund was the fifth child (b. 3 February 1866), of Samuel Vestey (1832-1902), a Yorshirerman and provision merchant, and Hannah née Utley (d. 1884). Samuel ran a business in Liverpool, buying and selling mainly provisions imported from North America. Both William and Edmund after an education at the Liverpool Institute, gained experience in the family business.

At the age of seventeen William was sent to the USA to buy and ship home goods for his father. He established a canning factory in Chicago, and purchased the cheaper cuts of meat to make corned beet which he shipped to Liverpool. This venture was successful, and the management of the canary was given to Edmund, who had joined the firm in 1883. In 1890 William traveled to Argentina, and decided to exploit the uses of refrigeration to preserve foodstuffs. He began by shipping frozen partridges and later mutton and beef, from Argentina to Britain. William was joined in this enterprise by Edmund, and in 1890 they established the first cold store in Liverpool which as the Union Cold Storage Company was to become one of the world’s largest cold storage operations. They soon diversified into other products, using their extensive network of cold stores to accommodate all types of perishable foodstuffs, and developed their supplies on a worldwide basis. In 1906 they began to ship eggs, chickens, and other produce from China. The China trade led them into another avenue of business when they purchased two tramp steamers in 1909, and converted hen, into refrigerated ships. This was the beginning of the Blue Star Line, which they registered in 1911, with a capital of £100,000. In the next five years they acquired five more ships, as well as a butchery business, a chain of retail shops in Britain, and small freezing works in Australia and New Zealand. This set the pattern for later growth of the Vestey empire—a totally integrated business, with control of every link in the chain of processing and distribution of food from producer to consumer.
A prominent part of the Vesteys’ worldwide holdings was the cattle-raising farms and ranches, which enabled them to control supplies to their meat-packing and cold storage plants. After 1915 Argentina became an important base for their operations, especially when Britain’s 1914 Finance Act with its high taxes made them tax exiles there. While their business made large profits in the First World War supplying the British Army with meat, the Vesteys applied themselves energetically to their Argentinean on packing houses. They returned to Britain in 1919 when William appeared before the royal commission on income tax to argue the need for a return to pre-1915 tax levels. Unable to convince the government of the validity of their case, in 1921 the Vesteys and their advisers devised a complex and highly successful scheme which not only satisfied their desire to live in Britain and avoid paying any personal tax but also showed them to be as innovative and pioneering in the field of tax avoidance as in the food business. The greater part of the Vesteys’ overseas empire ,was leased to their British company Union Cold Storage Ltd. for a yearly rent of £960,000, which was used to set up a Paris trust fund. From the trust the money flowed into the Western United Investment Company in Britain, a Vestey holding company in which the family held the management shares and controlling interest, and thence, tax free, into the pockets of the Vestry brothers. Once domiciled again in England, Edmund was created a baronet in 1921. and the following year William purchased a peerage from the Lloyd George government, apparently for £25,000 (he had been made a baronet in 1921 for his role in making food more widely available). The peerage evoked a letter of protest from George V. who felt it wrong that a man who declined to pay national taxes should be ennobled.

Edmund’s first marriage 1887 to Sarah Barker produced six children before they divorced in 1926. His second marriage was on 10 March 1926, to Ellen Soward (d. 1953).

The Vesteys’ ownership of refrigerated ships increased so that by 1925 they had, in Blue Star, the largest refrigerated fleet in the world. In Britain they owned cold stores in several cities as well as 2365 retail butchers shops. The advantage of such an all-embracing organization for perishable commodities that they could be held until prices were right, and once the chain of processing had started the arrival of further supplies would be controlled to avoid losses from overstocked markets. Their operations in Britain were managed from the Union Cold Storage Company Ltd, which by 1925 had a capital of £9,628,575. By 1933 the Union had an issued capital of £12 million. Despite the depression the Vesteys business continued to expand, especially in Australia where in 1934 they took over the Anglis meat interests for £1.5 million.
William Vestey was married twice: first in 1882 to Sarah (d.1923), daughter of George Ellis of Birkenhead; second on 9 August 1924 in New York to Evelene Brodstone (1875-1941), daughter of Norwegian emigrants to Superior, Nebraska.  His second wife had joined the Vesteys’ Chicago organization in 1895 as a secretary, and became a powerful figure in the enterprise as its international troubleshooter. Her help proved indispensable to the Vesteys in retaining their direct control over a multinational corporation which by William’s death was conservatively valued at £90 million. William’s son and heir from his first marriage, Samuel (1882-1954) later joined Edmund in running the family business during the eventful post-war years. William died on 10 December 1940 at his home, Cleeve Cottage, Bulstrode Way, Gerrards Cross. His remains were interned at the parish church of St Peter Foley, Lancaster; his ashes were later re-interned in the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool. Edmund died, still chairman, on 18 November 1953 at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and his son, Ronald (b.1898) assumed control of the business.

RICHARD PERREN

Acknowledgement: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography