Family tree Servaes, Maastricht/Venlo/Straelen/Neuss/Düsseldorf » William Vestey (1859-1940)

Personal data William Vestey 

• He was born on January 21, 1859 in Liverpool, Lancashire, England.
• Facts:
• (vermelding) .Source 1

  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

• (vermelding) The Vestey Baronetcy, of Bessemer House.
• (vermelding) William Vestey, 1st Baron Vestey.Source 2

  William Vestey, 1st Baron Vestey (21 January 1859 – 10 December 1940) was an English shipping magnate.
  
  William Vestey was born on 21 January 1859. He came from an old Liverpool family of traders. In 1876, at the age of seventeen, he was sent to Chicago by his father Samuel Vestey, a provisioner of Liverpool.
  Career
  
  He first managed a meat canning factory that was financed by his father. Together with his younger brother Edmund, he established Vestey Brothers (which later became the Vestey Group) in 1897 from a family butchery business in Liverpool. They were pioneers of refrigeration, opening a cold store in London in 1895.
  
  The Vestey brothers then went to South America in an attempt to make a fortune because the economy there was booming. They started by buying game birds and storing them in the cold stores of American companies before shipping them to Liverpool. These early activities soon developed into importing beef and beef products into the UK, which in turn led to them owning cattle ranches in Brazil, Venezuela and Australia, and their own meat processing factories in Argentina, Uruguay (Frigorífico Anglo del Uruguay), New Zealand and Australia. In 1914, they built a meat processing works at Bullocky Point, Darwin, Australia, but closed its operations in 1920 after the Darwin Rebellion. The Vestey Group's cattle station in Australia was the focus of a landmark strike in the 1960s, the Gurindji strike, which was instrumental in Indigenous Australians regaining rights to their land.
  
  In 1915, the brothers, after being refused a request for income tax exemption made to David Lloyd George, moved to Buenos Aires to avoid paying income tax in the UK. The family later administered the business through a Paris trust that enabled it to legally avoid UK tax until the loophole was closed in 1991. From 1915 to 1918, they moved to Chicago then to Argentina and back to England. Lord Vestey later became an important benefactor to Liverpool Cathedral, where he funded the building of the bell tower.
  
  During World War I another Vestey company, the Blue Star Line (now part of P&O Nedlloyd), was a major supplier of Argentine beef to England, and it was for this service to the wartime provisioning of England that William Vestey was later raised to the peerage. He was made a Baronet of Bessémer House in the Metropoliton Borough of Camberwell on 21 June 1913, and Baron Vestey, of Kingswood in the County of Surrey on 20 June 1922.[6] Wave Hill Station is located approximately 600 kilometres south of Darwin in the Northern Territory. Vesteys, a British company which ran the cattle station, employed local Aboriginal people, mostly Gurindji. Working and living conditions for Aboriginal people were very poor. The wages of Aboriginal workers generally were controlled and not equal to those paid to non-Aboriginal employees. An attempt to introduce equal wages for Aboriginal workers was made in 1965, but in March 1966 the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission decided to delay until 1968 the payment of award wages to Aboriginal workers in the cattle industry. In August 1966, Vincent Lingiari, a Gurindji spokesman, led a walk-off of 200 Aboriginal stockmen, house servants, and their families from Wave Hill as a protest against the work and pay conditions. The strike was part of a widespread campaign begun by workers on Brunette Downs Station and supported by non-Indigenous people, including unionists and the author Frank Hardy. The protesters camped at Wattie Creek (Daguragu) and sought the return of some of their traditional lands to develop a cattle station. The Governor-General in 1967, and leaders toured Australia to raise awareness about their cause. In 1972, Prime Minister Whitlam announced that funds would be made available for the purchase of properties that were not on reserves, and Lord Vestey offered to surrender 90 square kilometres to the Gurindji people. Daguragu was acquired by the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission and, on 16 August 1975 at Daguragu, Prime Minister Whitlam transferred leasehold title to the Gurindji, symbolically handing soil to Vincent Lingiari. The Gurindji campaign was an important influence on the events leading to passing the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976. The Central Land Council applied on behalf of the Gurindji under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 for traditional land comprising the Daguragu pastoral lease and some adjacent un-alienated Crown land. In 1981 the Aboriginal Land Commissioner recommended that the land claim should be granted. The claim relating to the South West Corner was granted in 1985.
  Personal life
  
  His first wife died in 1923 and was buried in Liverpool Cathedral. He then married Evelene Brodstone of Superior, Nebraska, on 1 August 1924. She had been working as a stenographer with the Vestey Meat Packing Plant in Chicago, where she was spotted by his brother. She would rise through the company, eventually becoming the highest paid female executive in the world. On 24 July 1941, the 2nd Lady Vestey was buried at Evergreen Cemetery of Superior in Nebraska. Each spring during memorial weekend, Superior holds the annual Lady Vestey Festival in her honor. This is the town's largest annual celebration and it attracts many people from around the area.
  Literature
  
  Phillip Knightley The Rise and Fall of the House of Vestey, on the business empire established by William Vestey in 1897;

• He died on December 10, 1940 in St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, Engeland, United Kingdom, he was 81 years old.
• A child of Samuel Vestey and Hannah Uttley
• This information was last updated on April 17, 2021.

Household of William Vestey

(1) He is married to Sarah Ellis.

They got married

Child(ren):

1. (Not public)

(2) He is married to Evelene Brodstone.

They got married on August 1, 1924, he was 65 years old.

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Timeline William Vestey

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