Local Patriots: Dewar’s Scotch Whisky, Prosociality, Politics, and Place—1846–1930

Abstract

Drawing from the literature strands of philanthropy, business, and history, this work explores the business, prosocial, and political activities of a prominent family in the Scotch whisky industry, with specific emphasis on two brothers’ philanthropy and its impact on a place—the city of Perth, Scotland. In our analysis, we tell the story of the second-generation owners of Dewar’s Scotch whisky company, brothers John Alexander and Tommy Dewar, and their journey of prosocial place-based service and giving. Consistent throughout are the themes of global success, family, local and national networks, and regional embeddedness, alongside the role of formal and informal giving. We offer an analysis of the prosocial activities that represent unexplored dimensions of business success, placing them in both spatial and temporal contexts. Within this is the story of a multigenerational family business’s international growth and success.

Introduction

Business historians have long considered the relationship between entrepreneurship, wealth creation, and philanthropy, detailing how the nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed entrepreneurs engaging in philanthropy and charitable giving fueled by the wealth generated from capitalist, entrepreneurial profit-making activities. ¹ Successful entrepreneurs engaged in philanthropy from historic to contemporary times to extend power in different locales using their wealth and the generative nature of capital forms in their giving. This has recently been understood by business historians through the lens of Bourdieu’s capital theory to capture the generative nature of philanthropy and its conversion to power and influence. ² The underlying premise of Bourdieu’s capital theory regarding philanthropy assumes that giving produces capital exchanges and conversions, which benefit entrepreneurs in a clearly identifiable way. We consider that such a transactional approach, while prominent beyond the specificity of locales, does not adequately explain all forms of philanthropy. For example, what happens when there is no obvious capital return for the specific act of giving? Moreover, what role does place play in such giving? Entrepreneurs often have strong ties to their locales and this contextual element requires further exploration to better understand giving where there is no evident capital return from the act itself, recognizing that the generative nature of business and politics may be observed. There is, therefore, an apparent gap in our understanding of the emergence of philanthropy as an informal, personalized undertaking arising from wealth accumulated through business activities and a need to more closely consider how such philanthropy is realized on a local level. ³

To answer these questions, we chart the informal philanthropy of two brothers, John Alexander and Tommy Dewar of the John Dewar and Sons Ltd Scotch whisky company. The origin of family wealth is Dewar’s Scotch Whisky, a family business that grew from a local wine and spirits merchant located in Perth into a global, multinational, dominant Scotch whisky brand under the brothers’ direction. During the firm’s growth, both brothers occupied significant public political roles at local and national levels while steering the company to ever-greater success, massively enriching themselves in the process. However, concomitant with their private and public success in business and politics was an ongoing commitment to their hometown of Perth, manifested first in public service roles (first held by their father who founded the business), then public recognition through ennoblement, followed by informal philanthropic giving to their hometown separate from their company’s activities. This provides an important distinction—we define formal giving as that specifically linked to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of the firm, whereas informal giving is personalized giving that the brothers engaged in individually. For the latter, the brothers’ giving was clearly rooted in their hometown of Perth, Scotland despite their national and global success as both politicians and businessmen.

While business historians have increasingly recognized the value of exploring philanthropy in recent years, to date there remains a relative lacuna of studies considering the role of both emotions and place in giving and service within historical contexts. The complexity of the brothers’ ability to successfully combine the three activities of business, philanthropy, and politics is indicative of a subtlety of connections between institutions at both a local and global level. By unraveling these connections, we contribute to an enhanced understanding of the importance of economic, social, and political contexts within the philanthropic journey.

Prosociality and Placed-Based Philanthropy in Business History

The prosocial behaviors of businesspeople are well established, and place-based giving has received growing scholarly attention in the domains of history, business, and philanthropy. ⁴ We use the definition of prosocial behavior provided by Wittek and Bekkers: “Prosocial behavior is a broad class of behavior defined as involving costs for the self and resulting in benefits for others.” ⁵ Whether a place is viewed as a locality connected to the business or philanthropist by geographic proximity, or by emotional attachment to a cause or specific community, philanthropists often build connections to locales through endeavors that extend beyond their core business activities. The primary focus of such activity is on improving the well-being and/or development of the communities they are associated with. ⁶ Similarly, the role of community foundations in the United States and the United Kingdom (U.K.) has historically been focused on the regeneration of specific locales and on improving well-being, driven, and supported by formalized collective effort. ⁷

There are many historic stories of places that have flourished thanks to their close connections to the efforts of individuals through philanthropic or business means. ⁸ Many prominent figures have chosen to give back to the communities they are connected to and by whom they have felt nurtured ⁹ including historic philanthropists successful in business such as Robert Owen (New Lanark, Scotland), William Hesketh Lever (Port Sunlight, England), Titus Salt (Saltaire, England), and George Cadbury (Bournville and Birmingham, England), each of whom remain synonymous with place. ¹⁰ All interweaved their business and philanthropic activities, with a focus on development within their communities and the well-being of their employees and their families. There is an explicit recognition of the generative value of such activities to their respective businesses, which is indicative of the generative nature of economic capital creating not only public benefit but benefiting the respective businesses too. ¹¹

The creation of wealth has fueled philanthropy and charitable giving throughout time, shining light on the philanthropic activities of wealthy elites from the first golden age of philanthropy (spanning the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries) where—fueled by successful business activities—private contributions to charities more than doubled. At this time philanthropy was the basis of poor relief in England. ¹² The second golden age of philanthropy, during the eighteenth century, saw the merchant classes creating and redistributing wealth, funding many hospitals of the time. ¹³ The third golden age of philanthropy was spurred by industrialization, where wealth became less concentrated in the landed gentry, shifting toward those entrepreneurs who profited from the Industrial Revolution. Some of the enlightened entrepreneurs of that era—as they subsequently became known—focused their philanthropy on specific places, creating purpose-built communities to the benefit of their businesses. Individuals such as the aforementioned Titus Salt and William Hesketh Lever created Saltaire and Port Sunlight respectively, providing housing and education for their workers and families. ¹⁴ In this context, such philanthropy may be recognized as enlightened self-interest owing to the generativity of the business.

The fourth golden age of philanthropy spans the end of the Victorian era into the early twentieth century and is aligned with the rise and expansion of the industrial economy in the United States. Rockefeller and Carnegie—whose wealth stemmed from the nation’s burgeoning oil and steel industries—are synonymous with philanthropy from that time. ¹⁵ Carnegie, in his philanthropy, pursued partnerships and matched funding from municipalities in the places he sought to establish and fund activities and initiatives, including libraries, then willingly accepted the plaudits and accolades that went with it including fifty-seven freedoms of the city. ¹⁶ The fifth golden age of philanthropy is now associated with successful entrepreneurs whose wealth has been created via strong stock markets, innovation, and the advancement of technology. ¹⁷ These new philanthropists are increasingly engaged in activities that span continents and with different levels of action and application beyond simply making donations.

The distinction between charity and philanthropy is important here. Charitable giving is associated with helping behavior where the recipient is typically absent from the context of the giver. ¹⁸ Philanthropy on the other hand is defined by Moody and Payton as “voluntary action for the public good” ¹⁹ with focus firmly placed on generating public benefit. This definition echoes that provided by Rey-Garcia and Puig-Raposo who consider philanthropy as “voluntary private participation in public benefit initiatives.” ²⁰ While public benefit is the aim of philanthropy, there are typically intangible benefits to the philanthropist from engaging in the act, which enriches their life and stimulates an evergreen cycle of public benefit activities. ²¹

Recent studies in business and history have adopted a critical view of the generative nature of philanthropy ²² where elite philanthropists seek to “extend their reach into the realm of the social as a means of personal aggrandizement” ²³ via formal institutions. Philanthropy comes in many forms and generates not only social, economic, human, and symbolic capital for the individual but also importantly power. Consistent therein is the argument that there is a spectrum of benefits generated not only for the public but the individual philanthropist and their formal vehicle of wealth creation that stems from engaging in the act of philanthropy itself, though arguably this may be associated more with both a formal vehicle and driven by a public profile in philanthropy. ²⁴ Public benefit generated by philanthropy has historically been linked to a broad range of societal areas including education, healthcare, support of the vulnerable, religion, and local community enhancement. ²⁵ It is the latter on which we turn our attention in this paper through an analysis of the place-based philanthropic giving and service by John Alexander and Tommy Dewar, scions of the Dewar Scotch Whisky business in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Contemporary philanthropic activity is often associated with place as highlighted by the work of Feldman ²⁶ who considers the connection between place, entrepreneurs, and philanthropy and who further emphasizes institutional creation as an output. Feldman uses the phrase “local champions” (akin to our use of “local patriots” in the context of the Dewars within this study), and her emphasis on the productivity of the connections and agency that entrepreneurs bring to philanthropy in communities aligns closely with the work of Schervish ²⁷ who details the generative nature of agency that wealthy donors bring to their philanthropic endeavors. Schervish views agency as multidimensional, where social connections are not limited to the domain of business but extend into politics, public service duties, and beyond, and posits that wealthy entrepreneurs have a skills repertoire to draw upon—alongside informal and formal connections—that can be deployed to achieve progressive, purposeful outcomes for the public benefit. ²⁸

Emphasis on the role of civic duty and public service bears importance here in the context of the Dewars story; both John Alexander and Tommy developed political profiles at local and national levels during their lifetime. The combination of knowledge, experience, and contacts merged from business, philanthropy, and politics is not unusual in the context of generating transformative value for specific locales ²⁹ and is well-documented beyond the individual micro level, by the many historical and contemporary community place-based foundations that exist. ³⁰ However, what is synonymous in the context of place-based philanthropy is the apparent sense of stewardship and emotional attachment that individuals linked to a family business feel towards a community. It can be argued that the act of giving back is therefore formed from within the family unit and community institutions. ³¹

Our analysis of the Dewar brothers shows the independence of their philanthropic activities from their business and is indicative of how they preferred to compartmentalize their different foci. Our attention is on their informal philanthropy, combined with the public service roles they held. We view their philanthropy as informal in the sense that the acts themselves typically involved the brothers making donations to causes they considered important, spanning religion, homelessness, poverty relief, education, and the protection of open space and land within the context of their hometown of Perth, Scotland.

Sources and Methods

Research for this article was conducted across multiple archives, including the John Dewar & Sons Corporate Archive, the Dewar family’s private archive, the Scoon and Perth No. 3 Masonic Lodge, St Johnstone Football Club, the National Records of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, and newspaper databases (British Library and British Newspaper Archive) comprising both local and national news reports. Newspapers have long been identified as a useful historical source, but less typically in business history. ³² The nature of the Dewar brothers’ philanthropy that we analyzed was informal—this means there are no surviving private records documenting the details of the giving, requiring us instead to piece together their story from contemporaneous newspaper reports of the time. We did not have access to any diaries, papers, notes, or other ephemera that might reveal motivations on the brothers’ parts beyond what public utterances they made via the popular press of the day. Recent work by Tinning and Lubinski is relevant in terms of the lack of “ego documents” ³³ that may belie familial motivations for service and giving beyond public pronouncements. As there are none, we had to instead construct our understanding through triangulation with other sources and draw inferences accordingly.

In line with Per Hansen’s work on newspapers as sources ³⁴, we sought to utilize the reporting on the Dewars’ philanthropy as a way of solving our problem of capturing their informal giving by using newspaper reports for establishment and confirmation purposes of the brothers’ giving and service. The contemporary newspaper reports provide records and details (to an extent) of what and how the brothers sought to serve and give. While several of these accounts have been digitized and are available through online databases such as the British Newspaper Archive, through the Dewar family’s own private archive we were also able to read their collection of newspaper clippings documenting principally local newspaper reports of the brothers’ giving, public service activities, and their engagement in the local communities in which they were active. Their public office and service are a matter of public record and serve as a guide to their activities. The corporate archives of John Dewar & Sons Ltd provided us with materials on the company’s history including the early family involvement, newspaper reports on the brothers’ activities, its financial performance, corporate sponsorships, and financial data showing growth and development into one of the world’s most successful Scotch whisky companies. Finally, the archives of the local Masonic lodge and St Johnstone Football Club allowed us to establish their associations further evidencing their strong local connections in the biographical sketches interspersed with the story of their company’s growth that follows.

Young Men of Vision—John Alexander and Tommy Dewar

John Alexander was only 24 years old, and Tommy was 16 when their father died in 1880. Both had benefitted from a school education (attending Sharp’s Institution Perth, which later merged with Perth Academy) and a technical education in the industry, serving apprenticeships with other drinks merchants (as was common in the industry at the time) earning their way through to the family business succession. John Alexander had worked for Condamines of Leith in Edinburgh, and Tommy with Forrest & Turnbull (also of Leith) as well as the influential Scotch whisky company Robertson & Baxter in Glasgow. ³⁵ Upon his father’s death, John Alexander entered a new copartnership with his mother Jane to run the business that lasted until 1887. Tommy joined in 1881 as an equal partner, with the business turning a profit of £1321. ³⁶ In 1888, the name of the company was updated again from John Dewar to John Dewar & Sons. ³⁷ The brothers’ education in the industry would serve them both very well, helping them to accelerate what was a modestly successful family business with strong domestic performance into a rapid growth business with a global footprint firmly rooted in their home city of Perth.

John Alexander

Following in his father’s footsteps of public service, shortly after joining the family business John Alexander embarked on his own career of public service comprising both local and national roles. Locally, in 1883 at the age of 27, he became a member of Perth Town Council. In 1884 he was confirmed as a member of the Masonic Lodge Scoon & Perth No.3, registered as a “Wine Merchant,” with his brother Tommy joining later in 1889 as a “Whisky Merchant,” but still resident in London. Neither attained higher office in their local lodge. ³⁸ John Alexander later became the convenor of the Housing Committee of Perthshire County Council, then finally the Lord Provost of the City in 1893 (a role his son John Jr. would later fulfill at the same age of 37 from 1922-25 ³⁹) serving until 1899. ⁴⁰ John Alexander also served as Justice of the Peace (a volunteer judicial role in a lower, local court) and the Deputy Lieutenant (the Queen’s representative) of Perthshire. ⁴¹ In each of these roles, he contributed to the running of the city as well as civic improvements including sanitation, water supply, swimming baths, leisure amenities, gasworks construction, slum clearances, housebuilding, development of the harbor, and street and bridge building, following in the footsteps of his father’s commitment to civic duties for the city. The roles of Lord Provost and Deputy Lieutenant are particularly important here—the former was a key local role, but the latter illustrates a connection to the upper echelons of the British establishment as a Crown appointment by the reigning monarch. This illustrates that John Alexander was not just locally connected but was gaining national recognition also and arguably generating considerable symbolic and social capital from such an appointment for leverage in the business. In 1897, the brothers reconstructed John Dewar & Sons as a public company, with £600,000 of shares issued. By this time, they had offices in London, New York, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh, and Dublin. ⁴² In 1898 they opened the Aberfeldy Distillery (which is still owned by Dewar’s to this day). By 1900 the company also reached an important milestone of selling 1 million proof gallons in a single year (535,000 standard 12-bottle cases) of its Scotch whisky for the first time. ⁴³ By 1914, they had additional offices in Calcutta, Sydney, Melbourne, and Johannesburg ⁴⁴, demonstrating the brothers’ continued global expansion.

The national connections did not stop at locally endowed honorific titles connected to the British establishment, however. John Alexander also served as a member of Parliament in the U.K. House of Commons from 1900 to 1916 for Inverness-shire representing the Liberal Party and winning the only Liberal seat in the 1900 election in Scotland ⁴⁵ before being knighted in 1902. John Alexander’s public activities were recognized with a baronetcy in 1907, before fronting a campaign for a reduction in spirits duty from the 1909 People’s Budget and becoming a spokesman for the whisky trade (one of the few explicit links to his business present in his public service). In 1910, he purchased the Dupplin Estate from the estate of the Earl of Kinnoull for £249,000 ⁴⁶ and then chaired commissions into medical services in the Scottish Highlands and Islands (1912), establishing early principles for what would later become the U.K.’s National Health Service. In 1915, he was made Chairman of the Territorial Forces Association after giving use of Aberdalgie House on his estate to the Red Cross for convalescents during World War One, serving until 1919. ⁴⁷ He was elevated once again becoming Baron Forteviot of Dupplin in the peerage in 1917, the first of the Whisky Barons. ⁴⁸ Thus, while John Alexander’s public service duties started locally before moving to the national stage, he remained steadfastly rooted in his hometown. His brother Tommy on the other hand worked his way through public service roles with his base in London, mirroring the company’s growth and development and his place in it.

Tommy

In 1885, just four years after joining the family business, Tommy moved to London to open the company’s new office in line with their growth expansion plans. Within a year of moving to London Tommy was appointed as a one-third share partner in the business in 1886. Tommy’s move to London was part of the brothers’ strategy for growth—the London office was to act as a base for the global expansion of the business. As the first city of the Empire and already a global trading hub, London was an ideal location for the brothers to expand their business and start to realize their growth ambitions. This was aided by a request from Andrew Carnegie who in 1891 ordered a “small keg…of the best Scotch whisky you can find” for Benjamin Harrison, then President of the United States ⁴⁹, marking Dewar’s first export and a new growth market for the product. ⁵⁰ In The Wine Trade Review – Supplement an article on the brothers’ ambitions and strategic moves talked about both London and “His Majesty’s Dominions” as the principal foci for the brothers, but the challenge they faced overseas was that Dewars was not a brand well-known brand to distributors. Tommy was reputed to have said to these firms “If this whisky does not sell, send the whole darned lot back at my expense.” ⁵¹

For many ambitious British companies at the time, exploiting both domestic connections and imperial ties and trade was a common route to growth. For the Dewar brothers, it was further exploited by Tommy’s book Ramble Round the Globe—a published travelogue of his 1892 journey around twenty-six different countries where he secured thirty-two different distribution agents for the business over a period of 2 years, including many Empire territories. ⁵² The book also reveals the importance of imperial connections to the brothers’ strategy for growth—Tommy’s principal destinations were current and former colonies with a view to exploiting the administrations’ (and locals’) newfound thirst for Scotch. This led to the company opening its first office in the United States in New York City in 1892. ⁵³ By 1893 Dewar’s had secured Queen Victoria’s Royal Warrant for supplying whisky to the Royal Household. ⁵⁴ These achievements saw the company’s profitability jump markedly to £17,862 by 1893. ⁵⁵

Utilizing early marketing tricks to enhance the visibility of the brand and himself, Tommy soon emerged as a well-known figure in London and beyond. In 1892 he served on the London County Council for West Marylebone, before becoming a Lieutenant (the Queen’s representative), then the Sheriff of the City of London in 1897, then a Justice of the Peace for Kent in 1898. During this time, Dewars launched the world’s first cinematic advert for a drinks product in 1897. ⁵⁶ First shown on the roof of the Pepper building in New York’s Herald Square, the commercial was created by the International Film Company and featured characters acting out “The Whisky of his Forefathers” painting already widely used by the firm for promotion and advertising purposes. ⁵⁷ The year after, the company followed this up with what was reputed to be the world’s largest illuminated sign depicting a Scotsman in his kilt drinking Dewar’s whisky—on the Shot Tower (which it had acquired for premises) next to London’s Waterloo Bridge. This was replaced by another sign in 1910/11, which was illuminated and mechanical, depicting a Scotsman drinking whisky that was 68 feet tall and composed of fourteen hundred lamps and 6 miles of electric cable. ⁵⁸

Tommy was elected as Conservative and Unionist Member of Parliament (M.P.) for the St George’s division of Tower Hamlet in 1900 (serving until 1906) and was knighted in 1902. He was elevated to baronet in 1917. ⁵⁹ Just two years earlier and in order to combat increasing taxation (partly a result of Lloyd George’s temperance enthusiasm against alcohol ⁶⁰) and competition, Dewar’s merged with Buchanan’s (with both companies retaining their separate identities) with capital of £5 million ⁶¹ and named Scotch Whisky Brands Ltd the following year, subsequently renamed to Buchanan-Dewar in 1919. This was the same year Tommy was made Baron Dewar of Homestall (named for his estate in Surrey) ⁶² and recognized “for public services and work on numerous hospital committees.” ⁶³ Tommy’s political rise was remarkable not least due to the concomitant global growth and success of the family business. In 1919 Tommy was elevated to Baron Dewar (three years after his brother), and the company was turning a profit of £943,690. ⁶⁴ Shortly thereafter in 1925, the “Big Amalgamation” of the Big Three Scotch whisky blenders of Dewar’s, Buchanan’s, and Walker’s formed the industry behemoth the Distiller’s Company Limited, with each retaining their own brand identity. By this point Dewar’s were turning a profit of £1.284 million ⁶⁵ and the brothers were not just locally known, but nationally and internationally recognized as principal figures within the Scotch whisky industry known as the “Whisky Barons.”

Local Patriots—the Dewars’ Place-Based Giving

After both John Alexander and Tommy reached the heights of the British establishment within both their respective locales—Perth and London, respectively—and nationally, they turned their attention to philanthropy. The Dewar brothers’ infeftments and giving were recognized in the obituary of Tommy whereby The Courier wrote “In common with the late Lord Forteviot, he retained throughout his business career, amid honors gained mainly in London, a deep-seated regard for his native city.” ⁶⁶ Their emotional commitment to their hometown extended to significant gifting covering a range of causes. It is worth noting that these actions were not directly related to their company—Dewar’s had its own sponsorships and CSR activities separate from the brothers’ giving. ⁶⁷ John Alexander and Tommy gave on a private, individual, and informal basis—neither held a formal giving vehicle at any point so gave from their private wealth. This makes tracking their giving challenging—there is no single document, diary, company minutes, or consolidation of their actions available to historians to capture their philanthropy. Thus, to establish the nature and extent of their philanthropy we pieced together their giving from contemporaneous newspaper accounts, drawn from digitized sources (the British Library and British Newspaper Archive), the John Dewar & Sons Ltd corporate archive, and the Dewar Family Archive. This allowed us to compose a picture and chronology of their giving activities, presented in Tables 1 and 2 in the appendix.

The nature of their giving in life and death provides key insights into the Dewar brothers’ interests and values. John Alexander’s baronial motto ⁶⁸, “Pro rege, lege, grege – ‘For the King, Law, Clan’,” identifies three things he wanted to be publicly known for: loyalty to the Crown, the British state, and his family. Consistent within this proclamation is the story of John Alexander’s business and personal lives—his company grew on the back of Empire ties, he worked closely with and within the British establishment at local and national levels, and finally he and Tommy worked together very closely in the family business to bring this together. Tommy’s baronial motto was “Gloria Patri—‘Glory Be to the Father’,” recognizing the origins of his start in business and his Presbyterian faith. Both recognized and gave significant funds to St John’s Kirk in Perth in its redevelopment as a war memorial—both grew up as members of that church. Similarly, John Alexander also gave to Aberdalgie Church (on his Dupplin estate), and Tommy attended the Church of Scotland in London. The brothers’ ties to British and Scottish institutions are obvious from their public service roles and recognition, but their giving illustrates deeper connections to their hometown and a sense of place beyond the generative values derived from their public roles.

There are other interesting aspects to the giving outlined in the timeline, including building on their father’s activities in developing Perth as a city. John Alexander followed in his father’s footsteps as Lord Provost and held various other city-level roles overseeing public improvements, which he identified as a “privilege” to have been able to do. John Alexander committed significant personal funds to the extension of the Perth Royal Infirmary through the construction and kitting out of a new maternity ward, he gave extensively to fund the construction of two new homeless hostels, and he gave both money and several hundred books to the city library—all of which are still in operation today. Tommy was no less generous in his beneficence to the city and its denizens—the gift of Kinnoull Hill was remarkably generous, but also in its foresight with the endowment of funds in perpetuity to support its upkeep, as well as the purchase and gift of the Barnhill estate southwest of the hill to provide access. Tommy’s flair for marketing extended to commissioning his old school friend, artist W.M. Frazer, to paint a panoramic scene of Perth (as viewed from the hill) as the basis of a new tourism marketing campaign for the city. It is worth noting that John Alexander’s son, John Jr., subsequently also served as Lord Provost of the city, and himself gifted land to create an eighteen-hole golf course therein (and fishing rights alongside the course). ⁶⁹

Each of these gifts had (and continue to have) a significant effect on the city in terms of amenity and economic development contributions. John Jr.’s position as Lord Provost is important as it ensured the brothers and family retained a strong connection with the governance of Perth and a direct line to understanding the city’s needs. Regarding the maternity ward, infeftment of Kinnoull Hill and associated lands, and the golf course, all three occurred at a time when the local authorities had expressed interest in doing it themselves but were concerned about financial constraints. The brothers’ willingness to give to the city allowed local authorities to spend in other areas. This led to one newspaper article describing them in 1923 thusly: “Lord Forteviot and his brother are, of course, both natives of the Fair City, and are in every respect splendid examples of local patriots.” ⁷⁰

Their giving did not go unnoticed, nor were attempts at reward absent. Newspaper reports of their gifts are often written in fawning and obsequious language but nevertheless reveal potential motivations for the brothers’ giving. In 1924, the brothers were offered, and declined, the freedom of the city of Perth by the Town Council. Both wrote letters in response to the Town Clerk that were published in the local press, outlining their reasons for declining the honor. Both brothers were characteristic in their responses: John Alexander was to the point in his letter limiting himself to two short paragraphs, whereas Tommy was somewhat more loquacious, writing four long paragraphs. The following excerpts from the news story outline their reasons for declining. John Alexander wrote:

“I have given the matter most earnest consideration, and I write to say that I hope, with much respect, the Town Council will allow me to decline the much too high honor they have so kindly offered. The pleasure of being allowed to help my native city is in itself sufficient reward for any little service I may have rendered, but the people of Perth have always been so kind to me that they have far more repaid anything I have been able to do.”

Tommy’s response demonstrated a similar sentiment (while recognizing his location in London):

“I have unfortunately not been able to keep up that close and intimate touch with my fellow-citizens which I should have liked to have done from the date I left school… Any little I have done does not rebound in attribute to me but is born of a fellowship of aims and ideals, which I owe to the bonds of that citizenship which unites us. I feel that in every respect compared to others I am a debtor. Anything I have done or may be able to do in the future for my native city will remain a pleasure and an abiding joy that will more than compensate me.” ⁷¹

Public recognition in the form of freedom of the city was a typical reward or outcome for wealthy businessmen who embarked upon philanthropic giving to their locales during this period. The reluctance of the brothers to accept local rewards for their giving was, however, unusual. Other local industrialists and businessmen were recognized for their service and philanthropy and accepted the freedom of the city including the whisky magnate A.K. Bell of Bell’s Scotch Whisky ⁷², Sir Francis Norie-Miller who led the General Accident Fire and Life Assurance Association ⁷³, Sir Robert Pullar of the Pullar Dyeworks ⁷⁴, and Andrew Carnegie ⁷⁵ (who was renowned for routinely collecting such awards). Acceptance of such reward for philanthropic endeavors supports the premise of the returns from philanthropy as developed by recent scholarship, but how then do we characterize or understand activities and actors that do not fit so easily with this understanding? The brothers’ unwillingness to accept the offer of the freedom of the city of Perth does not suggest their personal giving was wholly altruistic, but it does complicate the accepted wisdom that giving is undertaken to receive a capital return. The brothers occupied an already elevated public position via their political careers, their economic wealth, and their commensurate power, but their localized giving does not seem to significantly enhance their public position or their business.

In stark contrast to their refusal of local honors was the Dewars’ willingness to accept national recognition through their elevations to the House of Lords and the Peerage via roles as M.P.s and local roles where they lived. These showed they were not averse to accepting public recognition for their service, but were definitive in their refusal of recognition by the city for their giving. Their refusal to accept the freedom of the city also did little to quell their willingness to keep giving—as both tables show, the brothers continued to give significant amounts to the city and the surrounding environs after declining the honor, suggesting that their stated reasons for doing so were not based on any discontent with the city or its administration. It is worth reiterating that the brothers gave on a personal, individual basis to causes and interests they saw fit, in a separate fashion from their company’s own giving and CSR activities. ⁷⁶ The company is never credited with their informal giving, but only ever mentioned as the source of the brothers’ wealth. It operated separate CSR activities throughout the period sponsoring various activities, including for example sports competitions, all over the country. ⁷⁷

Equally, it is unclear if the giving was a defensive mechanism to offset criticisms of the business from temperance campaigners—Weir points out that blenders (including Dewars) made little to no attempt to counter the temperance movement stating “from the business records of the blenders it would be easy to believe that the temperance movement never existed” ⁷⁸—there is never any mention of the movement or defending the industry in the press reports of the brothers’ giving. There is no question that their business success was generative and allowed the brothers to give in the way that they did. The personal wealth generated through business activities, alongside the social and symbolic capital, gained and converted from their significant public and political roles and activities arguably held a generative effect in the domains of business, politics, and high society to their benefit. A possible explanation of this is the international export focus and its profitability—in 1912 Dewars calculated that the net profit on their exports was 52% compared with 14% on domestic sales. ⁷⁹ Their operations in Perth were thus focused on getting their product bottled and packaged to get the majority of it overseas as quickly as possible. However, their personal philanthropy appears to be discrete, distinct, and contextually localized from activities undertaken in support of the firm.

The Emotional Connection to Place

The notion of place-based service is critical to understanding localized needs, with this evidenced in various public service duties John Alexander undertook in his home city of Perth, prior to his and his brother’s philanthropic giving to the city. John Alexander’s sustained public service and giving over time, and the key roles he occupied over and above running a highly successful business, enabled him to influence the shape of the Perth improvement works, covering not just the waterworks but sanitation, transport, and road infrastructure, housing provision, and maternity care within the city, as well as significant contributions via aligned philanthropy, and is indicative of the generative nature of public service for the benefit of the community. Tommy’s public service in London ensured his networks in the capital at the heart of the Empire were strong which, in turn, likely helped the business. Moreover, his rambles around the world perhaps further exposed and emphasized to him the contextual importance of place, locales, and their specific needs. Both brothers served in national political roles for which their elevation to the Peerage via various titles bestowed upon them were recognized—in each case they were given their knighthoods, baronetcies, and finally their baron titles in recognition of their significant public service. It is important to recognize here the similarly elevated political circles in which both brothers moved—John Alexander as a Liberal, and Tommy as a Conservative and Unionist. Both parties were the dominant political movements in the U.K. at the time, and the brothers were very well-networked within them sitting first in the House of Commons, then the House of Lords.

With their success came ever-increasing calls on their time—both John Alexander and Tommy refer to this in public utterances. John Alexander was quoted “I can assure you I feel very keenly the severing of my connection with the work of the City Council, work which for the last fourteen years has filled so large a place in my life. I esteem it the greatest privilege of my life to have been permitted to take part in it, and I know of no sphere where the ordinary average citizen can better or more profitably serve his generation.” ⁸⁰ Tommy addresses his own commitment thusly, “Well gentlemen, my absence has not been brought about by politics. It was commerce that caused me to place my footsteps on the border facing South, the same as has been done by many a needy son of Caledonia, and it is commerce that has kept me away from my native city for so long.” ⁸¹ Both brothers recognized the demands of their business but remained committed to giving to their hometown as evidenced in Table 1.

There was a generative personal benefit from their public service as both were recognized for this in their ennoblements. However, establishing a personally generative connection or motivation to their giving is more difficult. Timing is relevant here. They were ennobled for their public service before they started giving in earnest. The brothers were running a globally successful export-focused business, which generated enormous revenues and personal financial benefits which they then used in turn to the benefit of their hometown in later years. An important part of the reason for the growth of their business was the connection to the British Empire and indeed their (or perhaps Tommy’s) willingness to engage in building networks to establish trading outposts. In this sense, the generative dimension of their business activities can be found in the political capital they developed as visible, active, and engaged Members of Parliament for the leading political parties of the time. What this means for the dimension of place, is that the global became local in terms of the fruits of the brothers’ labor and their willingness to donate and foster the economic and social development of their hometown. Tommy alluded to this: “I’m very conscious I have done little to deserve this banquet—except perhaps, in directing the attention of people who can read that my name is now inseparably associated with the name of Perth.” ⁸²

Echoing the roots of the communitarian ethos of customary philanthropy, ⁸³ place-based philanthropy is aligned with the collective narrative of the needs of the community. In the Dewars’ case, the interweaving of agency derived from the family’s business endeavors, local and national politics, and philanthropy was harnessed to steward and develop their hometown of Perth, Scotland. The generativity of the combination of local and national civic duty, via local and national political roles employed by both brothers and combined with their business activity and philanthropy, helped inform their understanding of local needs, driving the social and economic development of their hometown that in turn built a legacy for the people of Perth that endures today. This was undertaken without any evident link to the productivity of the family business itself, which stands out when compared with the activities of the enlightened entrepreneurs of that time whose philanthropy can be related to the benefit of their vehicle of wealth creation. The brothers’ strong emotional attachment to their hometown of Perth was a key driver of their philanthropy. When celebrating the opening of the new maternity ward he helped found, John Alexander was quoted as saying “He confessed he was rather embarrassed with the generosity of their appreciation and he had only to say that it gave a great deal of pleasure, and it was a great honour to his wife and himself, to be able to help the Directors to carry out their good work.” ⁸⁴

This suggests that emotional context fueled the informal philanthropic activities of the brothers. The emotional connection felt by the brothers to their hometown and their communitarian ethos is important considering their business was international and export-oriented. The brothers could have directed their informal giving anywhere their business activities exposed them to, and more so given Tommy’s ramblings around the world. However, they chose to focus on the place where they were born, grew up, and whose collective needs they understood just as other local businessmen had done before them. Tommy recognizes this in himself “The truth is for the last twenty years I have not had a great deal of spare time on my hands… Although I have been going to and fro on the surfaces of the earth for about a quarter of a century… your kind reception encourages me to believe that I have a home and that I am at home.” ⁸⁵ What distinguishes their giving to their hometown from others is their refusal to take honor for it and its apparent disconnect with their business operations. Their personal giving sits entirely separate from their business but is facilitated by proceeds from it.

The Dewars were undoubtedly exposed to local and international role models whose footsteps they followed in. Several philanthropists were active in the city—John Sharp a baker who established Sharp’s Institution where the Dewar brothers were educated, Professor Archibald Sandeman who gave a bequest to establish the eponymously named library in the city, Sir Robert Pullar (of the eponymous dye-works) who gave to establish a sanitorium and public wash house, and Rachel Pennycuik who gave to improve the local fire brigade with the purchase of new fire trucks. ⁸⁶ During the ceremony to commemorate Tommy’s gift of Kinnoull Hill to the city, his nephew the then Lord Provost John Jr. recognizing this history of local giving, said “there seemed to be an undefinable something in the atmosphere of the ancient city that compelled those whose lives had been spent within its walls to express in the most tangible form their appreciation of the privilege it was to be a citizen of Perth.” ⁸⁷

Given the brothers’ dual local and national foci in their prosocial actions, it is also worth considering their national peers like William Hesketh Lever, who built Port Sunlight as a model village in the late nineteenth century to accommodate the workers of his soap business, Lever Brothers (the predecessor of Unilever). ⁸⁸ Port Sunlight represents Lever’s vision to create decent and sanitary housing in an industrial setting for his workers. It bears similarity to Robert Owen, in New Lanark Mills, who undertook significant work to improve the housing and social conditions (including education) of the mill workers. Moreover, it also echoes the philanthropic activities of George Cadbury ⁸⁹ and Joseph Rowntree ⁹⁰ who embarked on a particular form of philanthropy and industrial welfarism in Bournville and York respectively. While Bournville was a model village built in 1879 to house the factory workers of Cadbury in a garden setting with significant recreational space, Rowntree’s factory in York focused on creating a holistic offering within the workplace to ensure worker’s welfare was accounted for in his factories, alongside the creation of sick and provident funds, medical services, pension schemes, and educational schools for children. Each focused on place and community but with the wealth-creating vehicle firmly at the center. These entrepreneurs merged the socioeconomic elements of their need to create wealth and the responsibility that it brought while being cognizant of the human agency interweaved with their drive for private wealth and the need to ensure basic social needs were met. Tommy and John Alexander knew Andrew Carnegie and his giving as well ⁹¹ but eschewed his approach of building alliances with matched funding and seeking concomitant rewards.

Conclusion

Place-based service and giving were second nature to the Dewar brothers during and after achieving business success—recognizing that there may be prosocial actions undertaken by business historical figures that are not about the pursuit of growth or profit is an area of potentially very rich inquiry for business historians that can illuminate networks, motivations, activities, and the lasting impact on places therein. The Dewar brothers’ clear emotional connection to their hometown over the course of their lives illustrates this. By combining the spatial and temporal dimensions of this kind of research, business historians have much to offer and explore in these spaces.

Our analysis of the Dewar family’s service and giving over the period in question was drawn principally from newspaper sources that have not been utilized in business history to the same extent as in other historical disciplines. Per Hansen raised the importance of recognizing the problem you are seeking to resolve by using newspapers as a source. Our problem was establishing the extent and value of the brothers’ informal giving—since no surviving archives capture the brothers’ motivation for giving, we had to work with public accounts of their activities and public utterances regarding them. This neatly captured the direction Hansen gave to business historians in using newspapers as sources but also allowed us to triangulate and develop our narrative in line with the company’s own growth story and the various archival materials we could access elsewhere.

Feldman argues that “what matters most is human agency—the building of institutions and the myriad of public and private decisions that determine the character of a place.” ⁹² We posit that the contextual knowledge generated from the local and national political roles of John Alexander and Tommy acted as both a driver of understanding localized and community needs and an enabler to work holistically to address them by entering partnerships with local government to support public initiatives in local healthcare and housing. In terms of a return, their ennoblement for public service clearly contributed to their symbolic position, but their personal localized giving is much more difficult to ascribe a return to beyond their stated affection for their hometown. Being offered and declining the freedom of the city complicates our understanding of returns from giving as the brothers not only did not seek a return from their giving, but refused when offered and continued giving.

The localized and informal nature of their civic duty and philanthropic focus is almost at odds with the formal and global outlook and reach of the family business itself, which was principally focused on the export of whisky to the global market they helped to create. ⁹³ The Dewar brothers were undoubtedly global in their perspective owing to their exposure to international business markets and their whisky exports, which were catalyzed by the considerable travels of Tommy Dewar in his rambles around the globe and enabled the business to forge channels to those markets. This outward orientation may also have acted as a driver for the informal philanthropic activities that the brothers later engaged in, at a time when the profit from the business activities increased substantially, coinciding with a time in continental Europe and North America where informal and formal philanthropy linked to family business and family foundations was commonplace. ⁹⁴

It is important to note the distinctly different approach that the brothers took in comparison with their “enlightened” entrepreneurial peers, via their combination of public service, entrepreneurship, and philanthropy, which is perhaps best understood as the bringing together of all three elements in a sustainable interaction to develop place socially and economically. We argue that higher forms of entrepreneurship (e.g., navigating complex institutional environments) imply more complex arrangements—combining politics, capital, and giving. The brothers expertly navigated this but were not explicitly focusing on the connection between their business and public good in the way Lever, Cadbury, Owen, and Rowntree appear to be (with the concomitant direct benefits to their businesses). Where Lever et al. built model villages for their workers in their main businesses and saw a commensurate economic value in doing so, John Alexander instead built a model village on his estate for the estate workers with little clear economic benefit to him or his company, though arguably other noneconomic benefits were generated to their home and estate life by keeping loyal and happy workers supporting their home life. Tommy gifted Kinnoull Hill to the city despite living in England. Similarly, the brothers’ apparent reluctance to use philanthropy to advertise their business points directly to the subtlety of their thinking at that time and a recognition that political and civic society along with business, philanthropy, and holding a strong emotional connection are instrumental to building sustainability into place. These factors, alongside no visible capital return to the brothers or the business, move the discussion beyond the parameters of capital exchange and the generative nature of capital in philanthropy to something else—it highlights the importance of local and emotional attachment to place as key drivers of philanthropy that deserve attention.