[BITList] Stirring stuff

[John Feltham]

To read this Life of the Day complete with a picture of the subject,
visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2010-10-30



Brooke,  Arthur  (1845-1918), tea merchant, was born in George Street, Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire, on 30 October 1845 to Charles Brooke, tea dealer, and his wife, Jane, nee Howard. After an early career in textiles was terminated in 1864 by the 'Cotton Famine', he trained in the wholesale tea firm Peek Brothers and Winch, initially in Liverpool and later in London.

After briefly returning home Brooke opened his first shop at 29 Market Street, Manchester, selling packeted, blended tea, sugar, and coffee, and trading under the name of Brooke, Bond & Co. The name Bond was entirely fictional, being added purely for alliterative effect. He adopted what were then viewed as innovative sales techniques: strictly cash sales, sale weight net of paper wrapping, and aggressive newspaper advertising. Within three years he had opened shops in Liverpool, Leeds, and Bradford, but in 1872 he left these in the hands of a manager and moved to London, opening an office and blending warehouse in Whitechapel High Street, his recently widowed father selling up in Ashton to help him run the business.

Although trade faltered in the late 1870s, leading Brooke to consider emigrating to New Zealand, the following decade witnessed dramatic growth based on supplying packaged, blended tea wholesale to retail grocers. By 1892, when Brooke Bond was converted to a limited liability company with a share capital of £150,000, it was the pace-setter in wholesale packet tea business, although it still retained three retail shops in the north of England. Brooke married Alice Catherine, daughter of William Young, Royal Navy paymaster at Plymouth, on 25 November 1875. They honeymooned in Paris, with Arthur taking the opportunity to visit colour printers to order display cards for his business. The couple lived initially in Stonebridge Park but by 1887 resided in Kensington and had a country house and estate, Leylands, at Wotton near Dorking. They had two daughters and two sons.

Brooke secured his market dominance by becoming 'a careful student of American business methods'  (The Grocer, 20 April 1918), visiting America to study distribution methods and sales techniques and appointing an American advertising consultant, John E. Powers, in 1903 at a fee in excess of a director's annual salary. In 1901 'Assam Brooke', as he was sometimes known, established an agency in Calcutta to purchase and blend tea in India which was to develop into a separate company in 1912. By this time his firm was one of the largest tea distributing firms in the world with an extensive domestic and export trade, operating from new premises in Goulston Street, Aldgate, after 1910, and with its own printing and bag-making works in Reading (opened 1902).

Although he retired as director of the company in 1904 and as chairman in 1910 (to be succeeded by his eldest son, Gerald), Brooke continued to retain an active interest in the business, being rumoured to have replied to a request to slow down in his old age, 'Where else could I get eight hours of pleasure so cheaply?'  (The Grocer, 20 April 1918). Brooke was also an early advocate of good working conditions, his Times obituary (16 April 1918) describing him as 'a model employer'. He introduced an eight-hour day and bonuses for his employees and supported the principles of co-partnership; his workers were reported to have looked upon him more as a colleague than employer. Brooke was an ardent admirer of W. E. Gladstone, and was regarded as a generous supporter of philanthropic and benevolent institutions, although he did not court publicity.

Brooke died on 13 April 1918 at 61 Hampstead Way, Golders Green, where his daughter Alice lived; the cause of death was recorded as acute tuberculosis and pneumonia. His funeral was at Golders Green on 16 April 1918.

Michael Winstanley 

Sources  D. Wainwright, Brooke Bond: a hundred years (1970) + D. Wainwright, 'Brooke, Arthur', DBB + The Grocer (20 April 1918) + The Grocer (27 April 1918) + Grocers' Gazette and Provision Trades' News (20 April 1918), 618 + The Times (16 April 1918) + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert. + CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1918)
Likenesses  photograph, repro. in Wainwright, Brooke Bond, 15 · photograph, Unilever Corporate Archives [see illus.]
Wealth at death  £189,584 8s. 3d.: probate, 20 July 1918, CGPLA Eng. & Wales


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