The Search for God and Guinness

by Stephen Mansfield

  In his eagerness to make his point, the spirited doctor at times risked being more vivid than the Guinness board was probably used to. Writing of the “lavatory arrangements” and in particular of the Earl Street area where there were often six toilets for as many as forty-five families, Lumsden wrote: “The females do not use these closets, I was informed, but instead use buckets which they empty into the dustbins. This is a truly shocking state of affairs . . . The actual closets are deplorable and appallingly filthy . . . the seats often made of common half-inch unplaned deal, put together in the roughest manner. In many cases I found them choked up to six or eight inches above the seat with sold human excrement!”

  Yet as enraged as Lumsden became, he was not critical of the people who lived in these squalid tenements, as some health officials had been throughout the years. Adopting the manner of his mentor, Dr. Cameron, in describing the problem of alcoholism, Lumsden dared to confess, “For my part, I have always sympathized with the working man in his social surroundings; he has few opportunities of relaxation or enjoyment outside of the club or public house.” This was a daring admission in an age savaged by alcohol abuse, but Lumsden was revealing the compassion that fueled his labors.

  There was, too, some good news amidst this sad report: Lumsden found that the Guinness homes were vastly superior to the non-Guinness homes he surveyed. “These houses,” he recounted to the board, “were all clean, tidy and home-like, many of them I am extremely pleased to be able to state were scrupulously clean and, in every sense, a credit to the occupiers.” It was a pleasant note in a torrent of bad news.

  Finally, Lumsden’s conclusion was to the point: “I consider the conditions under which most of your people live, move and have their being is anything but satisfactory and far from what one would desire.” His proposal for change was equally straightforward.

  If the firm could only see their way to erect more tenement buildings . . . I am convinced our people would flock to them from the wretched buildings . . . the mortality returns would be diminished, great contentment and happiness made possible, less sickness, want and misery would be evident . . . The moral effect of the inspection has been productive of much good . . . it has shown the people the interest the firm takes in their welfare.

  In addition to this primary recommendation, Lumsden proposed six other courses of action that he believed would help in the short term. First, he suggested that the firm appoint an inspector of dwellings. His survey had done much good, not only in the gathering of facts but also in building goodwill with workers, and he believed the work should continue. Second, he surprisingly recommended that aid such as sick pay be withheld from workers who insisted upon living in dwellings condemned by the company. In other words, stop rewarding decisions that led to ill health. Third, he urged the company to keep a register of suitable housing, so that workers could be directed to better dwellings. Fourth, he wanted the company to exercise its considerable influence to keep its laborers from living in unhealthy tenements. Fifth, he suggested cooking classes be offered to women, the first of a flurry of recommendations he would make in regards to education. And finally, he recommended that “annual certificates of merit” be awarded to houses that were kept in good order. He would recommend more such awards in time, and they would go far in motivating families to improve their homes and themselves.

  Yet of all that Dr. Lumsden reflected in his report, it may have been his contagious sense of mission and of the possibilities at hand that most won the board. The young doctor had reported some horrible conditions, yes, and in the most stark terms. But he was equally convinced that genuine changes could be made, that the situation was not so fixed as to be incapable of improvement. Much of this confidence arose from Dr. Lumsden’s view of the Guinness workers themselves, from their innate goodness and willingness to improve if only they were shown how. As he wrote in a later report,

  I personally have always found the majority of our men and their wives reasonable, intelligent and anxious to learn. They have to be tactfully handled and kindly treated, but they are always respectful, apparently grateful and often quick in appreciating the necessity for improvement. There are, of course, many infirmities of national character which time and education can alone overcome, but I am sanguine of the results, and I believe our people are capable of improvement, and worthy of the effort.

  This positive spirit surely touched the Guinness board as they met to consider Dr. Lumsden’s proposals on April 4, 1901. Judging by the portions of the board’s minutes we have today, Dr. Lumsden’s proposals were examined carefully.

  Pending the erection of the Corporation’s houses on the Bride Street area and the erection of Lord Iveagh’s houses on the Bill Alley area, the only practical suggestion would seem to be that Mr. Busby (Registry Department) should place himself in touch with the existing agencies for the letting of houses.

  Average number of families using the one WC. Dr. Lumsden to submit a draft letter to the Public Health Authorities with a view of urging them to take steps in this connection.

  Cases of members of the opposite sex occupying the same sleeping apartment. [Particular case mentioned.] Dr. Lumsden will ascertain whether this case still exists, and if so will communicate with the Parish Priest.

  This last point for the board’s consideration arose from Dr. Lumsden’s reporting that unmarried adults of the opposite sex were sometimes living in the same quarters and, indeed, sometimes sleeping in the same bed. The good doctor was compassionate about these conditions, explaining that this was a “not-uncommon state of affairs in the Dublin slums, I regret to say.” Still, Lumsden was a devoted Christian and a deeply ethical man, so it was more than narrow Victorian values that moved him to thunder in his report, “This overcrowding, besides being unhealthy in the extreme and a means of the spread of disease, is also highly immoral.” The board took the point, decided to check into the matter, and it is revealing of their broadmindedness that they determined to involve the local Catholic priest in solving this particular problem.

  It is a tribute to the enduring benevolence of the Guinness firm that the board that convened in 1901 was eager to follow Dr. Lumsden’s suggestions. It might have been otherwise. These senior men, some of them Guinness heirs, might well have felt themselves bullied and manipulated by this upstart, this fresh-faced young doctor with his novel ideas of corporate duties to the poor. They might have simply labeled him a radical or a socialist and ignored his suggestions or, worse, sent him away to ply his trade elsewhere. They might, too, have felt they had already done enough. Didn’t they pay the highest wages possible? Wasn’t their firm already the best place in Ireland to work? Hadn’t they already brought employment and training to thousands? Why should they feel a responsibility to do more? This might well have been their response and few of the time would have blamed them had it been so.

  Instead, they threw themselves into the vision Lumsden had set. They immediately approved funds for the certificates and contests the doctor recommended. They also agreed to keep registers of quality housing, to dispatch health officials to Guinness workers’ homes, and to withhold aid from employees who stubbornly insisted on living in inadequate housing when better dwellings were available.

  As important, notes from the board’s meeting in October of 1901 reveal that brewery managers were dispatched to meet with employees whose homes did not meet Lumsden’s standards for health. Reports from these meetings were studied by the board and from them we get a picture of the kinds of problems that plagued Guinness workers at the time. Some of the workers were surprised at Lumsden’s evaluation, thought that their homes were adequate, but accepted responsibility for improving conditions according to the doctor’s standards. Other men pointed to wives of “bad character” who would not do as they were told or as the company expected of employee spouses. Yet another man explained that his wife had been sick for many months but he promised that she was well now and that they would do all they could to answer the company’
s concerns. There were many other explanations and excuses, but what we should not forget is the image of board members from the largest brewery in the world examining in detail the reports of conditions in workers’ homes. That the company hired a man like Lumsden in the first place, accepted his recommendations, and then spent so many hours working to improve conditions as he directed, is a moving statement of how much Guinness wanted to fulfill its legacy of compassion and generosity.

  The Iveagh Market—Dublin’s first indoor market— was a local fixture for decades

  What the board likely did not understand at the time was where Lumsden hoped to lead them. He was aware of emerging trends in public health and he was watching, too, other thriving companies and how they cared for their employees. A hint at what he hoped Guinness might become appears at the end of a report he submitted to the board not long after his survey of homes. He first offered nine suggestions for improving workers’ lives and all nine were eventually followed, as we shall see. Dr. Lumsden recommended that the company provide:

  1. Technical education for the younger generation

  2. Popular lectures of educational value

  3. A program of athletics and exercise

  4. Literature encouraging hygiene and the prevention of disease

  5. Courses in cooking for mothers and young women

  6. Education regarding the feeding of infants

  7. Recreational opportunities in the form of concerts or socials

  8. Opportunities for management and laborers to meet and socialize

  9. Housing

  It was while explaining, once again, this last point of housing that Dr. Lumsden tipped his hand.

  Until our families are given the opportunity of being comfortably and decently housed, we cannot expect to do much in raising their social and moral standard. I therefore make so bold as to look forward to the day when a Brewery Model Village is built on the lines of Cadbury’s at Bournville [sic], and Lever Brothers at Port Sunlight, where our people can obtain a small one- or two-storied cottage at reasonable rent.

  If the board had not understood before, here was Lumsden’s vision clearly spelled out. He was grateful for the chance to serve as the company’s medical officer, to survey the homes and improve sanitation, and to try to make Guinness a healthy place to work. But he clearly hoped for more. He dreamed of a day when an entire model village might be built, one in which workers could own their own cottages and where healthy living would be encouraged. This was where Lumsden hoped to take Guinness; to understand this further, we have to know something of the examples of Cadbury’s and Lever that guided his thinking.

  John Cadbury, founder of the world’s largest chocolate company, was born in Birmingham, England, in 1801. He came from a long line of devoted Quakers and, as wonderfully as this faith shaped the social values of the company he would one day found, it also caused him to be treated with prejudice and discrimination throughout his life. As a Quaker, he was not allowed to study law or medicine in the universities of his day. A military career was also not an option, since Quakers are historically pacifists. Like many of his faith, he turned to business and underwent an apprenticeship as a tea dealer in the Leeds of 1818.

  In 1824, Cadbury opened a small grocery store at 93 Bull Street in Birmingham. Like any good merchant, he not only became familiar with the needs of his customers but also grew to understand the evils that plagued his society. He came to believe that alcohol was the scourge of his generation. As a Quaker he had always contended that consuming alcohol was immoral, but he became even more certain of this when he saw the rampant drunkenness of his age, leaving poverty and vice in its wake. He decided to provide an alternative. By 1831, he had determined to leave the grocery business and to begin manufacturing chocolate and cocoa. He had convinced himself that “drinking chocolate” could become an alternative to the gin and whiskey that were ravaging so many lives. Merging his business skills with his Quaker sense of social duty, Cadbury bought an old malt house on Crooked Lane and began making chocolate.

  His businesses thrived. Before long, Cadbury’s had moved to a large factory on Bridge Street and was one of the major industries of Birmingham. In 1879, George Cadbury, John’s son, took the lead of the firm and soon showed that he was as committed to social reform as his father. Rather than building a larger factory in Birmingham as their company prospered, George and his younger brother, Richard, decided to move the firm out of the slum-ridden city to a farming region four miles to the south. There they built Bournville, a model industrial village in which wages were relatively high, working conditions were excellent, medical services were provided, and experiments with workers’ committees proved a thrilling success.

  Bournville became a model of community planning and corporate social concern that was emulated the world over. In the decades after its founding, the Cadburys hired architect William Alexander Harvey to design neighborhoods of Arts and Crafts–style houses that were celebrated for their beauty, efficiency, and the manner in which they improved workers’ lives. The Cadburys also developed programs for encouraging outdoor sports, social events, education, and even spa life, centered around the natural mineral springs that graced the village property.

  Though Bournville has now been incorporated into the city of Birmingham, it still exists as a distinct community of more than 7,800 homes on 1,000 acres and is still honored as a valiant effort to answer the ravages of the industrial age with faith, generosity, and compassion.

  What is important for our purposes, though, is how the Bournville of the early 1900s must have contrasted with Dublin in the mind of Dr. John Lumsden. Bournville was by that time a lovely village of happy workers who lived healthy, meaningful lives—all because a successful company had decided to use its wealth for social good. Lumsden’s Dublin, though, was the European center of sickness and death. Lumsden wanted Guinness to bring this curse to an end. What he wanted was a Dublin version of Bournville, and when the young doctor visited Port Sunlight in 1905, this passion reached a fever pitch.

  This model of corporate benevolence that completed Lumsden’s inspiration was the vision of William Hesketh Lever. Born in 1851 in Bolton, England, Lever was educated at the Bolton Church Institute. He was trained for business in his father’s grocery firm but in 1886, he decided to start a soap manufacturing company in partnership with his brother, James. Lever Brothers soap was the first that was manufactured using vegetable oils rather than animal fats. and this, combined with the Levers’ production and marketing skills, lifted their new company to astounding success.

  In 1888, Lever, now a fabulously wealthy man, decided to build a community similar to Cadbury’s Bournville. Employing some thirty architects, Lever built his model village on fifty-six acres along the River Mersey. His goal was “to socialize and Christianise business relations and get back to that close family brotherhood that existed in the good old days of hand labor.” Taking a bit more of a paternal approach than Cadbury’s, Lever built Port Sunlight on a profit-sharing model in which Lever reinvested profits back into the village for his employees. As he explained this to workers, “It would not do you much good if you send it down your throats in the form of bottles of whiskey, bags of sweets, or fat geese at Christmas. On the other hand, if you leave the money with me, I shall use it to provide for you everything that makes life pleasant—nice houses, comfortable homes, and healthy recreation.”

  Lever worked to make Port Sunlight a worker’s heaven. There were lovely homes in Old English, Dutch, and Flemish architectural styles. There was a reproduction of Shakespeare’s cottage at Stratford-On-Avon. Schools were built, parks were cultivated, and courses on nearly every skill, craft, and trade were provided. There were also an art gallery, a monthly publication, and a wide variety of athletic facilities. The village boasted several concert halls, one of which was so well planned that the Beatles performed there as late as 1962.

  What men like Cadbury and Lever did to improve the conditions of their worker
s was replicated in other projects throughout England. There was Stewartby, originally built for the workers of the London Brick Company; the Woodlands, designed by Percy Bond Houfton; and Hampstead Garden Suburb, founded by Henrietta Barnett, to name but a few. Even when leading companies did not develop entire villages or planned communities, many still attempted dramatic efforts to improve the lives of their workers, largely because of the examples set by firms like Cadbury’s and Lever. All of these were attempts to roll back the grinding poverty and crushing slum life that had risen to critical levels in the industrial age.

  Lumsden toured both Bournville and Port Sunlight in 1905 and then went on to visit health facilities on the European continent. When he returned to Ireland, he submitted a report to the Guinness board. Typical of his well-known sense of humor, he called his report “A Summer Ramble.” In it he described in glowing terms all that he had seen: the clean accommodations, the beautiful athletic facilities, the safe, wide streets, and the programs to encourage healthy living. It must have been a transforming time for the young doctor, now merely thirty-five years old, and it certainly clarified his vision not only for public health but also for his own life’s work.

  We do not have records that provide details, but it is obvious from the course of the next decades that Guinness did not wish to follow the examples of Cadbury and Lever. There would be nothing like the “Brewery Model Village” that Lumsden had proposed, no planned community a few miles outside of Dublin to serve as an example for the world. We can only speculate as to why. That it cannot be blamed on callousness of the Guinness board or a disregard for workers’ lives seems clear given the company’s long history of care for its employees. Historians have suggested many possible reasons, from the distractions of the oncoming war in Europe to a Guinness desire to find solutions right in the heart of Dublin where the monsters of want and poverty lived. All we can know for sure is that nothing of the Bournville or Port Sunlight kind of solution was ever attempted.