AS THE Guinness family celebrates a quarter millennium of brewing this year, maybe it should mark the occasion by laying a wreath in gratitude at the grave of Ireland's greatest temperance campaigner, writes Frank McNally.
It would be a dubious tribute, to be sure. But the success of the world’s most famous stout owes at least something to the triumph – short-lived as it was – of Fr Theobald Mathew’s Total Abstinence Campaign.
Although his zero-tolerance approach to alcohol was bad news for breweries and distilleries alike at the time, his primary target was the hard stuff – whiskey and poitín in particular – the poor man’s drink of choice in pre-Famine Ireland.
Ale and porter were expensive, urban tastes then. In the 1830s, per capita annual consumption of whiskey in Ireland rivalled beer at an estimated 3.5 gallons each.
And if anything, given that a government report of 1825 estimated the country had 10,000 unlicensed distilleries – one third of them in Inishowen alone – the figures for spirit drinking were probably understated.
So producers of strong liquor had most to fear from Father Mathew. His own brother was among the distillers put out of business by the crusade, which achieved extraordinary success in a few short years just before the Famine. By its height, over half the population, across all religious denominations, had taken the pledge.
The effects on the whiskey trade were dramatic. According to John F Quinn's 2002 book Father Mathew's Crusade: Temperance in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and Irish America: "The number of gallons of spirits consumed in Ireland fell 48 per cent from 12.3 million in 1838 to 6.45 million in 1844. Since the population increased during these years, the decline in per capita consumption of spirits was even greater. . . the number of [legal] distilleries decreased 29 per cent from 87 to 62; the number of spirit dealers declined 30 per cent from 455 to 317; and the number of whiskey retailers dropped 38 per cent from 20,399 to 12,646 . . ." Then the Famine and a basic lack of organisation saw Fr Mathew's campaign collapse as rapidly as it had risen.
But even if it was not his aim, the apostle of temperance had probably made a more lasting contribution in helping to change tastes away from spirits to ale, beer, and stout. Of course the influence of successive British governments, which saw whiskey as a big contributor to crime (and rebellion) in Ireland, was a factor too.
At any rate, Guinness was the main beneficiary of the change. And as its dominance of the market grew, it was soon doing for smaller breweries what the temperance campaign couldn’t.
There’s a striking correlation between the lives of Fr Mathew and the second heir to the brewing empire, Benjamin Guinness. Both were born in the 1790s; they enjoyed similar life spans; and at the time the former launched his anti-drink crusade, in 1838, the latter was just about to take control of the family business.
Benjamin Guinness seems to have been a glowing exception to the “Third Generation Rule”. In the classic model, the first generation builds up a company; the second consolidates and develops it; then the third squanders the whole thing (often through drinking).
But the third Guinness built on the achievement of Arthurs I and II and it was under him that the brewery underwent its most dramatic expansion.
In this he benefited from a recovery in economic fortunes after the recession that followed the Napoleonic wars and held back the company under his father. And although the Famine drastically reduced the size of his home market, it also forced him to seek other outlets abroad: a move that would yield great rewards.
By the time Fr Mathew was bringing his message overseas – first to England and later the US – so was Guinness. The former had the more dramatic success, initially, although again it was fleeting.
If you ask people in the UK or US now which exports Ireland is most famous for, temperance would probably not feature high on the list; unlike a certain stout. As if to underline the point, Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs operates out of Benjamin Guinness’s old house on St Stephen’s Green, donated to the State in 1939.
It might be some consolation to Fr Mathew that at least religion benefited from the philanthropy to which Benjamin Guinness’s beer-based wealth inclined him. Among other things, the brewery magnate spent £150,000 – a huge sum of money then – restoring St Patrick’s Cathedral, a contribution that has earned him a statue in the grounds.
It may have been the wrong church from Fr Mathew’s point of view, but as a committed ecumenist, he could hardly have objected.
He too would be honoured in his turn. Among the things that now commemorate him is the former Whitworth or Church Street Bridge in Dublin. Renamed in his honour for the movement’s 1938 centenary, this connects the northside with the southwest inner city: thus, ironically, leading many of its daily users in the general direction of St James’s Gate.