Whiskey History: Thomas Dewar

By Richard Thomas

As much as whiskey fans like to imagine every great brand as being built by a legendary Master Distiller or Blender, endlessly tinkering with grain, copper, and wood, in truth most were built by managers and salesmen. Such was the case with Dewar’s. The company was founded by John Dewar, Sr in 1846, and was built by his two sons into one of blended scotch’s major brand names. The eldest, John Dewar, Jr., was the manager. The younger brother, Thomas Dewar, was the salesman.

Born in Perth in 1864, Dewar grew up into a charming man, endowed with a silvered tongue. The witticism “minds are like parachutes: they only function when open” is his. Having a combination of ambition and wanderlust, Dewar left his older brother John to run the home office and set out to travel the world and sell the family’s spirits. He visited 26 countries in two years, making Dewar’s into an international brand and the best-selling scotch in the United States. He also collected material for a book Ramble Around The World, published in 1894.

Upon returning home, Dewar divided his time between being something of a dandy, further promoting Dewar’s Whisky, and politics. In the 1890s, he was reputedly among the first handful of Britons to buy a car, and also among the first to install a London advertising billboard (for Dewar’s, of course) using electric lights. Like many dandies, he was a thoroughbred horse breeder and racer, and produced two noteworthy horses in Challenger and Cameronian. Active in Tory politics, he was elected to Parliament in 1900 after occupying some municipal appointments in the late 1890s.

As an MP, Dewar’s actions would later tarnish his name with antisemitism. He campaigned vigorously for the Aliens Act of 1905, Britain’s first immigration control law and one passed with the clear intent of blocking Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

However, Dewar’s antisemitism was almost fashionable at the turn of the century, and posed no obstacle to his advancement in British upper class society. He was knighted in 1902, made baronet in 1917, and in due course created 1st Baron Dewar in 1919. Dewar never married, and as he had no heirs, his titles became extinct upon his death in 1830.