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LIPTON, SIR THOMAS JOHNSTONE, BART. (1850— ), British merchant, was born at Glasgow in 1850, of Irish parents. At a very early age he was employed as errand boy to a Glasgow stationer; at fifteen he emigrated to America, where at first he worked in a grocery store, and afterwards as a tram-car driver in New Orleans, as a traveller for a portrait firm, and on a plantation in South Carolina. Eventually, having saved some money, he returned to Glasgow and opened a small provision shop. Business gradually increased, and by degrees Lipton had provision shops first all over Scotland and then all over the United King-dom. To supply his retail shops on the most favourable terms, he
purchased extensive tea, coffee and cocoa plantations in Ceylon, and provided his own packing-house for hogs in Chicago, and fruit farms, jam factories, bakeries and bacon-curing establishments in England. In 1898 his business was converted into a limited liability company. At Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in 1897 he gave 20,000 for providing dinners for a large number of the London poor. In 1898 he was knighted, and in 1902 was made a baronet. In the world of yacht-racing he became well known from his repeated attempts to win the America Cup.