"1st Baronet" Sir Walter Gilbey Hand Written Letter For Sale

Up for sale the "1st Baronet" Sir Walter Gilbey Hand Written Letter. 

ES-3813D

Sir Walter Gilbey, 1st Baronet, DL (2 May 1831 – 12 November 1914) was Gilbey was born at Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire to parents Henry and Elizabeth. His father,

the owner (and frequently driver) of the daily coach between Bishop's Stortford and

London, died when he was eleven years old. Walter was shortly placed in the

office of an estate agent at Tring,

subsequently obtaining a clerkship in a firm of parliamentary agents in

London. On

the outbreak of the Crimean War, Walter and

his younger brother Alfred volunteered for civilian service at the front, and

were employed at a convalescent hospital on the Dardanelles. Returning to London on the declaration of peace,

the pair took the advice of their eldest brother Henry, a wholesale wine-merchant, and started in the included the local London style gin. The heavy duty then levied by the British government on French,

Portuguese and Spanish wines made them too costly for English middle classes,

and especially lower middle classes, which could only afford beer.

Henry Gilbey believed these classes would gladly drink wine if they could get

it at a moderate price. On his advice Walter and Alfred determined to push the

sales of colonial, and particularly of Cape, wines, on which the duty was comparatively light.

Financially backed by Henry, they opened a small retail business in a basement

in Oxford Street, London, in

1857. The

Cape wines proved popular, and within three years the brothers had 20,000

customers on their books. The creation of the off-licence system by William Ewart Gladstone,

then Chancellor of the

Exchequer, in 1860, followed by the large reduction in the duty on

French wines effected by the commercial treaty between England and France in

1861, revolutionized their trade and laid the foundation of their fortunes. Three

provincial grocers, who had been granted the new off-licence, applied to

be appointed the Gilbeys agents in their respective districts, and many similar

applications followed. These were granted, and before very long a leading local

grocer was acting as the firm's agents in every district in England. The

grocer who dealt in the Gilbeys' wines and spirits was not allowed to sell

those of any other firm, and the Gilbeys in return handed over to him all their

existing customers in his district. This arrangement was of mutual advantage,

and the Gilbeys' business increased so rapidly that, in 1864, Henry Gilbey

abandoned his own undertaking to join his brothers. In 1867 the three brothers

secured the old Pantheon theatre and concert hall in Oxford Street for their headquarters. In 1875, the firm

purchased a large claret-producing estate in Medoc,

on the banks of the Gironde, and became also the proprietors

of two large whisky-distilleries in Scotland. In 1893 the business was

converted, for family reasons, into a private limited liability company,

of which Walter Gilbey, who in the same year was created a baronet, was chairman. Sir Walter Gilbey also became well

known as a breeder of shire horses, and he did

much to improve the breed of English horses (other than race-horses) generally,

and wrote extensively on the subject, including the encyclopedic Animal

Painters of England From the Year 1650: A brief history of their lives and

works. He became president of the Shire Horse Society, of the Hackney Horse Society, and of the Hunters' Improvement

Society, and he was the founder and chairman of the London Cart Horse Parade

Society. He was also a practical agriculturist, and president of the Royal

Agricultural Society. He was appointed a deputy