William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme

[close] William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851 – 1925) was an English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician. Following an apprenticeship and a series of appointments in the family wholesale business, which he successfully expanded, he began manufacturing Sunlight Soap, building a substantial business empire with many well-known brands such as Lux and Lifebuoy. In 1886, together with his brother, James, he established Lever Brothers, which was one of the first companies to manufacture soap from vegetable oils, and which is now part of the Anglo-Dutch transnational business Unilever. In politics, Lever briefly sat as a Liberal MP for Wirral and later, as Lord Leverhulme, in the House of Lords as a Peer. He was an advocate for expansion of the British Empire, particularly in Africa and Asia, which supplied palm oil, a key ingredient in Lever's product line.

In May 1918, by then in semi-retirement, Leverhulme bought the Isle of Lewis for £167,000 and in late 1919 he bought the estate of South Harris for £36,000; both in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. His plans for their future prosperity centred upon the application of modern science and his own business skills in establishing a large and thriving fishing industry. His scheme perished with almost nothing achieved.