Bessie Williamson

Elizabeth Leitch "Bessie" Williamson (22 August 1910 - 26 May 1982) was a Scottish distillery manager and former owner of the Laphroaig distillery noted for being the first woman to manage a Scotch whisky distillery during the 20th century.^[1][2] She is credited as being instrumental in promoting single malt whisky, in particular Islay malts and Laphroaig, during the then-emerging US trend for single malts.^[3]

Biography

Williamson was born in Glasgow in 1910 to John Williamson, a gunner in France with the Royal Garrison Artillery who died in 1918, and Agnes Whyte, née Paton. She attended the University of Glasgow from 1927, intending to become a teacher. However she did not graduate until 1932. While waiting to enrol at Jordanhill College of Education she worked as an office assistant with her uncle William Paton, an accountant working for the restaurateurs and purveyors Smith (Glasgow) Ltd.^[2]

After graduating with an MA in 1932,^[2][4] Williamson accepted a summer job at Laphroaig distillery intending only to stay a few months. She worked directly with then owner Ian Hunter, eventually taking on responsibility for US distribution following Hunter's stroke in 1938. By the time of the Second World War she had become full-time distillery manager.

With operations mothballed during the war and government seeking to use the distillery for storage and training purposes, Williamson succeeded in preventing the theft of stock or damage to equipment that had occurred at other distilleries such as Old Bushmills Distillery in Dublin and could have hampered recovery of production in the postwar period. Over 400 tonnes of ammunition were stored at the facility during the early years of her tenure.^[3]

After production restarted following the war, Williamson continued to pursue the blending sales that had been the backbone of Laphroaig's business model beforehand, but starting to guide the business elsewhere. Upon Hunter's death in 1954,^[5][6] Williamson inherited the controlling interest in the Laphroaig distillery on Islay, Hunter's house Ardenistiel, and the island of Texa. Williamson is credited with being among the first to anticipate the coming trend for single malt scotches and to position the Laphroaig product, and by extension other Islay malts, to the American market.^[3] Williamson was quoted on UK television in the 1960s saying "The secret of Islay whiskies is the peaty water and the peat ... there's an increasing demand for the [single] Islay whiskies. We can't supply the demand that we have for our whiskies."^[3]

The Scotch Whisky Association named Williamson as its American spokesperson from 1961 to 1964 and she toured the US representing Islay whisky to buyers and distributors. While touring the US Bessie met her future husband, Islay-born Canadian singer and entertainer Wishart Campbell and they married in 1961.

In 1962 Williamson sold a third of her business shares to Seager Evans. The balance of ownership was released in 1967 to Long John Distilleries. Williamson continued as managing director of the distillery until her retirement in 1972. Long John International was acquired by Whitbread & Co in 1975 and sold to Allied Lyons, now Allied Domecq, in 1990. Fortune Brands then split up its business product lines in 2011, forming its spirits business into Beam Inc. Beam was then purchased by Suntory in April 2014. Williamson died at Gartnavel General Hospital in Glasgow on 26 May 1982.^[2]

References