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The History of the Distillers Company, 1877-1939. By R. B. Weir . New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. xxii + 417 pp. Bibliography and index. $80.00. ISBN 0-19828867-0.
Business history offers many examples of companies incurring public disfavor but few have attracted as much sustained press criticism and hostility as the Distillers Company (DCL). Descriptions range from the uncomplimentary 1906 epithet, the "Torpichen Street Leviathan" (the company's head office was in Torpichen Street, Edinburgh, from 1877 until it moved to St. James's, London, in the 1930s), to the early 1980s characterization of DCL as "a dinosaur awaiting extinction" (D. Hobson, The Pride of Lucifer, London, 1990, p. 333). DCL's independent existence lasted for more than a century, ending in 1986 when it was acquired by Guinness, after one of the U.K.'s most acrimonious corporate takeover battles. This history covers slightly more than half of DCL's lifetime, exploring its formation, growth and diversification and, in the process, destroying some of the myths which fed its unpopularity. It differs from most other corporate histories in that it was neither commissioned nor subsidized by the company; DCL cooperated only by making its archives available to Weir, initially for the research for his doctoral thesis and then for this book.
The creation of DCL in 1877 by the merger of six Scottish distilling businesses followed two...