Background
William Vestey was born on 21 January 1859. In 1876, at the age of seventeen, he was sent to Chicago by his father Samuel Vestey, a provisioner of Liverpool. He first managed a meat canning factory that was financed by his father.
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William Vestey
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He came from an old Liverpool family of traders. They were pioneers of refrigeration, opening a cold store in London in 1895. They started by buying game birds and storing them in the cold stores of American companies before shipping them to Liverpool.
These early activities soon developed into importing beef and beef products into the United Kingdom, which in turn led to them owning cattle ranches in Brazil, Venezuela and Australia and their own meat processing factories in Argentina, Uruguay (Frigorífico Anglo del Uruguay), New Zealand and Australia.
In 1914, they built a meat processing works at Bullocky Point, Darwin, Australia, but closed its operations in 1920 after the Darwin Rebellion. The Vestey Group"s cattle station in Australia was the focus of a landmark strike in the 1960s, the Gurindji strike, which was instrumental in Indigenous Australians regaining rights to their land.
In 1915, the brothers, after being refused a request for income tax exemption made to David Lloyd George, moved to Buenos Aires to avoid paying income tax in the United Kingdom. The family later administered the business through a Paris trust that enabled it to legally avoid United Kingdom tax until the loophole was closed in 1991. From 1915 to 1918, they moved to Chicago then to Argentina and back to England.
Lord Vestey later became an important benefactor to Liverpool Cathedral, where he funded the building of the bell tower.
During World War I another Vestey company, the Blue Star Lincolnshire (now part of P&O Nedlloyd), was a major supplier of Argentine beef to England, and it was for this service to the wartime provisioning of England that William Vestey was later raised to the peerage. He was made a Baronet of Bessémer House in the Metropoliton Borough of Camberwell on 21 June 1913 and Baron Vestey, of Kingswood in the County of Surrey on 20 June 1922. Personal life She would rise through the company, eventually becoming the highest paid female executive in the world.
On 24 July 1941, the 2nd Lady Vestey was buried at Evergreen Cemetery of Superior in Nebraska.
Each spring during memorial weekend, Superior holds the annual Lady Vestey Festival in her honor. This is the town"s largest annual celebration and it attracts many people from around the area.
Death He died in 1940 and his ashes were buried in Liverpool Cathedral. He was succeeded by Samuel Vestey, 2nd Baron Vestey (1882–1954).
