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Lord Leverhulme is the most familiar name of William Hesketh Lever, ( 19 September 1851 - 7 May 1925 ), an English Industrialist and colonialist who was created 1st Viscount Leverhulme. William Lever was born in Bolton , Lancashire in 1851 , and educated at the Bolton Church Institute. In 1886 he established a soap manufacturing company called Lever Brothers (now part of Unilever ) with his brother James. It was one of the first companies to manufacture soap from vegetable oils, and in conjunction with Lever's business acumen and marketing practices, produced a great fortune. James Lever never took an active part in running the business. William Lever's biographer, Adam MacQueen, speculates that James suffered from mental instability exacerbated by a traffic accident in his youth. From 1888 , Lever began to put his philanthropic principles into practice through the construction of Port Sunlight , a model community designed to house and support the workers of Lever Brothers, who already enjoyed generous wages and innovative benefits. Lever's philanthropy had definite paternalistic overtones, and life in Port Sunlight included intrusive rules and implied mandatory participation in activities. With accommodation tied to employment, a worker losing his or her job could be almost simultaneously evicted. Nonetheless, conditions, pay, hours, and benefits far exceeded those prevailing in similar industries. In the early 1900s, Lever used palm oil produced in the British West African colonies. Soon, he found difficulties in obtaining more palm plantation concessions and started looking elsewhere in other colonies. In 1911, Lever visited the Belgian Congo to exploit cheap labor and Palm Oil concessions in that country. Palm oil production was based on slave labour enforced by terrible violence. Lever's attitudes towards the Congolese were paternalistic and racist, and his negotiations with the Belgian coloniser to enforce the system known as '' Travail Forcé '' (forced labor) are well documented. As such, he fully participated in this system of formalised slave labor, as a main actor. The archives show a record of Belgian administrators, missionaries and doctors protesting against the practises at the Lever plantations. Formal parliamentary investigations were called for by members of the Belgian Socialist Party , but despite their work, the practise of forced labor continued until indepence in 1960.Jules Marechal, "Travail forcé pour l’huile de palme de Lord Leverhulme L’Histoire du Congo 1910-1945". Part III. Editions Paula Bellings. pp.348-368. Jules Marechal, the authority on the history of Belgian colonisation, includes archival documents in full showing the protests by missionaries, administrators and doctors against the practises in 'Leverville' and on the Lever plantations. Lever long lived in the Rivington area of Bolton . In 1913 , his house there was destroyed by Suffragettes -- ironically, as he was in favour women's suffrage. He had a large mansion created to replace this original home. Lever was a lifelong supporter of William Gladstone and the Liberal cause, and was often called upon to contest elections for the Liberal Party. He and served as Member of Parliament for one of the seats in the Metropolitan Borough Of Wirral between 1906 and 1909, as High Sheriff of Lancaster in 1917 . Lord Leverhulme is remembered as a philanthropist. Port Sunlight is now the home of the Lady Lever Art Gallery ; endowed a school of tropical medicine at Liverpool University ; gifted Lancaster House in London to the British nation; and endowed the Leverhulme Trust . The garden of his former London residence Hill Garden in Hampstead , is open to the public. In 1918 , Lever bought the Isle Of Lewis , Scotland , with the intention of making Stornoway an industrial town and building a fish cannery, his intentions were received badly by the islanders. He gave the island to the people in 1923 . He was created Baron Leverhulme on 21 June 1917 , and Viscount Leverhulme on 27 November 1922 . The Leverhulme viscountcy passed to his son William Hulme Lever in 1925 , and became extinct on the death of the third viscount, Philip William Bryce Lever, in 2000 . NOTES REFERENCES
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