It would be interesting to know who today, other than the discerning wine drinkers of Dublin, is familiar with the name Findlater. The author of this book observes that in the mid-1970s his mother was taken aback when asked in a shop to spell her surname since for more than 100 years it had been well-known throughout the capital. From the middle of the 19th century until the company's demise at the end of 1968, Findlaters had been the most famous grocers of Dublin; at its height, the business supported 21 retail outlets employing hundreds of staff.
In effect, Findlaters was an institution and, as becomes clear, while for a long time this was its strength, ultimately it became a fatal weakness. It is therefore important that Findlaters has been properly and thoroughly commemorated and the wealth of archival material deployed provides a meticulous picture not just of the family but also of merchant life in Dublin during the past 200 years.
Like their former stores, the mercantile class to which the Findlaters belonged no longer exists. Alex Findlater is amusing on the snobberies of a former era when a wealth of tiny distinctions was used to separate one social group from another, quoting from Great Expectations that "while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you can be as genteel as never was and brew".
One member of the extended family who lived in Malahide was disconcerted in 1917 when Findlaters opened a local branch because she was obliged to patronise it and thereby acknowledge her blood ties with trade. George Bernard Shaw, a distant cousin, summed up the matter when he declared: "It was simply the rule in Dublin that though business had to be admitted as gentlemanly, it must be wholesale business." Gentlemen most definitely did not own shops.
That the Findlaters were relatively untroubled by these social niceties may have been due to their non-Irish origins. The first Alexander Findlater to go into business here came from Scotland in 1823 and originally traded in whiskey before moving into other goods. A large number of Scottish merchants settled in Ireland during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, among the familiar names from this period being Arnott, Jameson, Weir and Johnston.
Alexander Findlater was an extraordinarily industrious man and established certain patterns of behaviour in both his business and private life which were followed by later generations of the family. While the grocery business was a core concern, it is fascinating to learn just how widespread were the Findlaters' other commercial interests. They owned a distillery, and their brewery only closed in the 1950s; the hotels they controlled included the St Lawrence in Howth and the Royal in Bray; and they also had a large stake in what is now Dublin's Olympia Theatre and the long-demolished Empire in Belfast.
But just as important were the family's philanthropic activities. The most tangible sign of Findlater wealth is the Presbyterian church on the north-east corner of Parnell Square, built in the early 1860s with funds provided by the first Alexander. But Alex Findlater provides plenty of evidence that other ancestors were just as munificent, if not in quite so overt a fashion. Typically, at the end of the 19th century, in addition to managing all his diverse business, the author's great-uncle Adam Findlater was a member of both the Dublin Port and Docks Board and the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, as well as being chairman of the Commercial Travellers' Benevolent Institute for which he raised considerable funds.
The Findlaters, it becomes clear, may have originated outside Ireland but quickly became immersed in the culture of their adoptive city. Yet, they would always remain outsiders to some extent, separated from the majority of the local population by their religion and their politics - until Independence, the family tended to support a liberal form of Unionism. Naturally, they adapted to changing political circumstances, but their particular class of Protestant merchants was one that dwindled in significance during the course of the 20th century.
In the new State, initially, Findlaters continued to thrive and even at the middle of the 20th century there seemed to be no reason to imagine that the company would not still be around today.
But Alex Findlater's examination of the company's financial papers, together with his personal experience of the final years, show that an old-fashioned grocery business had no chance of long-term survival. The form of individual service offered by the company's shops, and the resultant large numbers of staff employed, simply could not compete with the new self-service supermarkets which offered consumers cheaper goods. Findlaters did consider changing its approach to retailing but by the time this was initiated, it was already too late, not least because there were no funds to support such a drastic overhaul.
Alex Findlater describes the closure of the company with a pragmatic composure probably not felt by the many customers who missed the quality of service his family business had provided for so long.
His own business as a wine merchant has thrived, to such an extent that he claims the past few years were primarily spent researching and writing this history of the family.
The original manuscript, he says, ran to over 250,000 words and had to be drastically pruned. Still further curtailment of the text might have been helpful because, while he writes with great gusto, the range of topics covered spreads too far; a chapter is devoted, for example, to his maternal family and although this material is unquestionably interesting, it has the effect of distracting the reader from the core subject, namely the Findlater business.
For all that, however, let this book be recommended as a valuable addition to the history of Dublin, social, economic and mercantile. It may also have the advantage of ensuring that when shopping his mother no longer has to spell out her surname.
Robert O'Byrne is an author and an Irish Times journalist