Liverpool is a city of migration and movement: Cains is ‘Liverpool in a Pint’, so it’s fitting that the Dusanj brothers, second generation immigrants, and the first Indian family to ever own a British brewery, should be the ones injecting new life into the company. Robert Cain was himself an immigrant, born in County Cork in 1826, and coming to Liverpool as an 18-year old (Queen Victoria’s age on taking the throne seven years earlier).

Liverpool in 1844 was a noisy, rich and fascinating place for a young Irishman. The city had been the dominant port in Britain’s nefarious slave trade (which between 1782 and 1807 traded in around 1 million human lives), and was blossoming under the influence of its many different races and religions.

At the age of 24, Robert entered Liverpool’s brewing industry, buying a small pub in Limekiln Lane, and brewing his own ales: down in London, work was underway on an enormous crystal palace to house Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of the following year, 1851. Brewing turned out to be the perfect trade for the affluent, vibrant city of Liverpool, and soon Robert Cain’s fortunes were rising with those of his adopted city, and those of Britain itself, which was thriving in the great Victorian era of industrial expansion, economic progress and empire.

By 1858 Robert Cain was able to buy an old established brewery site on Stanhope Street – the site where Robert Cains Beers are still brewed today – and his name rapidly became famous throughout the city for the exceptional quality of his beers.

Twenty-five years later, Liverpool Docks were frenetically busy with cargo ships carrying produce such as palm oil and sugar from West Africa and the Caribbean, and with sleek Cunard and P&O liners, serving between New York and London. (The influence of the musical and fashion tastes of the cooks, stewards and waiters who travelled on these liners would later be felt in the rhythm and shape of the Merseybeat era, eighty years after the first sailings between the two cities.) Robert Cain had by this time built 200 pubs on Merseyside, including three of the most gloriously extravagant pubs in Britain: The Philharmonic, The Vines and The Central. He had also built himself a palatial mansion (featuring his monogram etched into every window arch) set in six acres of grounds.

In 1887 he started work on a new red brick brewery with an ornate tower: the brewery is a Merseyside landmark, still in use today. This was the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee: all over Liverpool, as all over the country, people celebrated the first 50 years of her reign (Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, she went on to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, marking 60 years on the throne).

Robert Cain died in 1907, 6 years after Queen Victoria herself, and, at 81, just a year younger than the Regent when she died. His was a classic case of the immigrant made good. He had become a legendary brew master by using only the finest malt, hops and yeast to brew exceptional beers, which he advertised proudly as “Superior Ales and Stouts”. He’d made a fortune, been ennobled as Lord Brocket (his great-great-grandson is making a name for himself on “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here”) and married the Lord Mayor of Liverpool’s daughter, and when he died 3,000 mourners attended his funeral.

Happy Birthday Robert Cain

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Images by kind permission of Liverpool Daily Post and Echo