Abram Lyle (14 December 1820 – 30 April 1891) was a Scottish food manufacturer and politician, who is noted for founding the
sugar refiners '' Abram Lyle & Sons'' in 1887, which merged with the company of his rival
Henry Tate to become
Tate & Lyle in 1921.
Early life
He was born on 14 December 1820 in the
seaport
A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manc ...
of
Greenock
Greenock (; ; , ) is a town in Inverclyde, Scotland, located in the west central Lowlands of Scotland. The town is the administrative centre of Inverclyde Council. It is a former burgh within the historic county of Renfrewshire, and forms ...
, Renfrewshire, in Scotland, and at twelve years old became an
apprentice
Apprenticeship is a system for training a potential new practitioners of a Tradesman, trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships may also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in ...
in a lawyer's office. He then joined his father's
cooperage businesses and in partnership with a friend, John Kerr, developed a shipping business, making the Lyle fleet one of the largest in Greenock. The area was heavily involved in the sugar trade with the
West Indies
The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...
, and his business included transporting sugar.
Sugar refining

Together with four partners he purchased the sugar house of the defunct ''Greenock Sugar Refining Company'' in 1865, forming the ''Glebe Sugar Refinery Company'', and so added sugar refining to his other business interests. When John Kerr, the principal partner, died in 1872, Lyle sold his shares and began the search for a site for a new refinery.
Together with his three sons he bought two wharves at
Plaistow in East London in 1881 to construct a refinery for producing
golden syrup. The site happened to be around from the sugar refinery of his rival,
Henry Tate. In the first year Lyle's refinery showed a loss of £30,000, with economies being made by asking staff to wait for their wages on occasion, but eventually the business came to dominate the United Kingdom market for golden syrup. Lyle Park, near the site of the syrup refinery at Plaistow Wharf, West
Silvertown, was named after him.
The brand, sold in a distinctive green and gold lidded tin with an image of a lion surrounded by bees, is believed to be Britain's oldest. The design of the tin decoration, which includes a biblical quotation, has remained almost unchanged since 1885. In 2024, the brand introduced a new logo for bottles of the syrup, with a visual identity designed to “refresh the brand’s legacy to appeal to a 21st century audience”, but canned syrup still has the original logo.
In the
Book of Judges
The Book of Judges is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the ...
,
Samson was travelling to the land of the Philistines in search of a wife. During the journey he killed a lion, and on his return past the same spot he noticed that a swarm of bees had formed a comb of honey in the carcass. Samson later turned this into a riddle at a wedding: "Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness". () While no one is sure why this particular quotation was chosen, it has been suggested that it refers either to the strength of the Lyle company which delivers the sweet syrup or possibly even to the trademark tins in which the syrup was sold.
Sugar refineries belonging to
Tate & Lyle continued as a major industry in Greenock (but with difficulties) until the 1980s, then declining sugar consumption and a shift away from
cane sugar led to closure of the last refinery in 1997. There is still a warehouse that was used in the past to store sugar in the town's
Greenock Ocean Terminal.
Personal life and public office
Lyle was the son of Abram Lyle and Mary Campbell. He married Mary Park, daughter of William Park, on 14 December 1846 and the couple had five sons and one daughter:
* Abram Lyle (6 October 1847)
* Sir Alexander Park Lyle, 1st Bt., (2 August 1849 – 10 December 1933)
* Charles Lyle, (1851 – 13 June 1929)
* Mary Lyle (1 March 1855 – 6 April 1927)
* John Lyle (9 March 1857)
* Sir Robert Park Lyle, 1st and last Bt., (17 October 1859 – 11 July 1923)
An
elder of St Michael's
Presbyterian Church in Greenock, Lyle himself chose the biblical quotation for the syrup tins. He was a pious man and a strict
teetotaller, who once declared that he would "rather see a son of his carried home dead than drunk".
Lyle was
Provost of Greenock from 1876 to 1879. In late 1878, to help the
unemployed
Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is the proportion of people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for Work (hu ...
during the
Long Depression
The Long Depression was a worldwide price and economic recession, beginning in Panic of 1873, 1873 and running either through March 1879, or 1899, depending on the metrics used. It was most severe in Europe and the United States, which had been e ...
, the
Police Board provided work building a scenic road to a viewpoint known as the Craigs or Bingens. In January 1879 the Streets Committee named it Lyle Road, and after it was formally opened on 1 May 1880, the name
Lyle Hill came into use.
Lyle died on 30 April 1891. He has a large memorial in Greenock Cemetery.
See also
Notes
Footnotes
Citations
References
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* (
Inverclyde Council website)
Further reading
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External links
Tate & Lyle (History)Preparing cloths for the filter presses, Glebe Sugar Refinery, GreenockGlebe Sugar Refinery, Ker Street, Greenock
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lyle, Abram
1820 births
1891 deaths
Food processing in London
People from Greenock
Food manufacturers of Scotland
Merchants from the British West Indies
Tate & Lyle people
19th-century Scottish businesspeople
Scottish company founders