by Steven Moore

Even on his death bed, Tom Gallaher’s father knew his son was destined for great things. “I’m leaving you nothing,” he told the schoolboy. “You have brains, so you don’t need money. You will make plenty.”

In the years ahead, the young Gallaher grew into one of the richest men in Ireland and brought employment to thousands in his own lifetime and beyond.

Known worldwide as the ‘Tobacco King’  he went about everything with the same hard-headed determination which established an empire which is still going today.

Tom Gallaher was born on the family farm at Templemoyle, Londonderry, in April, 1840. He had ambitions to join the Army or take up law, but in the event found himself apprenticed, age 14, to the general merchants of Osborne & Allen in Londonderry’s Waterloo Place, where he learned the art of making twist, plug and pigtail tobacco.

In 1857, at the age of just 17, he set up in business for himself in his one-room accommodation in the city’s Sackville Street in which he ate, slept and produced his products.

Beginning each morning at 5am and working through until 10pm, he would twist tobacco on a hand-spinning machine, package and then deliver it in person to his growing band of regular customers.

Having reached his full potential West of the Bann, he took the decision to move to Belfast in 1863 as it offered a bigger market in which to grow.

Gallaher relocated initially to Hercules Street (later replaced by Royal Avenue) then took bigger premises in Queen’s Square, moving on to the city centre end of York Street before finally situating his factory further along the road, on the site now occupied by the Yorkgate shopping complex.

The series of buildings ultimately constructed there used an estimated eight million bricks and incorporated many innovated machines invented for Gallaher. He also purchased tobacco plantations in Kentucky and Virginia, which he was fond of visiting two or three times a year.

As forthright as his father, he was never overly popular with either staff or business associates: “In whatever society I am, I try to dominate,” he once said.

One of his habits was to stroll around the factory with a stick in hand with which he would rap any employee he felt wasn’t working hard enough! For Tom Gallaher there was no such thing as luck, only hard work and inspiration.

“There is no royal road to fortune.  You must work.  You must start out with a central fixed idea and never take your mental gaze from it,” he often told people.

“There isn’t any luck anywhere. It’s opportunity. You have to train your mind to recognise opportunity, to grasp its particular message, and train your hand to make capital out of it.”

In an era in which the health hazards of tobacco were unrecognised, he was a walking advertisement for his own wares. Immediately after breakfast every morning he would light up a cigar and throughout the day would chew what was known as a ‘quid of tobacco’.

Tom was also known to have an occasional pinch of snuff.  He married Robina Mitchell Bell in April, 1873, with the couple having one son and five daughters.

Tom Gallaher, who often joked when unwell that “I cannot afford to die and I am just walking about to save funeral expenses,” passed away in May, 1928, aged 88.