Why is so little known about the matriarch of Ireland's most famous beverage?
Guinness will always be one of Ireland’s most famous exports, besides Paul Mescal and Riverdance. However, not many people outside its motherland know a lot about its history and the man behind the “the black stuff”. Arthur Guinness’s eponymous brewing business has been churning out Ireland’s favourite drink since 1755, and it has been housed in the same brewery in Dublin since 1759, which continues to produce the stout. While today, the storehouse is home to a world famous tourist attraction, Guinness’ Brewhouse 4 is the largest stout brewery in the world. Given that St. Patrick’s Day reminds us of all things Irish, now seems the right time to look at the country’s most famous business and try to find out more about one of its most elusive figures, Arthur Guinness’ wife, Olivia Guinness.
When I visited the Guinness storehouse in December of 2022, one line in a short informational video about the family explained Olivia Guinness had 21 pregnancies. She was not mentioned again besides her staggering number of births, and while her life may not have had a direct impact on the brewing of stout, this meagre attempt to present her is inherently gendered. I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that that has stayed with me, and it’s something I think about every time I see the iconic glass. When I visited again a year later, I was upset to see that the video had been replaced with a demonstration of a new product Guinness Nitrosurge, and I considered that maybe this was something worth exploring. Was it a coincidence that the company’s new machinery had replaced information on such an important part of the Guinness family? Most likely, yes, though I couldn’t help but feel bitter that the only mention of the woman so heavily involved in the continuation of the Guinness name had been erased from the tour. Why was it not implemented into another part? I spent the rest of the tour waiting for that video to reappear, but only when I started researching her further, did I understand perhaps why this had happened. An invention from 2021 had more recorded history than a woman born in 1742. She doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.
Olivia Whitmore was the daughter of grocer William Whitmore and Mary Grattan. Not much is known about Olivia’s paternal line, but there is much to be said about her mother. Despite Olivia being left fatherless, her maternal family owned land in Kildare which at the time granted Olivia a high social standing and funds that easily provided for her. This meant by the time Olivia Whitmore became Olivia Guinness, she had a sizable dowry that gave her new husband, and budding brewer, Arthur opportunity to rise in society's ranks. The bulk of the historical record for Olivia Guinness starts here, documenting her place in the marriage, and subsequently, the marriage's place in the business. She was just nineteen on her wedding day - Arthur was thirty-six. Their relationship presents itself as transactional in the eyes of history; Olivia’s respectable dowry of £1,000, equal to about £200,000 in today’s currency, combined with connections to her gentry family provided Arthur a decent start to married life, and the rare chance for a brewer to gain the social respectability he needed in the rural towns of Ireland. For Olivia’s widowed mother, marrying her daughter off to this ambitious man was an opportunity to reduce the instability caused by William Whitmore’s death and provide a somewhat secure future for her beloved daughter.
Beyond her wedding is where history has admitted it knows next to nothing about her - even her family has agreed that knowledge about the matriarch of the Guinness line is limited. Historian and direct Guinness descendant Patrick Guinness brought forward these limitations in his 2008 title Arthur’s Round: The Life and Times of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness. This was the first biography of his descendent and remains the leading work on the family’s history, and yet there are only 15 very brief references to Olivia’s life in the index. The only information the archive assistants at Guinness Archives at the Guinness Storehouse could offer me was sourced from this work. So, here, we come back to what we do know and what drew me to this enigma of a woman in the first place. Olivia Guinness had 21 pregnancies over two decades with 10 children surviving into adulthood. The lack of detail about her births and her time as a mother means historians have often had to make somewhat weak assumptions about it. One such example is that Patrick Guinness surmises that Hosea, the eldest Guinness son, had a difficult birth, alluded to by his name meaning “Jehovah is saved”. I can’t say I’m easily convinced by this, mainly because it reads as though he just needed to say something, however nonsensical, about his distant grandmother. What does it say about the value placed on historical women that the one fact that remains about Olivia relates to how many times she fell pregnant?
Olivia Guinness remains a powerhouse of 18th century femininity and what it meant to be a woman. The longevity of the Guinness line ultimately comes back to her and her extensive bloodline. Olivia Guinness bore the six men that would continue the name, while supporting her husband and his business ventures for 42 years. There is something to be said about the fact nothing is said - she did her marital and biblical duty by providing the family Arthur needed, and the reason no one thought to pass on stories of her life, is that providing others life was the greatest achievement of them all. She did her duties so well that nothing else mattered. The births over the span of 20 years demonstrate that she and Arthur were sexually active - either through love for one another, or religious devotion. Given the norms governing 18th century femininity in Ireland and beyond, Olivia’s body would have been her greatest asset in demonstrating her position of power - churning out 21 pregnancies in just over 21 years was impressive even in a land where contraception was only legalised in 1979. With a maternal mortality rate as high as 1 in 5, Olivia’s survival, given the sheer number of births she experienced, is awe-inspiring. Olivia had her last child in 1787, when she was 45 and her husband was 63, which must have been a great relief for her. Despite the 10 children that survived in adulthood, there is no evidence of the suffering she undoubtedly experienced with the 11 children she sadly lost.
Equally little is known about how the couple met. Many historians speculate the couple met through introductions by family friends, or Arthur’s family’s proximity to William Whitmore’s grocery shop on Essex Street. This absence of knowledge also feeds into the questioning of why this relationship was of so little importance to wider family histories. Were details of the couple’s relationship deemed mere women’s gossip of romancing, or perhaps there was no romancing at all to tell of? From what we do know, and evidence suggesting the transactional nature of the union, the latter does seem more likely. Did Arthur merely see Olivia as a way of moving up the social ladder, and the carrier of his legacy? It seems as though we will never know, as Arthur never spoke of it, and Olivia appears to have no public voice - not even a diary or letters can be traced back to her.
So, back to the question that started this all back in that little cinema in the historic brewery. Why is it so hard to find anything about this biological wonder of a woman? If her own family knows so little, what hope is there for the rest of us? With all my research, I think I have had to admit defeat on finding even a snippet of what made the woman who she was - she is destined to be the subject of tourists gasps for the rest of eternity where they learn about her spectacular mothering, alongside learning the temperature of wheat roasting. However, I think there is something to be tapped into here: the women behind some of the world’s oldest and most famous businesses are often made invisible without much of a fight. Were the achievements of Olivia’s husband so great that the trials and tribulations of her life were dismissed in favour of what she could provide for him? While her husband and his droves of sons remain at the forefront of Irish memory and glorification, Olivia and her daughters most certainly had a part to play in the magic behind the machine.
Bibliography:
Patrick Guinness, Arthur’s Round: The Life and Times of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness, London, 2008.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Guinness: Irish Company, 18th March 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Guinness [date accessed 14/01/2024]
Katie Birtles, A Brief History of Ireland’s National Drink, Guinness, 6th April 2022,
https://www.trafalgar.com/real-word/a-brief-history-of-irelands-national-drink-guinness/ [date accessed: 12/01/24]