🥃 What Goes Around Comes Around: William Helm
- Jun 29
- 4 min read
Names.
Some people forget folks’ names as soon as they hear them. Others are very good at remembering them. Usually, I fall into the latter category – although age is making this increasingly tricky – and I put it down to the fact that I was a secondary school teacher for the best part of twenty years. If you didn’t learn the kids’ names quickly, the sense of security anonymity afforded them lent itself nicely to them completely wiping the floor with you.
As it turns out, this skill proves equally useful when delving into the lives of those who shaped the Scotch whisky industry into what it is today.
The same names crop up time and time again. More importantly, the way they are woven together across different periods of Scotch whisky history is revealing. Like a huge jigsaw puzzle, the names form the border – the first pieces you put together. Discovering more about those individuals gradually fills in the middle. On occasions, some of the pieces go missing. But, even so, an educated guess allows you to complete the picture.
Here’s a example using last week’s articles on Fife’s well-known Bonthrone family.
When William Bonthrone died in 1919, one of the executors of his estate was William Helm. Now, William Helm was a name that cropped up before – he was one of the whisky merchants in Leith who became caught up in the Pattisons’ shenanigans of double-selling casks.
Which led me to ask a few questions: (i) who was William Helm? (ii) what was Helm’s link to Bonthrone? (iii) why is any of this relevant to what is happening in the industry today?
William Helm was born in Pulteneytown in 1827 (the year after the distillery was established there). His father, Paul, was a supervisor for the Inland Revenue and in 1869, he took up a post in Leith. Prior to that, however, he was the supervisor in – wait for it – Auchtermuchty.
So, Paul Helm would have inevitably had links to the distillery there. Now, even today, Auchtermuchty is no heaving metropolis. And, given that Williams Bonthrone and Helm were roughly the same age, it’s pretty safe to say that both families would have known each other fairly well. Might we even conclude that the boys were childhood friends?
However, William Helm was just twelve years old when the family moved to Leith. And it was there that he established and grew his business as a wine and spirit merchant over on Assembly Street.
On a side note, next time you visit a distillery and you’re told that no flash photography is allowed in the stillhouse, for fear of causing an explosion, perhaps show them this map of Leith from 1892. Here, on the corner of Baltic Street and Assembly Street, was William Helm & Co’s bonded warehouse.
Right opposite the gas works.
And as far as I’m aware, the warehouse never blew up.
Although highly esteemed in trade circles, William Helm’s business wasn’t without its issues.
In 1887, the creditors were called in – as they were with a number of other Leith whisky merchants – after the collapse of a key firm in the trade: Kidd, Eunson & Co.
In short, speculation in Scotch whisky had caused the failure of John Kidd and Thomas Eunson’s firm. But next week’s email will shed more light on this.
The collapse started a domino effect, leading to the failure of a number of other whisky firms. Now, doesn’t that sound familiar? So, after bringing his business back on track, you’d have thought Helm would have been more careful when dealing with those Pattison brothers...
...but sometimes, the lure of money – or the greed for more money – invites us to take the risk. This was an era where whisky could do no wrong in the eyes of those looking to make a quick buck. Banks advanced credit for it; everyone and their (relatively wealthy) granny invested in it. ‘Liquid gold’ is a phrase often used by writers and historians.
And so, once again, doesn’t that sound familiar? Although enough well-respected writers in the industry have highlighted the pitfalls of believing the multitude of cask investment companies whose misleading adverts appear on your social media timelines today, they are still at large. Even a BBC Scotland documentary hasn’t stopped them.
When Helm died in 1920, he left an estate worth £33,435 which equates to approximately £1.8 million today.
Although he lost a significant amount of money as a result of his dealings with the Pattisons, it seems he didn’t do too badly overall.
But now, as we embark on a somewhat turbulent time for the Scotch whisky industry – the start button for the next downturn having already been pressed - the next question I’m asking myself is how many other William Helms will come to light over the next few years?
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