Dr William Okell
Title: Dr
Epithet: Surgeon, apothecary, founder of Okell's brewery (1819-1892)
Record type: Biographies
Biography: From ‘New Manx Worthies’ (2006):
Dr William Okell is famous in the Isle of Man for his establishment of Okell's Brewery at Glen Falcon, Douglas, around 1852. In the early part of the nineteenth century and before, brewing had been in the hands of quite a large number of small breweries producing beer of variable quality. Quite why Dr Okell came to the Island to start brewing is uncertain, but he seems to have taken over as brewer of Dutton's Brewery attached to Castle Mona at Castle Hill in 1850, as well as running his own brewery.
Descended from a Cheshire family of some standing and education, after school at Shrewsbury he qualified as a surgeon and apothecary and practised in the Liverpool Southern Hospital, Warrington and Douglas. The Okell family name, found in Cheshire and South Lancashire as early as the sixteenth century, is thought to have Danish origins rather than being a simplification of O'Kelly as popularly supposed.
William Okell is recorded as having purchased property in Derby Square in 1846, and a series of transactions took place at the end of which he had acquired the land at the Falcon Cliff Estate above what is now the Villa Marina, where he constructed the Falcon Brewery as Okell's Patent Brewery. Criticism that the product of the Patent Brewery was in some way adulterated had to be answered in an announcement published in the Manx Sun of 13th November 1852, saying 'the patent consorts entirely in the substitution of steam pipes in terms of furnace heat thereby ensuring cleanliness and total absence of burnt flavour and acrid bitter so often complained of by the public'. In 1873 he built a new brewery on land off Derby Road, which came into production early in 1876, together with a home for himself, Glen Falcon House, which was demolished before 1950. Where it stood is now a public garden.
There may have been anxiety about the process as a result of Dr Okell's background as an apothecary, for he also produced and sold various elixirs and perfumes of his own invention, the most famous of which was named Mona Bouquet.
However his efforts were primarily devoted to brewing, and by the time of his death in 1892 only five breweries were still in operation in the Island. He also acquired interests in a number of public houses, often in conjunction with the Brearleys [see Henry Brearley].
As a mark of his success, he sent his sons to King William's College. One, William Henry, followed his father into the Falcon Brewery; another, Douglas, was sent to manage a new enterprise for, in 1877, Dr Okell built the Lion Brewery at Waterloo, Liverpool, to brew Okell's beers for the north west of England. Conditions were difficult, and in 1887 this was sold to Thorougood's.
In addition to his brewing activities, Dr Okell was a director of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company and is said to have been a staunch churchman. He was a lieutenant in the 2nd Douglas Volunteer Rifles on their foundation in 1860. His monument can be seen in the premises of the Falcon Brewery which he built, and also in the name of his excellent beers still provided throughout the Island.
Biography written by Roger Rawcliffe.
(With thanks to Culture Vannin as publishers of the book: Kelly, Dollin (general editor), ‘New Manx Worthies’, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, pp.353-4.)
Culture Vannin
#NMW
Gender: Male
Date of birth: 24 February 1819
Date of death: 24 April 1892
Name Variant: Okell, Dr. William