Gallaher, Thomas (1840–1927), businessman, was born Thomas Gallagher (he changed the spelling of his name to Gallaher during the 1870s) on 27 April 1840 at Templemoyle, Co. Londonderry, one of nine children of wealthy farmer, Thomas Gallagher. The family also owned several successful corn mills, where the younger Thomas worked from a young age. Educated privately, he considered careers in both law and the army before being apprenticed with Osborne & Allen, general merchants, Derry, where he learned the techniques of tobacco manufacture.
In 1857 he established himself as a tobacco manufacturer on Sackville Street, Derry, with £200 he borrowed from his mother. He quickly gained a reputation for producing a superior pipe tobacco and built up a strong home market and a small export trade to Britain. In 1863, in co-operation with his brother-in-law, he transferred the business to Belfast because of its better port facilities and the bigger market. By 1881 he was employing 600 people in a five-storey factory. He mechanised the manufacturing processes and acquired plantations and stemming factories in Oldsburgh and Henderson, Kentucky, and Richmond, Virginia.
The business expanded rapidly, and in 1888 Gallaher established a London manufacturing base at 60 Holborn Viaduct, where 200 people were employed. In 1889 he set up a second London factory at Clerkenwell Road. In February 1896 the business became a limited liability company with a capital of £1 million, and later that year he opened new headquarters at York Street, Belfast, which was reputed to be the largest tobacco factory in the world at the time. In 1898 Gallaher was appointed chairman of the National Association of Tobacco Manufacturers (1898) but he refused to join the Imperial Tobacco Co., which was founded to combat American competition. Instead he met the competition head on and by 1900 he was so successful that he paid the largest bond cheque ever issued to customs for the release of tobacco.
In 1902 the company successfully produced its first machine-made cigarettes under the brand name ‘Park Drive’. In the same year Gallaher donated £5,000 for the building of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. As cigarette consumption increased, so too did the profits of Gallahers; such was the demand that in 1908 the company purchased the entire Irish tobacco crop and expanded its market share throughout the British empire and as far afield as Scandinavia and USA. Political unrest in Ireland brought this period of growth to an end, when Sinn Féin organised the ‘Belfast boycott’ of goods produced in Northern Ireland in 1920–22. This, coupled with a stagnant British market, saw profits drop. In 1921 Gallaher, suffering from heart disease, resigned as managing director and was replaced by his nephew John Gallaher Michaels.
Although he generally eschewed politics and public affairs, Gallaher served as vice-president of the Tariff Reform League and as a member of Joseph Chamberlain's tariff reform committee. As chairman of the Belfast Steamship Co., he ruthlessly opposed the attempts of James Larkin (qv) to organise the Belfast dock workers into a trade union (1907). The ensuing stand-off led to a widespread and prolonged strike. Despite his anti-union stance, he was the first tobacco employer to reduce the working week from fifty-four to forty-seven hours, and in Belfast he bravely maintained a non-sectarian workforce. He was a JP for Co. Antrim, and a life governor and benefactor of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.
On 23 April 1873 Gallaher married Robina Mitchell Bell, daughter of William Bell JP, of Belfast. They had five daughters and a son (the latter predeceased him). He died 3 May 1927 at his home, Ballygoland House, near Greencastle, Belfast, leaving estate valued at £503,954.