Do it once and congratulations are due. Do it twice and there is either commitment, a pattern or both. So what did Tommy Dewar do? The answer is that he gifted two trophies to football.
The first was initially played for in 1898. It was the Sheriff of London Charity Shield because he was Sheriff of London at the time, or more accurately, one of the Sheriffs of the City of London in 1897. To be be played for by the top professional team in the country, effectively decided to be the winner of either the FA Cup of the League, and the best amateur one, on all but one occasion, Corinthian, but in 1899, Glasgow's Queen's Park, proceeds were to go to hospitals and charities. Then in 1908 it to all intents and purposes became the FA Charity Shield to be competed for by the winners of the FA Cup and the League, profits going to much the same causes and in 2002 was renamed the FA Community Shield. The second, the Sir Thomas Dewar Cup, is still awarded annually to the winner of the U.S. Open Cup, now the Lamar Hunt Cup. Presented in 1912 and first played for in 1914, it is American soccer's equivalent of the FA Cup. First won by Brooklyn Field Club, then by Fall River Rovers and
Bethlehem Steel over the next seven years, Bethlehem four times, last season it victory went to the Houston Dynamos.
As for Tommy Dewar, Sir Thomas Dewar, Baron Dewar, he was something of a character, both good and less so. He was born, not in England nor in the USA but in 1864 in Perth in Scotland. A grandfather had been a crofter. His father was the founder of John Dewar & Sons, whisky distillers and distributors, of the Dewar whisky brand and when he had stepped down the business was taken over by his two sons. John junior stayed at home and ran the office, whilst the
charismatic and clearly charming Thomas set out to sell worldwide the product the company had been at the forefront of developing, the blend. In 1885 at the Brewer's Show he caused a stir by loudly playing the pipes. Then at the beginning of the 1890s for two years he literally travelled, publicising as he went.
It was a journey that took in America, coast-to-coast, Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and China, one described in 1894 in the book, A Ramble Round the Globe. It was the beginning of the spread of knowledge of Dewar as a brand name with a subsequent effect of sales but more than that it began the worldwide acceptance of Scotch, whether blended or latterly as a single malt. In America the Sir Thomas Dewar Cup has to be seen as part of the Dewar company's global marketing effort but, with Tommy a notable sports enthusiast, particularly later in life for horse-racing, the Sheriff's Shield might be seen non-commercial. That does not mean it was not political. In the year of its suggestion, 1897, Tommy Dewar, a man always with an eye on the main chance, stood, unsuccessfully as it happens, as the Tory candidate for Walthamstow. True it was a setback but not permanent. Three years later he was elected for St. George in Whitechapel, standing down in 1906 to get on with the rest of his life, seeing Dewars in 1923 become part of the Distillers Company and dying in 1930 on his Sussex estate an immensely wealthy man, but one who not just had facilitated Scotland's greatest export but also had the initiative and where-with-all to create an international footballing trophy and the footballing principle of games for charity, both of which continue to this day.