William Arnott (6 December 182722 July 1901) was the Scottish founder of the

Arnott's Biscuits Holdings Arnott's Biscuits Limited is an Australian producer of biscuits and snack food. Founded in 1865, they are the largest producer of biscuits in Australia and a subsidiary of KKR. History In 1847, Scottish immigrant William Arnott opened a ...

(now Arnott's Biscuits Limited) in Australia.

Early life

William Arnott was born 6 December 1827, in

Pathhead Pathhead ( sco, Paithheid) is an area of Kirkcaldy, in Fife, Scotland. Pathhead was an independent village before it was incorporated into the Royal burgh of Kirkcaldy. In Jan Blaeu's map of Scotland from the 17th century reference is made to ...

Fife Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i ...

, Scotland, the eldest of eight children. His father was David Millie and his mother was Isobella Arnott. In October 1847, he and his brother David set out for Sydney, Australia on board the assisted-immigrants' ship ''Sir Edward Parry''; they reached Sydney some 135 days later, on 17 February 1848.

Career

Arnott's Biscuits

Newcastle Arnott's Steam Biscuit Factory, 1868

After arriving in Australia, he first started a baking company in

Morpeth, New South Wales Morpeth is a suburb of the city of Maitland in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia. It is on the southern banks of the Hunter River at the border between the City of Maitland and Port Stephens Council LGAs. The major population centr ...

, 22 miles north-west of Newcastle. He continued working as a baker, together with David, for three years. Arnott decided to try his luck gold mining in 1851, and left for the Turon River diggings alone. He was not successful; he failed to find any gold and eventually returned to life as a baker. In 1865, Arnott established the William Arnott's Steam Biscuit Factory in

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

, New South Wales. It was so named as his biscuit-making machines (or "rotary ovens") were steam-powered. In 1894, Arnott employed numerous workers after purchasing a biscuit factory in Forest Lodge, Sydney; his biscuits had already begun shipping to Sydney in 1882. The factory in Forest Lodge was relocated to

Homebush Homebush is a suburb in the Inner West of Sydney in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located 12 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the Local government in Australia, local government area of the Municipali ...

circa 1908. During his career as a biscuit manufacturer, Arnott came up with the Milk Arrowroot biscuits, a combination of arrowroot biscuits and plain milk biscuits; they were marketed as "children's food" and were very popular, to the extent that other rival companies tried to come up with imitations of the Milk Arrowroot biscuits. Arnott also produced

Tim Tam Tim Tam is a brand of chocolate biscuit introduced by the Australian biscuit company Arnott's in 1964. It consists of two malted biscuits separated by a light hard chocolate cream filling and coated in a thin layer of textured chocolate. H ...

, Jatz and

SAO SAO or Sao may refer to: Places * Sao civilisation, in Middle Africa from 6th century BC to 16th century AD * Sao, a town in Boussé Department, Burkina Faso * Saco Transportation Center (station code SAO), a train station in Saco, Maine, U.S. ...

biscuits.

Personal life

William Arnott was a prominent member of the

Wesleyan Church The Wesleyan Church, also known as the Wesleyan Methodist Church and Wesleyan Holiness Church depending on the region, is a Methodist Christian denomination in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Namibia, Sierra Leone, L ...

and taught Sunday school for close to 25 years. In 1848, Arnott wed Monica Sinclair, who already had four children at the time of the marriage; Sinclair died aged 36 on 11 April 1865. That same year, Arnott married Margarete McLean Fleming. She assisted him in his baking business and they had eight children. A rather surprising and widespread omission from William Arnott biographies (including the major article on him in 1968 in the Australian Dictionary of Biography olume 3, Melbourne University Pressby Phyllis Mander-Jones who is a descendant of his, and also in histories of the Arnotts Biscuits company, has been any mention of the convict heritage of this Australian Arnott family. Yet the details of such have been clearly published in places. For example, the author Malcolm David Prentis published in 1983, in "The Scots in Australia", that the most famous Scots lay Methodist was biscuit-maker William Arnott; and that he was son of David Millie Arnott who had been transported here for breach of trust, fraud and embezzlement following sentence in 1837.

Death and legacy

On 22 July 1901, Arnott died at his ‘Arnottholme’ residence. aged 73. Shortly after his death, Arnott's sons spread out the business to other parts of the world, including East Asia and South Africa.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arnott, William 1827 births 1901 deaths Australian food industry businesspeople Australian people of Scottish descent 19th-century Australian businesspeople Australian bakers People from Kirkcaldy