William Horlick was born on February 23, 1846 to James and Priscilla Horlick in the village of Ruardean, Gloucestershire, England. In 1869, William made his first voyage to the United States to visit his distant uncle, Joseph A. Horlick of Racine, Wisconsin. There he met the love of his life, second cousin Arabella Horlick, and eventually married her. On their wedding day, the newlyweds left for England. Two years later the pair returned to Wisconsin, where William joined his father-in-law in business at J.A. Horlick & Sons Lime and Stone Merchants.
In 1875, William convinced his brother James, a chemist at a baby food company in England, to come to Chicago to help with a new product idea. William and James founded the J & W Horlick Company in Chicago. Originally dubbed “Horlick’s Food for Infants and Invalids,” their new product was a special compound made of wheat and malted barley. Consumers added the powder to milk as a nutritional supplement. The Horlick brothers had invented malted milk. Their new business venture would eventually become the Horlick’s Malted Milk Company.
By 1877, the business was doing well enough that the brothers needed to expand production. Looking for a location with abundant land and water resources, they selected Mount Pleasant— right outside of Racine, Wisconsin—as their new base of operations.
William Horlick was becoming an avid entrepreneur. Besides the malted milk company, he would come to own several dairy farms and other businesses including a small dairy shipping company. William was also a major philanthropist. He sponsored several expeditions to both the North and South Poles, often gifting the party with his malted milk product to sustain them and to advertise his product. In fact, Richard Byrd, a famous explorer of both the Arctic and Antarctic, was a close friend of William’s. Horlick funded a few of Byrd’s expeditions. Byrd even named a plane after William on his second expedition to the South Pole. Horlick also funded the exploits of Roland Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer who was the first to fly over the North Pole and the first person to ever reach the South Pole. William’s support for exploration even earned him a knighthood from the King of Norway.
Besides his charity abroad, Horlick was also a major benefactor to his hometown of Racine. William Horlick High School in Racine was constructed thanks to William’s donations. The nearby stadium, Horlick Field, was also a gift from William to the city “for the promotion of athletic events, military drills, amusement, musical events, and events of a similar nature.” Similarly, Island Park—originally called Horlick Park—was another of William’s land gifts to the people of Racine.
In 1936, William Horlick died at the age of ninety. As the father of malted milk, Horlick provided his Wisconsin community with jobs and civic improvements. But his biggest contributions extended far beyond Racine. Horlick helped fund and donate expeditions to the North and South Poles and, most importantly, invented a nutritional supplement still found today in milkshakes, candies, and other snacks.
Written by Samuel G. Brink, October 2016.
SOURCES
American Produce Review, “Who’s Who in the Egg and Poultry Industries?” Annual Supplement to the American Produce Review 79(9), 1935.
Richard E. Byrd, “Reports on Scientific Results of the United States Antarctic Service Expedition, 1939-1941.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 89(1), 1945; iii-iv.
The History of Racine and Kenosha Counties, Wisconsin. Chicago: Western Historical Co., 1879.
Horlick’s Corporation Records, Boxes 1-2: “Horlick’s Corporation Records 1873-1974,” UW-Parkside Library, Racine, Wis.
Robert Hutchison, “Horlick’s Malted Milk”. The Lancet, Vol. 1, no. 4154, (1903): 1060.
Fanny S. Stone, Racine: Belle City of the Lakes, and Racine County, Wisconsin: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement Vol II. Chicago: SJ Clarke, 1916.
RELATED STORIES
Horlick’s Malted Milk Company
OBJECT HISTORY: Horlick’s Malted Milk
Malted Milk and Infant Nutrition
EXPLORE MORE
OBJECT HISTORY: Wind Point Lighthouse
OBJECT HISTORY: Norwegian Trunk
Very interesting!
Thank you for your posting about Horlick’s malted milk. This email is just a little note about how Horlick’s malted milk actually came into existence. My maternal great grandfather (Vincent Bezucha, buried at a cemetery in Racine, Wisc.), was a stow away in the 1800’s on a boat to the US as he didn’t have money to pay for the boat ticket. Will Horlick was also on that boat to the US and took a liking to him, such that Vincent, as I was told by my mother, then became something of a servant to Will Horlick. (I suspect that may also have been an attempt on Vincent’s part to have a better cover for his presence on the boat.)
The long and the short of it is that their friendship continued in the US as both settled in Racine, Wisconsin. Vincent evidently did not have many marketable skills (or he would have probably stayed in Bohemia)–except for one thing which would prove of great importance to his friend Will Horlick. Vincent was skilled in malting liquor, and it was in fact his malting skill that produced Horlick’s malted milk. I don’t know exactly what kind of financial ties came about because of that, but the two remained close friends all of their lives–even to the point that Will Horlick later stayed up all night by the corpse of my great grandfather Vincent, after he died, in observance of a “wake.” (The tradition was started to keep the devil away from the corpse. When asked why he was staying up all night with Vincent’s corpse, his answer was, “I’m just saying good-bye to a good friend.” )