John Lewis Phipps

He was the second son of Thomas Henry Hele Phipps (1777–1841), of Leighton House, Westbury, Wiltshire, and Mary Michael Joseph Leckonby (1777–1835).

Despite a number of alarms, the business eventually flourished, becoming for a while one of the largest coffee exporters from Brazil.

Phipps was part-owner of a cargo of coffee shipped from Rio de Janeiro in the Amy Warwick, a merchant vessel that was captured by Unionist forces on 10 July 1861, at the outset of the American Civil War.

Willes J held that, although Phipps himself was personally innocent of any corrupt practice, his agent, Harrop, had carried out acts of intimidation on voters.

His replacement instead by his brother, Charles Paul Phipps, and (after a Liberal interlude, with the short-lived success of Laverton in 1874) by his nephew, Charles Nicholas Paul Phipps, added to family tensions arising from the conduct of the partnership's affairs.