William Almack

According to one account he was descended from a Yorkshire family of Quakers;[1] he came to London at an early age as the valet of the James Douglas-Hamilton, 5th Duke of Hamilton.

Before 1763 he opened a gaming-club in Pall Mall, which was known as Almack's Club, and from that date till his death he was the leading caterer for the amusement of the fashionable world of London.

Among the twenty-seven original members of Almack's Club were the Duke of Portland and Charles James Fox, and it was subsequently joined by Edward Gibbon, William Pitt, and very many noblemen.

The weather was bitterly cold, and Horace Walpole writes that, to induce his patrons to attend on the opening day, ‘Almack advertised that the new assembly-room was built with hot bricks and boiling water.’ Gilly Williams, in a letter descriptive of the ceremony addressed to George Selwyn, says: ‘Almack's Scotch face in a bagwig waiting at supper would divert you, as would his lady in a sack, making tea and curtseying to the duchesses.’ The success of the new rooms was rapidly assured.

He married Elizabeth, elder daughter of William Cullen, of Sanches, Lanarkshire, who was waiting-maid to the Duchess of Hamilton, and sister of Dr. Cullen, the celebrated physician; Almack had by her two children, William, a barrister, who died on 27 October 1806, and Elizabeth, who married David Pitcairn,[4] physician extraordinary to the Prince of Wales.