[2] For much of his life, William Horatio Crawford was associated with the family firm, which he and his partner Richard P. Beamish controlled from the 1850s.
[3] Crawford used the "vast wealth and income from the brewery" to contribute to the intellectual and cultural institutions of Cork,[3] as well as for donations to the Protestant cathedral and to the Women and Children's Hospital, and for private charity.
He also furnished its rooms, and a short time later settled debts of over £3,000 which the college had been unable to repay to the board of works and banks.
[4] Though virtually nothing remains of Crawford's garden at Lakelands,[5] at its height it employed thirty workers, produced new hybrids of subtropical plants, largely stocked the botanic houses at the college, and in his garden Magnolia campbellii, a tree otherwise native to the Himalayas, "flowered for the first time in Britain or Ireland".
[6] Crawford was unmarried; his sudden death on the night of 18/19 October 1888 at his home in Cork was mourned, and his public funeral to Brooklodge graveyard was attended by hundreds of mourners, including all his employees.
[citation needed] Collections of materials belonging to Crawford are possessed by the British Museum and the University of Leeds.