Sir Henry Tate (1819-1899), well-known as the Tate of Tate and Lyle, and as the founder of the Tate Gallery in London, is typical of many 19 century Unitarians who combined a simple religious faith with quiet philanthropy and a shrewd sense of business. He was born on 11 March 1819 at Chorley, in Lancashire, the son of a Unitarian minister. After working as an assistant in the grocery trade he became a partner in a firm of sugar refiners in Liverpool His fortune was based on his patenting a means of cutting sugar into dice-sized cubes. He used it to endow colleges, hospitals and libraries, including that at Harris-Manchester College, Oxford, and, in 1893, free libraries for the London boroughs of Battersea, Brixton, and Streatham. He also contributed substantially, in 1881-2, to University College, Liverpool, the forerunner of Liverpool University. The National Gallery of British Art, popularly known as the Tate Gallery, was built at his expense on the site of the old Millbank prison, and was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales on 21 July 1897. Tate's own collection of 65 paintings by contemporary artists - most notably Millais (1829-1896) - provided the nucleus of the Gallery. He was created a baronet in June 1898. He died on 5 December 1899.