Robert Cain (brewer) his mother's maiden name is listed as Mary Kirk (died 1864). The story of the life of Robert Cain and Cains Brewery is told in Christopher Routledge's 2008 history of the brewery, "Cains: The Story of Liverpool in a Pint", which unpicks many of the mythologies that have developed around the Cain family. Many of these mythologies seem to date back to the 1920s and 1930s, when Cain's sons William Cain and Charles Nall-Cain were given titles in the British honours system, and centre on the idea that the brewery's founder had a background in the Irish gentry. Such a
Cains Brewery debts totalling more than £8m. The Cains brewery was founded by Irishman Robert Cain in 1858 when he bought an established brewery. Cain had begun his brewing career aged 24 when he purchased a pub and brewed his own ales. Within 25 years of founding his brewery, Cain had established 200 pubs, including the Philharmonic Dining Rooms, the Vines and the Central Commercial Hotel, which are currently listed as being of architectural merit. His personal mansion had each window arch inscribed with his monogram. In 1887 construction began on a second brewery. In 1921, 14 years after Cain's death, the