Licensed to Sell…

‘ The pub and the church are twin symbols at the heart of every English community, the signs of an integrated social life, and they have been so throughout our recorded history from Chaucer’s time down to the new Elizabethan age’. 

So wrote the anonymous author of ‘ Licensed to Sell ‘ in  the September/October 1952 issue of Today (Photo World).With congregations plummeting year by year, the Church ‘s position in the community may have lessened considerably since the year in which Elizabeth II ascended the throne, but the friendly local remains the favourite meeting place for many men and women, whether they actually drink alcohol or not.

However, back in 1952, when bitter, mild and porter were dominant, lager frowned on as a European interloper, and when to order a coffee as an alternative to alcohol in a pub was almost an insult. As the author put it

‘ Beer is complementary to the Englishman’s character and has therefore set the seal on the local pub as the very hub of every social activity. Certain town councils used to hold their village meetings in the local, and as late as 1794 not only orthodox churchmen but Nonconformists as well did consider it blasphemous to old their meetings within tavern walls and round off their discussions with flagons of good old ale’

‘In the middle ages the people wanted ale, cheap ale, and the sovereigns saw that they got it. There was no tea or coffee and wine was scarce and dear,  so ale was the necessary concomitant of harvesting, feast days, births and marriages. Even when the making of ale passed from the hands of the private householder into the province of the professional brewer, laws were promulgated to protect the public and control the price and quality of the national beverage. The first licensing statute passed in 1495 under HENRY VII empowered any two Justices of the Peace “ To reject and pout away any common ale selling in towns and places where they should think it convenient, and to take sureties of keepers of ale houses in their good behaviour.”

‘ Court and common folk ‘ drank ale, apparently. Look at the allowance given to Lady Lucy, a maid of honour at the court of Henry VIII

“ Breakfast—a chine of beef, a loaf, a gallon of ale. Luncheon—bread and a gallon of ale. Dinner—a piece of boiled beef , a slice off roast meat, a gallon of ale. Supper—porridge, mutton, a loaf and “—you’ve guessed it—“ a gallon of ale “.

Incidentally, this Lady Lucy (1524 – 1583 Pic Above) was the daughter of Henry Somerset, 2^nd Earl of Worcester. She served as a Maid of Honour to Katherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, who was executed for adultery. The King considered marrying Lucy, but instead took Katherine Parr as his sixth and final wife. 

Even Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth, had her gallon of ale for breakfast. The alcoholic  regime didn’t seem to do either woman much harm. Lucy reached the age of 59, while Queen Elizabeth died at 70.

At this point the author doesn’t make it clear that this gallon of Tudor ale must have been very weak indeed. After all, how could any human being glug down four gallons of ale ( ie 32 pints ) a day ? That’s if the ration was a daily amount rather than a weekly one. Nor did this ale taste like the beer that we drink today. Beer, according to the learned Dr Bottomley in his Inn Explorer’s Guide ( 1984), was brought to England by the Dutch in the early fifteenth century. It was much stronger than ale and had a bitter taste provided by the addition of hops.

This new-fangled drink wasn’t well received, if Andrew Boorde is to be believed. In his Dyetary of Health (1542) he wrote:

Beer is made of malte, of hoppes and water; it is the natural drynke for a Dutche man and now of late dayes it is much used in England to the detriment of many Englyshe people; specially it killeth them that be troubled with the colyke and  the stone and the strangulation; for the drynke is a cold drynke; yet it doeth make a man fat, and doth inflate the bely, as it doeth appere by the Dutchmen’s faces and belyes. If the bere be well served and be fyned and not new it doth qualify heat of the lyver 

Over the years the number of licensed premises grew enormously until, at its peak in the eighteenth century London alone had 14,288 houses licensed to sell alcoholic drinks on the premises . In 1739 the population of the capital stood at 725,903, which works out at one pothouse per 47 persons or one pub of sorts for every six houses. Of this vast number of pubs, 8,659 were ‘ brandy shops ‘ , 5,975 were ale-houses and only 654 inns or taverns. Incidentally, inns or taverns were not public houses. The former were also places to stay overnight, whereas public houses were simply private houses fitted with a bar on which liquor was served. The author points out that ‘ brandy shops ‘ or spirit bars ( we must confess that we haven’t heard these terms before ) were ‘ crowded together eastward of the City and on the Surrey side of the river. There were comparatively few of them in the City proper and the West End, where coffee houses and genuine taverns still flourished ‘.

The quantity of liquor consumed in London in 1739 was staggering. There were 70,955,604 gallons of beer; 11,205627 gallons of spirits; 30,040 tuns of wine, which amounted to 90 gallons of beer and 14 gallons of spirits per head. By 1896, thanks possibly to the Temperance movement this, consumption had gone down to 30 gallons of beer and just one gallon of spirits per head. By this time, also, the number of pothouses in London had been reduced to one to every 77 houses and to every 585 persons. Quite a drop, with the greatest reduction being among spirit houses.

R. M. Healey